TheOverAnalyzed

Devour recently featured a supercut of Pixar films called “The Best of Pixar.” Watching this reminded me of a passage in a book I have been reading recently. But before I talk about that, I should give some backstory.

Reading Books ¶

I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t often read books. I blame that on not being forced to read as a kid. I read the bare minimum, just what was necessary to get through elementary school. But that was it. I liked TV and movies more, I suppose. Truthfully, I never really enjoyed reading until high school. I’m thankful I had teacher, Ralph Christie, who exposed us to humanities through the lens of many great literary works. I owe much of my understanding of the world to books I read in high school. And so at that time, reading wasn’t the absolute worse thing I had to do. Still, it wasn’t a hobby, reading was what I did for school.

In college, the only humanities courses I took were the ones required for my chemistry degree. Because of that, I read much fewer ‘book-books’ in college, focusing instead on textbooks. And in dental school, I read even less.

When not forced to do so because of a scholastic endeavor, I never really got into reading. I never read ‘for fun.’ I have been an avid reader of the internet for at least 15 years, especially so in the past three or four. Maybe it’s because an online article seems so much less daunting than a big (“big”) 1000+ page book? For some reason, the idea of sitting down and devoting myself to reading an entire book always seemed stressful. Reading on the internet never made me feel that way.

So when family members or friends have gifted me books, my emotions have been a mix of thankfulness and gratitude, as well as anxiety.

I have even gone so far as to specifically ask for books as gifts, in the hopes that my fear of disappointing the gifter might actually motivate me to do some good old fashioned book reading. Alas, no. The guilt is there, but the books remain on the shelf, staring me down on a daily basis.

Will I finish this before I see them next, less they think me ungrateful?

Thankfully, the new biography “Becoming Steve Jobs” by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli might just be the motivation I need.

When I need to pass the time, my go-to apps are what they have been for years: Instagram, Tweetbot, and Reeder. The former for absolute time-wasting, and the latter two for browsing my feeds for things to read. I save articles I want to read to Instapaper, so that I can read them later, with stripped-down and clean formatting.^[1]Historically, when I’ve gone through my whole Instapaper queue, I might launch an indie game and truly veg-out. Or if I have an article saved to Instapaper that I want to write about, I might do that instead.

Becoming Steve Jobs ¶

Not until Becoming Steve Jobs have I considered reading a book in my downtime. Despite my initial protestations and apprehensions regarding reading such a ‘big’ book, I find it quite relaxing. This is especially true because reading a book doesn’t carry with it the emotional baggage of a completionist.

Also, the fact that I am holding something physical and tangible is not lost on me. If I am holding a book, I am not holding my iPhone. In fact, it’s probably in my pocket. That makes it more bothersome, and therefore, less tempting to press the home button and look for another app silo to tap into. This physical separation from my electronic device allows me to read away, with little distraction, just like people of old, before all the screens. Becoming Steve Jobs might just be the perfect way to re-introduce me to reading: less stress, more relaxation.

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I’m almost halfway through Becoming Steve Jobs and I am enjoying it so far. This is in stark contrast to the opinions of long-time Apple devotees Jason Snell and John Siracusa. On the latest episode of Upgrade, both admitted they weren’t entirely pleased with the authors’ presentation of Steve Jobs or Apple on the whole.

Firstly, they felt the authors come off as shills, and that having Apple seemingly endorse the book can’t possibly bode well for the book’s supposed veracity and non-bias.

Also, in their attempt to paint Jobs as not just an a**hole, the authors seem to make up their own version of events. And worse yet, say Snell and Siracusa, the authors fail to support their claims with quotes from people who were ‘there.’ After all, the recollections those people who lived through the events might illuminate the somewhat cloudy history of events.^[2] Why not put to rest the cloudiness and set the record straight? Snell and Siracusa make good points, no doubt about that.

I wasn’t privy to all the history and happenings of Apple during the 80’s and 90’s. Because of that, a lot of what I have read in this book has been taken at face value. I don’t have all the backstory that Snell and Siracusa have. So take that with a grain of salt. As far as I can see, much of Schlender’s story seems to coincide with what I already knew about the history of Apple between Macintosh and Jobs’ second coming. There are other Apple slash Steve Jobs books in my Amazon Wish List. As I go through those, I’ll be able to compare and contrast their story with the one that Schlender and Tetzeli have told.

Pixar ¶

Now we come back to Pixar. In the chapter “A Side Bet,” the authors discuss the time in Jobs life in which NeXT was failing, and he was looking for the next big thing. Luckily for Jobs, the ex-Lucasfilm lot that he financed would eventually revolutionize animated feature films. Pixar’s eventual success solidified Jobs’ perception that he was doing a decent job as CEO of NeXT^[3] This, according to the authors, helped galvanize Jobs into what would eventually be the Steve Jobs that brought Apple out of the dark times, and catapulted them to where they are today.

But before Pixar was Pixar, Jobs and some of Pixar’s own had doubts about the company’s sustainability. In the late 80’s, Pixar wasn’t making any serious amount of money. John Lasseter, the animator/designer whose storytelling abilities are unmatched even today, thought back then that Jobs might decide to cut the animation team at Pixar, in order to save money.

According to Schlender, Lasseter was worried, to say the least:^[4]

“And I thought for sure that they’d get rid of Animation. At one point they were contemplating a layoff in Hardware, I think, and there were lots of complaints like, ‘What about Animation? They don’t do anything to bring in the money.’ So I asked the head of Software, a guy named Mickey Mantle, like the baseball player, ‘When’s the shoe gonna drop, really? When will they just close Animation?’ And he said, ‘John, they never will.’

“ ‘What do you mean?’ I asked him,” continues Lasseter. “And Mickey said, ‘Computer hardware and software companies, they go through layoffs and it’s business. It’s the ups and downs of the business. But when people think of Pixar, it’s not our computers or our software. They think of those little short films you’ve made. That’s the identity of Pixar to the rest of the world. So if Pixar were to stop making those films and lay everybody off in Animation, that would signal to the entire world that Pixar is done. That,’ he said, ‘is why they’re not gonna close Animation.’”

Even then, before the Tin Toy (1989) and the Oscar, Pixar was animation. Today, nothing’s changed. Pixar is still about the stories through brilliant animation. If you haven’t watched anything from Pixar, start with Toy Story (1995), and then just go through them all, up until today. I really like Cars (2006), though I can admit that it probably wasn’t, cinematically-speaking, the best Pixar film ever.^[5]

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Becoming Steve Jobs is an exploration into the parts of Steve Jobs’ life that Apple nerds care about. It glosses over all the personal relationship stuff that formed the basis of Isaacson’s biography. Instead, Schlender and Tetzeli paint the picture of a man who got kicked out of the company he founded. They show us a man who desperately needed to start something new, but ultimately failed at what would be his next endeavor as well. And after gaining some managerial skills from his little animation house, they show us how he comes back to the company he started, this time with the skills necessary to catalyze a monumental change in the personal computer industry, and later on, the entire consumer electronics space.