I decided to read the biography of Steve Jobs. Because it was Steve Jobs’ biography, it seemed appropriate to use iBooks. This was my first experience downloading and reading a large book in iBooks. I had previously used iBooks for a number of PDF files so I was familiar with the program and I viewed it positively.
The book itself was fascinating. I give it an A-. It is extensive and comes across as balanced. The main downside involves keeping track of timelines. When the author covers Jobs’s romantic life, the timeline being discussed overlaps the timelines previously covered. I wish there had been a graph showing how the events from different areas of Jobs’s life lined up. Other than that it was an enjoyable and informative read. I won’t cover what was in the book. Buy it and read it. The author did a better job than I ever could.
One of the themes in the book was Jobs’s obsession with creating a consistent and cohesive user experience. Here is where I ran into a problem with iBooks. As mentioned above, the book was an interesting read. I got engrossed in it one day and found the battery on my iPad running low. I decided to charge the iPad and continue reading on my Macbook Pro. Imagine my surprise when I found out you can’t read an iBook on a Macbook Pro. Had I bought the book through Amazon and used the Kindle app I would have been fine. There are Kindle apps for iPhone, iPad, Android (tablet and phone), PC and, yes my dear readers, Macs. Apple needs to fix this immediately. It runs counter to the Apple philosophy and strikes me as glaringly inconsistent. While I think it would be in Apple’s best interest to release iBooks for the PC (but not Android), it is absolutely necessary to at least release it for OSX i.e. Mac. Right now I am advising everyone to stick with Kindle. There are too many reasons to want to be able to read a book on your laptop or desktop computer.
Reading the biography reminded me of my days selling Apple computers. It was 1978 and I was a graduate student in the physics department at Louisiana State University. To earn some extra money, I had taken a part time job at a small store called The Computer Place. It was a lot of fun. We sold Apple II and Commodore Pet computers and later added the Atari 400 and 800 with the Apple II being the big seller. I still have the old Apple II Red Book owner’s manual. I learned the rudiments of Basic, Pascal and Lisp while playing on the computers and solving customer problems. It was a time when the games that came with the Apple II were named Breakout and Star Trek. Only later would Apple be contacted regarding trademark and copyright violations. One Saturday I was trying to answer a customer’s question and was stuck. I decided to call Apple. Steve Jobs answered the phone. He was cordial and answered my question. What that question was I don’t remember. I do remember being impressed that Jobs was there on a Saturday and that he had answered my question as if I was a big time customer. That’s the only contact I ever had with Steve Jobs and it was a very short and minor moment but a fond memory just the same. Little did I know then that I would later be involved in a Silicon Valley startup, Cypress Semiconductor, and have my own up close and personal set of experiences with an intense and focused CEO i.e. one T. J. Rogers. However, that, as they say, is another story.
paulplatt 