Ondrej Holzman On Tuesday, the expected title will appear on the shelves of booksellers and in online e-book stores Becoming Steve Jobs, which many, including top Apple executives, are describing as the best book ever written about Steve Jobs. Several company managers even actively collaborated with the authors.
The announcement of a new Apple-themed book surfaced relatively quietly a few weeks ago, but since then Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli is garnering so much attention that Crown Publishing Group has decided to print twice as many copies in the first run as compared to the originally planned forty thousand.
Much of the credit for promoting the book goes to Apple itself. Tim Cook, Eddy Cue and Jony Ive have made it clear with their recent statements that they are Becoming Steve Jobs is finally the book that shows Steve Jobs as he really was. Which, according to many, Walter Isaacson failed to do in the official biography of the late visionary.
Also just about the official biography Steve Jobs Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks in the new title. According to him, Isaacson failed to properly capture the persona of Jobs. "The person I'm reading about here is someone I would never want to work with all this time," Cook revealed to Schlender and Tetzel. However, Apple initially resisted cooperation on the book.
What is extraordinary is both that several of Apple's top men are actively involved in the book, and that they are publicly criticizing another book. "My opinion couldn't get any lower," he declared about the book by Isaacson in profile The New Yorker Jony Ive, chief designer of Apple. A similarly sharp statement he allowed just Cook a year ago when Yukari Kane's book came out.
On Twitter, great expectations about the new book nourished Eddy Cue, who is in charge of software and Internet services at Apple. "'Becoming Steve Jobs' is the only book about Steve recommended by the people who knew him best," said Cue. When prominent blogger John Gruber also had only words of praise about the new book, we probably have a lot to look forward to.
This is because Apple is not only helping with promotion, but especially active cooperation with authors. In an interview for The New York Times Although Schlender and Tetzel admitted that it was not easy, their patience paid off in the end. Back in 2012, Apple told them that it would not release its managers for interviews. After a year and a half, he changed his mind.
Brent Schlender has been writing about Jobs for almost 25 years, and he decided to write a book because he felt that there was a certain part of Jobs' personality that no one had yet captured on paper. In the end, both authors showed Apple their finished work to verify some facts, but Apple "had absolutely no say in the content," Tetzeli revealed.
"After much reflection after Steve's death, we feel a responsibility to say more about the Steve we knew," said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling. “We decided to collaborate on Brent and Rick's book because of Brent's long friendship with Steve, which gives him a unique perspective on Steve's life. This book captures Steve better than anything else we've seen and we're happy we decided to work together," added Dowling.
For the time being, the book will only be available in English, and Czech customers can purchase it, for example in electronic form in the iBookstore or as a hardcover on Amazon. There should also be a Czech translation in preparation, which we will inform you about at Jablíčkář.
