Chicago Sun-Times Interviews Author Of "Second Coming Of Steve Jobs"

The hottest thing in Mac gossip circles right now is the soon to be released Second Coming Of Steve Jobs, an unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs. The rumor mill says that Steve Jobs is not in the least bit happy with this book and has supposedly gone to some lengths to keep it from being published. It has also been labeled a hatchet-job, and has raised the hackles of many a Mac user, including our own Eolake Stobblehouse due to things like comparing Steve Jobs (no matter how directly or indirectly) to the founder of the EST cult.

The Chicago Sun Timesi Janelle Brown claims that the book is not a hack-and-slash attempt and has interviewed the author of the book. A quote from the interview:

Q. Several biographies of Steve Jobs have already been written in the last 20 years. What made you decide to write about him, too?

A. Of all the CEOs and entrepreneurs Iive written about over the past decade, Jobs is by far the most charismatic and the most fascinating. He just has that hypnotic presence and this complex personality.

At the time [that I began talking to Broadway Books about the book], the iMac had made its debut in the summer of 1998 and it was an immediate sensation. And then in January 1999, at Macworld, Jobs unveiled the four additional fruit-flavored colors of the iMac, and thousands of people at Macworld just went wild.

Bill Gates later obtained a videotape of Steve Jobsi speech and couldnit understand why thousands of people were going crazy over colors; he was like, "Colors? Whatis the big deal?"

Steveis incredible personal resurgence with the turnaround of Apple . . . really captured the themes of Silicon Valley of the i90s. Hereis someone whois passionate about technology, but whose success was largely based not on engineering prowess but on marketing and image-making and public relations.

Jobs is someone who is an incredible elitist yet yearns for the patronage of the masses, for millions of people to buy his product--even though his own personal tastes are incredibly austere and minimalistic, and he is removed from the popular culture.

Read the full interview for a very interesting read; itis worth the time.