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Ask HN: Why aren't there other biographies of Steve Jobs?

• rib3ye 5y ago
  Not a strict biography format but folklore.org has many stories about Steve written by those that worked with him. Here’s one from one of the original Mac engineers, Bill Atkinson: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Joining_Apple_Computer&sortOrder=Sort+by+Date https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
• colinramsay 5y ago
  From Puffin's Extraordinary Lives: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extraordinary-Life-Steve-Jobs-Lives/dp/0241434041/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extraordinary-Life-Steve-Jobs-Lives...
• rjv 5y ago
  I just finished "Becoming Steve Jobs" by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. Not a full bio but has some great stories about Steve Jobs at NeXT, Pixar, and his return to Apple.
  • superlopuh 5y ago
    If I remember correctly was written almost as a reaction to the official biography misunderstanding/misrepresenting the character. I'd say that it's a difficult biography to write since his character seems to have changed quite a lot over his lifetime, and accounts from one era will not be applicable to another. Small Fry is an interesting personal account over time, but obviously very biased and particular. I really enjoyed folklore.org for a look at the professional side of things from a very specific period, and would recommend the hypercritical episode on the book [0] for some good arguments on why Isaacson was the wrong person to write the biography. [0]: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42
    • atombender 5y ago
      One of the themes (reflected in the title, even) of "Becoming Steve Jobs" is precisely that Jobs changed. For example, it starts out with a formative episode from early in his career that the authors use to illustrate how Jobs constantly used failures to re-evaluate his approach to work and life, as develop his character.
• na85 5y ago
  Why does Jobs command such rabid adulation? He was an asshole, so vain that he would get a new car every X number of months just so that he could be the guy without license plates, and so selfish he wouldn't give one of those dozens of cars to his daughter whom he refused to acknowledge. So he made popular products, big deal. What a disgusting human being he was.
  • gjhr 5y ago
    I certainly don't adore him, but would probably read a good biography about him _because_ he is such a controversial figure.
    • akie 5y ago
      I mean the officially authorized biography, which in my opinion shows Steve Jobs as a real asshole, is a good read.
  • colourgarden 5y ago
    Where is the adulation in OP's question? A person doesn't have to be likeable to be worth reading or learning about.
  • switchstance 5y ago
    It sounds like you need to read or reread Walter Isaacson's biography on Steve. Sure he was an asshole, but there is still a lot to be learned from the man.
    • na85 5y ago
      I prefer to think about "Steve" as little as possible.
      • sunshinerag 5y ago
        Yet you are here pumping out comments. Surely you can’t get him out of your head. Such devotion.
• gary17the 5y ago
  Perhaps there aren't more biographies of Steve Jobs, because the general public does not really consider Jobs to be "an important historical figure of our time" (and neither Apple to be the most important technological company of our time)? IMHO, when the iPhone came out, it did not introduce almost anything revolutionary over the already available Windows Mobile PDA devices, it only simplified, polished and packaged the device way better. I still do not understand how Microsoft, considering their extensive experience in operating system development, somehow managed to lose their entire, massive mobile device market share in the course of only a couple of years. All it could have taken for Microsoft to win over Apple was to switch Windows Mobile from a cumbersome stylus-based UI to a convenient touch-based UI without wasting years and years to re-develop the misguided Windows Phone from scratch.
  • the-dude 5y ago
    Are you familiar with the abomination that used to be called the Control Panel ? Microsoft is a B2B company, not a B2C.
    • falcor84 5y ago
      Could you please elaborate on your opinion? I personally really liked the old Windows control panel
    • gary17the 5y ago
      If you look at the modern iPhone, it' settings tree structure is as confusing and unmanageable as the good old Control Panel, there's almost no UI ergonomics difference nor any UI innovation there. Well, since Microsoft invested as massively into the Windows Phone as to re-develop it from scratch and ship free 1.0 devices to all developers who requested one, I would say that Microsoft did indeed want to keep their B2C market share pretty badly. Yet, they failed.
  • tuyiown 5y ago
    > I still do not understand how Microsoft, considering their extensive experience in operating system development, somehow managed to lose their entire, massive mobile device market share in the course of only a couple of years. Maybe because the iPhone actually delivered much much more that was already available on windows mobile ?
• theelous3 5y ago
  > He's most certainly an important historical figure of our time Is he actually though? He was really wealthy, and sold a lot of mobile devices. He was fanboyed over by a lot of mobile device enthusiasts. Of note outside of this - he was a horrible person to work with, and died in large part of lala land medical thinking. Is this what an important historical figure is these days? Historical figures are typically more than just grease in the profit engine of a multinational.
  • sunshinerag 5y ago
    Disagree. What’s wrong with being wealthy and selling a lot of mobile devices. Great accomplishments. By the way he sold iPhones, not generic mobile devices. :)
    • theelous3 5y ago
      1. You can't disagree with me because I never said anything was wrong with being wealthy. 2. iphones are the epitome of generic mobile devices, and have been since their second gen. That's an accomplishment in and of its self - but doesn't make what I said very wrong.
  • roenxi 5y ago
    > He was really wealthy, and sold a lot of mobile devices. He created the worlds most profitable company. That deserves some attention. If we demand perfection of role models; then we won't get any. That is why we have them, to some extent - to learn what flaws are safe to ignore as we strive to make the world better.
    • theelous3 5y ago
      He was the ceo of the worlds most profitable (for a while) company. Wow amazing. What a role model?
      • rib3ye 5y ago
        It’s observable that it wasn’t “just” about the money for him. He walked away from that company after they sidelined him. Most execs would just rest and vest but instead he rage quit and sunk his own money to save Pixar and spin up NeXT, and at least of those companies had a major cultural impact, so give him a little credit.
• killtimeatwork 5y ago
  > He's most certainly an important historical figure of our time I wouldn't call him that. He's in second/third leaguer at best. His impact on the world was minor. He deserves biographies for sure (people with much less accomplishments get them as well), but let's not compare him to his contemporaries who were truly important historical figures of that time, like Nelson Mandela or Lech Wałęsa - people who radically changed lives of tens of millions of people. In general, impact made by individual businesspeople is not that great, because all they do is follow market trends, which makes them fungible -i.e. if Jobs didn't push Apple to make iPhone, some other company would come up with the smartphone later on (the next step in technical/scientific progress is a logical consequence of the previous steps and is usually spotted by multiple companies/people at the same time). Whereas in politics, the world is not an unidirectional march towards more progress, and, depending on actual leaders, things can get much better or much worse. So, a given leader makes much more of a difference. For example, if Hitler didn't want German race to dominate the world and didn't start WWII, tens millions of people would not have died - that's a huge impact in comparison. The Nazi party and even WWII could still happen without Hitler existing (somebody else might start the party to harvest all the German resentment of that period), but perhaps he'd be less rabid than Hitler, which would result in much less death - hence the actual delta of Hitler is huge. Even deltas of vanilla American presidents are much greater than Jobs'.
  • fdeage 5y ago
    For better or worse, I think he embodied the tech culture of our time more than anyone else. My bet is that he will be remembered as a capital figure for putting half of the planet on a smartphone, which is a huge cultural change (not necessarily a good one, but still). If he's "second/third leaguer at best", who would you put in the first league?
    • heliodor 5y ago
      He'll be remembered just as much as we remember the railroad barons; which is too say, not that much. Such is tech.
    • killtimeatwork 5y ago
• tcmart14 5y ago
  I wouldn't say Jobs was that important of a historical figure. He, at the end of the day, was a business man and good at marketing. I would find a biography of Wozniak more interesting since he actually did a lot of the early engineering at Apple and was the technical genius in the early days of Apple. Essentially, I think Woz would have gone on to make a name for himself with or without Jobs. Jobs on the other hand, probably would have been a nobody without Woz.
  • fdeage 5y ago
    I see your point, but I think history doesn't care about merit. Even if he was only the best phone seller in history, selling phone has become so important in our times that this achievement would still make him a historical figure IMO. Also, definitely not sure about Woz. He would probably have found a nice job, sure, but it's a far stretch to say he would have revolutionized as many industries as Apple did.
  • yardie 5y ago
    Woz had an aircraft accident after the Apple II and kind of fell off the ball after that. So much so that Jobs had to go to Bill Gates to get some very necessary coding work completed. Woz had a brilliant but relatively short streak at being the top engineer of his time. Also, there is a autobiography of Woz, iWoz[0] [0] https://smile.amazon.com/iWoz-BYWozniak-Wozniak/dp/B006Q4IWXG https://smile.amazon.com/iWoz-BYWozniak-Wozniak/dp/B006Q4IWX...
    • tcmart14 5y ago
      I will have to check out that autobiography, thanks!
• throw0101a 5y ago
  Try Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. Gruber's review: * https://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/03/02/becoming-steve-jobs https://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/03/02/becoming-steve-... Gruber's review of Isaacson's book: > Note that my complaints here are not about Isaacson being insufficiently deferential. That the book is not a hagiography is to its credit. The personal stuff — documentation of Jobs’s cruelty (and his talent for cruelty), his tantrums, his tendency to claim for himself the ideas of others — that’s not problematic. Isaacson handles that well, and what he reports in that regard jibes with everything we know about the man. My complaints are about outright technical inaccuracies, and getting the man’s work wrong. The design process, the resulting products, the centrality of software — Isaacson simply misses the boat. * https://daringfireball.net/2012/02/walter_isaacson_steve_jobs https://daringfireball.net/2012/02/walter_isaacson_steve_job...
• Jedd 5y ago
  It's mostly about the author, though her father necessarily features large - with Lisa Brennan-Jobs' 'Small Fry'. From 2018 https://www.booktopia.com.au/small-fry-lisa-brennan-jobs/book/9781611854916.html https://www.booktopia.com.au/small-fry-lisa-brennan-jobs/boo...
• fbanon 5y ago
  >He's most certainly an important historical figure of our time According to what metric?
• pfarrell 5y ago
  I was thinking that everything’s been covered already. For instance, a book about Next would just be a rehash of “Soul of a New Machine”. On consideration, I’d really like to know more about ‘97 to ‘07. You’ve got Jobs rejoining Apple, creation of iMac, moving to Intel processors, creation of the iPod, creation of the Apple stores, culminating with the creation of the iPhone. Those ten years with some incredibly gutsy decisions did change society. But I’d want this theoretical book to be about many more people, not just Jobs.
• PacketPaul 5y ago
  Steve Jobs is one of the most important historical figures of our lifetime, if not the most. Here is why. He broke the hold the carriers had over phones. In doing so changed the world and ushered in the mobile economy. Remember back to pre iPhone days. Each carrier had their own version of the phone. That phone came with bloatware and a curated list of possible apps you may download … from the carrier. The carrier had total control and say of the phone, it’s functionality and the apps installed. Imagine a world today where the phone App Store and phone function itself was controlled by the carrier. The carrier dictates if Uber or Lyft is available to “their” customers. Only certain banks or restaurants are available based upon agreements with the carriers.The carrier picks the winners and losers in this new mobile economy and the world is fragmented based upon your cell phone carrier. Things we take for granted like maps, messaging and FaceTime would be additional costs you pay to the carrier. Because of Steve Jobs and his vision, that dystopian carrier controlled world does not exist. The new mobile and gig economy is all because Steve Jobs had the vision to wrestle control from the carriers. Name one other person in the last 50 years that has had this much effect on the world and how society has changed.
  • stby 5y ago
    At least with carriers we'd have more competition, now everything you mention is basically controlled by two companies. I'm not sure if that's any better.
  • eptcyka 5y ago
    This is an US specific issue - in Europe it was common to just buy the device outright and use it with whichever carrier. And whilst it's cool that Apple was against the tyranny of carriers, it's very obvious it has no qualms about being the tyrant itself.
  • tcmart14 5y ago
    Wait, wasn't iPhone an AT&T/Cingular exclusive for awhile? I feel like this is kind of antithetical to the idea of escaping the tyranny of carriers. Unless escaping the tyranny of carriers means that between 2007 and 2011, iPhones were tired to one carrier. Then there is the side loading apps issue. There is only one true source for apps on iPhone, but someone can actually build an alternative app store for android phones. This seems more like walled garden activity.
• rib3ye 5y ago
  One thing I love about Steve is that he didn’t play the PR bullshit game with regards to his personal image. While Zuck sells stock so that he can put his name on a hospital, he lives in a compound. By comparison Steve lived in a simple house on a public street.
  • duncanawoods 5y ago
    > By comparison Steve lived in a simple house on a public street. Up until his death, he was in a court battle to demolish and rebuild his mansion that sat on a 6 acre estate.