If someone wrote a book about me (warts and all), two things would immediately go through my mind.
One: I would be highly flattered that someone felt my life was worthy enough to put pen on paper for
Two: I would have to question the sanity of the author for picking such poor subject matter.
Someone DID however find that Steve Job’s story was interesting enough to burn a few trees for. Not just once, but twice.
Jeffery Young wrote such a biography on Steve Jobs back in the mid-eighties and decided that an update might be in order. So he did what any such author might do and chronicled SJ’s journey through getting unceremoniously dumped by Apple, his failure to make NeXT a viable entity in the computing world, the incredible success story of Pixar animation, and his successful return and revitalization of Apple Computer. Specifically the Mac OS and iPod technologies that turned the company around from the death spiral of the mid to late 90s.
Anyway you look at it, it’s an amazing success story. Even Apple’s fiercest detractors would have to admit that Apple under the second tutelage of Steve has been a magnificent achievement.
Unfortunately for Jeffrey Young, Steve Jobs doesn’t quite see it that way.
The book is called ‘iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business’. It’s distributed by John Wiley and Sons, a noted publisher for the Mac Market (and many others) with a slew of Mac related titles by such noted authors as David Pogue, Bob LeVitus, Mark Chambers, Andy Ihnatko, and many more.
Apparently, an advance copy was given to the powers that be at Apple and someone (Steve himself?) found the subject matter objectionable. After a month of ‘discussions (oh to be a fly on the wall)’ with the publisher Wiley refusing to pull or edit the book to Apple’s satisfaction, Apple has pulled all of Wiley’s books from the shelves of all Apple stores regardless of the content.
Apple owns the Apple Stores of course and they are certainly free to decide what will be sold or stocked, but this seems to be a case of cutting off one’s nose to spite their face. I could certainly understand that they might decide to not sell THIS particular book, but to take all the other worthy and helpful books off the shelves as well seems silly. I would find it difficult to believe that a vast majority of Wiley’s Mac books would actually be sold at the Apple Stores as compared to either direct sales or through the web. The greater part of the books sold by Wiley Publishers aren’t even Mac related. So how effective does Apple really think this boycott is going to be?
Read the whole story at SiliconValley.com
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