Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Steve Jobs Writing... On & By Him

There's been some extremely solid writing on Steve Jobs published or brought back up with his passing last week. I'm sure more great content out there I haven't seen, but below is the best from what I have...

The cover story from the latest issue of Time was American Icon by Walter Isaacson. Formerly Managing Editor of Time, Isaacson's short piece on Jobs gets at the man as well as what he accomplished... and is a good indicator that the upcoming authorized biography Steve Jobs from Isaacson could be excellent.



From Michael Kruse for the St. Petersburg Times came As Apple grew, so did an entire generation. Kruse seems to do very good human impact writing (another example being this on the Tampa Bay Rays a couple weeks back) and he writes of Job's death through the story of someone that's grown up using the devices conceived of and supplied by Jobs and Apple.

Another piece of writing on Jobs that stood out to me wasn't even directly about him, but rather the concept of forward-thinking entrepreneurship best exemplified by him. The Steve Jobs MBA Unit 101: Don’t think about the present was published in June 2011 and part of a series for Wired Magazine. What got me to read the piece (and truth be told, what also influenced my enjoyment of it) was it being written by Alain De Botton... author of the fascinating book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (which I linked to and posted on here).

Finally, it's been referenced over and over since Jobs passed away, but his June 2005 Stanford Commencement address really is deserving of the all the attention as a testament to the guy and his ideas.