Skip to footer

'Becoming Steve Jobs': Apple approves of this biography

The bestseller 'Steve Jobs' by Walter Isaacson got slammed by some Apple staffers, but now some Apple higher-ups are praising Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli's book 'Becoming Steve Jobs,' which will be released on March 24.

'Becoming Steve Jobs' is by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

A new biography of Steve Jobs – “Becoming Steve Jobs” by Rick Tetzeli and Brent Schlender – is garnering words of approval from some involved with Apple. 

Walter Isaacson’s 2011 book “Steve Jobs” became an instant bestseller but was not well-received by some Apple staffers. Apple design chief Jony Ive told the New Yorker of the book, “My regard couldn’t be any lower.” In "Becoming Steve Jobs" Apple chief executive Timothy D. Cook is quoted as saying that Isaacson’s book did “a tremendous disservice” to Jobs. (“My book is very favorable and honest, with no anonymous slings,” Isaacson told the New York Times.) 

However, “Becoming Steve Jobs,” which is being released on March 24, is getting a much different reaction from the company. (According to the NYT, Schlender, who along with Tetzeli is a journalist who writes about technology, wrote about Jobs for almost 25 years.) The iBooks Twitter account called the book 

while Apple’s chief of software and Internet service Eddy Cue tweeted, 

Barnes & Noble also praised the book, writing that “few had contents that can match the access and revelatory quality of this new book.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Becoming Steve Jobs': Apple approves of this biography
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2015/0323/Becoming-Steve-Jobs-Apple-approves-of-this-biography
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe