Paul Daniel's Views On The World, For What They're Worth

Have a look at this screen shot. Can you see something fundamentally wrong with it? No?

Have a look at the price of the Kindle edition, compared to the paperback and hardcover (sorry – I know the quality of the screen grab isn’t great).

The whole idea of e-books is they can be distributed a lot more easily and cheaply and thus, those savings can be passed onto the consumer. There are no manufacturing and shipping costs associated with getting the book to the consumer.

So what the hell is going on here Macmillan? Please explain.

I’ve spent the whole of my working life in the IT industry. 34 years in fact. When I studied computer science, as it was called then, at University of Queensland, I was one of the first students to actually study in the field.

So it probably doesn’t surprise you that I’m not as passionate about the IT industry as others might be. What goes around, comes around. If you think “cloud” is something unique, you’d better put your head back in the sand. We used to call them bureaus.

As a result, I’ve never spent a lot of time meticulously studying how our industry has evolved. I’ve pretty much taken it for granted and just rolled with the flow. Of course I know who Gates and Jobs are and what they’ve done, but it’s never really fascinated me as some people think it might or should.

I did feel a great sense of loss when Steve Jobs passed away though. I even changed my Facebook profile picture to the silhouetted Apple logo with his face etched into the bite. I love my iPod and my iPad, and I would prefer to have an iPhone, than the Windows phone that my employer gives me.

Some people would argue that, given I work for, and rely on my income from, a Microsoft partner, I shouldn’t be so supportive of the Apple products. But that’s bullshit. Those people need to stick there heads in the sand with the cloudites.

So given my love for the Apple products and my sense of loss at Steve’s passing, I realised I really needed to get to know the bloke better. So I bought Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson, ironically reading it on the Kindle client of my iPad.

In short, it’s a great read. I love Isaacson’s writing style and have downloaded previews of his other biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. I might give Henry Kissinger a miss though.

Given Jobs’ controlling nature at Apple, it would not be unreasonable to expect he would have taken control of what went into the biography. But this is clearly not the case. At the end of the book, he has the opportunity to articulate the Steve Jobs view of the world. However, Issacson also covers many aspects of Jobs’ life that clearly do not paint him in the best light.

So what do I think about the man, having reading the Isaacson biography? This excerpt sums it up for me.