As an Apple owner since the days of the Apple II+, I put the definitive Steve Job's biography on my Christmas list the year it came out. Placed on my "fast track" shelf it only took me two years to start. I knew a lot of the Steve Jobs story from other books, movies, and magazine articles. However it became apparent that most of my knowledge concentrated on his original stint at Apple. The book is organized by time but has a different tone between the first and second halves. The beginning has a lot of insight into his emotional and spiritual development. The second half of the book is organized very much by product releases: iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc. Among the things I learned where that his sister, Mona Simpson, is a very successful author. I also didn't realize he took over Pixar BEFORE it became a household name via Disney. I knew about Pixar from my college days because I had an interest in computer graphics and my friend Terry was a graphics super-freak. I also had the sense that Steve would find one person who he thought was good at a task, then always go back to them, even after they've retired or want to return home. Examples would be his advertising agent and chief industrial designer. That approach seems to work against developing new talent. The Big Truth one can take away from the book is that to have a successful company you have to concentrate on excellent products. The Ivy League produces people bent on "taking companies public". Hype an idea, sell stock, hype it some more, offload the stock to working class retirement plans before the whole house of cards collapses. To them, products are just widgets, and it shows. Devices like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad were not new ideas. Other companies had tried them first. Apple just figured out how to do them WELL. You need to focus on making quality products that enhance peoples lives, not just emptying their pocketbooks.