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The Jobs book
- hack_edu 15y agoDave Winer doesn't seem to like anything, does he?
- bitsweet 15y agoThe ladder we chose to climb was a very short one, unlike the ones the reporters climb. To get to the top meant convincing one or two people we could make a contribution. IMO, this still applies to software. That is why the whole debate to stay or drop out of school even exists. You don't see lawyers, accountants, doctors, or journalists for that matter debate on the merits of school to advance their career. If you write code, consider yourself lucky to still be living in this "golden period" where just a little skill and ambition is all you need to make an excellent living doing enjoyable work.
- wes-exp 15y agoTo be fair, lawyers, accountants, and doctors all face strict professional requirements to be degree holders. As such, debating the necessity of a degree serves no practical purpose in those fields. The decreased need for education in software engineering shouldn't be used as an indicator of its competitiveness. On the contrary, one could argue that is actually more competitive, because anyone can enter the field at any time.
- bitsweet 15y agoExactly - Accounting as an example had a much lower bar of entry, similar to programming today. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen -"Hey Arthur Andersen, your a bright kid, you should come work for us") It is very possible programming follows a similar path requiring more and more professional requirements to get a ticket to play.
- hollerith 15y agoYou have to be a CPA to sign certain kinds of reports that investors depend on and to do certain kinds of audits, but there is a lot of work in accounting without any profession-wide degree or certification requirements.
- jgrahamc 15y agoIt's hard for me to know why I should care that Winer doesn't like the book. It's true that the book is not written by someone with a deep understanding of technology, but this is mostly a story about Steve Jobs the man, and not technical detail. What comes through in the book is that Jobs was a very difficult and troubled person with a tremendous energy to try to do things 'right' (for his definition of right). I've found it a very enjoyable read. Here you have a book written with the cooperation of a man who knows he's dying and wants to talk about his story. It's an interesting book because it's not a hagiography nor is Jobs making excuses. Early in the book he says straight up that he behaved poorly towards his parents and Lisa Brennan-Jobs and at the same time can't quite recall stiffing Woz out of money for the Atari work.
- davewiner 15y agoGlad you enjoyed the book. And of course there's no reason you should care what I think. Can't think of a single reason. :-)
- Tloewald 15y agoI like your suggestions for a more tech savvy bio, but like the grandparent I think Isaacson has done a pretty good job. I totally agree that so much of the story has become rehearsed myth that it's kind of annoying to see it regurgitated here and there although, to give one example, I think Isaacson does a great job of dealing with the relationship between Woz and jobs when so many others simply accept Woz's evolving "standard version".
- jseliger 15y agoRight. To some extent, the review is criticizing something Isaacson pretty clearly didn't set out to do—explain technology. Isaacson wants to look at Jobs's contradictions and paradoxes—the kindness and cruelty in a single package, indifference tempered by sudden engagement, a frequently binary worldview, the lack of consistency from the outside, the habits that we'd normally dismiss as bizarre, like dietary ones, that might also be tied to success. Now, I can understand why someone might not be interested in those things, but to me that doesn't invalidate the book. BTW, I started it and wrote about the first 50 or so pages here: http://jseliger.com/2011/10/24/the-steve-jobs-biography http://jseliger.com/2011/10/24/the-steve-jobs-biography . Note that the book itself is actually nicely and well-made; it feels like a Jobesian artifact, instead of the usual publishing industry pablum.
- kenjackson 15y agoReading the PPS in Winer's post about who should write a Jobs book made it clear to me that I think I will like this biography. I honestly didn't think anyone liked "Breaking Windows".
- andymboyle 15y agoI'd like to know how Dave Winer expects a new biographer to get the same amount of access to Steve Jobs as Walter Isaacson did. It's hard to interview someone 40 times if, you know, you can't.
- gigamonkey 15y agoBy "source materials" presumably he means the raw transcripts of the interviews, etc. Which doesn't seem too likely but it's at least possible.
- andymboyle 15y agoAnd under what obligation is Isaacson or his publisher supposed to give the raw transcripts of any interviews he did with anyone for the book?
- davewiner 15y agoI would assume none. But I also assume it doesn't hurt to ask. :-)
- adestefan 15y agoI would assume they're actually under obligation to not release them. Most people that sit down for these things would rather every word they've spoken does not see the light of day.
- matwood 15y agoInterestingly enough, the reports make it sounds like both Jobs and his wife want everything to be told as is.
- Thrymr 15y agoI would expect he is under no legal obligation. But he ought feel a professional obligation to history that others may be able to use the recordings/transcripts to draw their own conclusions. He is a biographer, after all; he never got to interview Einstein, he had to rely on the records of others that were preserved. That doesn't mean the transcripts must be released immediately, but I would expect that others will eventually have access.
- jeffreymcmanus 15y agoStating that "The ladder we chose to climb was a very short one, unlike the ones the reporters climb" is kind of bullshit. Dave is a blogger who feels like bloggers are the new news reporters, and that news reporters would be as great as him if they would only grow a pair, or something. But reporting the news is not easy. For most reporters it's like bringing a spork to a machine-gun battle, every single day of the week. This is not a book about Apple and it's not a book about technology. It's not supposed to be "The Soul of a New Machine." It's about Steve Jobs. Did Dave not look at the cover before he started reading? It's all right there.
- knowtheory 15y agoI'm confused. I think you're wrong on the substance and also contradicting yourself. Reporters do have a harder time than devs. There are a lot of solo devs, they're even exalted for their indie developer-dom. But there aren't exalted indie investigative reporters (if there even is such a thing as indie investigative reporters). Being a reporter does mean that there's a longer ladder to climb than creating a startup and getting funding.
- cruise02 15y agoI'm pretty sure he was talking about software development there, not blogging.
- davewiner 15y agoYes, I was talking about developers. But I appreciate the other guy standing up for me.
- andymoe 15y agoIt's an interesting take by someone who has been involved since the early days of personal computing. I have not read the Jobs book yet but I have been reading Dave's stuff since sometime in '98 (His writing used to be the second result when searching for scripting) and he is always good for an interesting perspective. ps. Thank's to the mod's for removing the negative editorializing from the submission title.
- snorkel 15y agoWalter Isaacson wrote the definitive biography of Einstein, so I believe he can grasp the technicals. The reason the book is not overly technical because like Apple itself, it's better to put people in front of technology.
- davewiner 15y agoActually I think he misunderstood what programmers and hardware engineers do. And he had no grasp of the creative process of tech, which is presumably what the book is about.
- tptacek 15y agoI thought the book was about Steve Jobs.
- Thrymr 15y agoHis Einstein biography was great, but very heavy on his personal life and professional interactions, while weak on the science. "Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein" by Abraham Pais is much better on his science.
- seanmccann 15y agoWe were young and stupid, and the world told us we were the super-exceptional people that Jobs apparently believed he was until he died. That's what makes this so hard to read. We weren't that special. Dave Winer is an exceptional person but I don't like how he writes as if he was a complete equal to Steve Jobs. Just because Dave Winer doesn't think of himself as special, doesn't mean Steve Jobs wasn't special. The people that think they are super-exceptional, are often the ones that end up being super-exceptional.
- davewiner 15y agoOf course when he was alive we were complete equals. Do you know of a mathematical formula that allows you to compare two whole human beings? To think otherwise is an exceptional form of hubris. And of course that extends to you and to everyone else who comments here. And now that he's gone, I'm more of a person than he ever will be. I believe that's the sad truth of what death means, Sean. Gone is gone.
- AllenKids 15y agoOh, the temptation to evoke the godwin's law... To facilitate a mature conversation, one might want to set the tune first.
- OpieCunningham 15y agoI'm not very familiar with you, so perhaps there is some context missing. But those statements are extraordinarily odd. No one is equal - or perhaps you know of some physical or natural law that demonstrates this supposed equality? If anyone was equal to another they would be identical and indistinguishable. I know of a mathematical formula that allows me to compare to whole human beings: what value have I received from your existence vs. another's existence? It's an imperfect formula, no doubt, but it's not equivalent to null. Specific people have far greater influence on any given individual than all people have influence. Therefore, they are superior people from the perspective of that individual. The last statement lacks sufficient context for me to comment: "And now that he's gone, I'm more of a person than he ever will be" - I can't determine the meaning. I suppose it's something like: any person that is alive at this moment is better than any person that has ever lived and died. And that's not supreme hubris? (Perhaps there is some indication you're referring to the potential of a person living vs. the potential of a person dead, though that ignores the reality of continuing influence and inspiration that some dead people retain while a living person likely never achieves at a similar scale.)
- stdbrouw 15y agoIt's a good book, I think, but Dave is right that it gets repetitive at times, and the storytelling is a wee bit exaggerated. 20% is about Steve being an asshole and 20% is about him being a spiritual and emotional kind of guy. Luckily, the remaining 60%, thank heavens, has some actual content.
- staunch 15y ago> We weren't that special. It's silly that you would write as if you were a peer to Jobs. Only a handful of people were, people like Gates, Ellison, Grove. Even those guys aren't special in the big way Jobs was. It's not required that you like him to acknowledge his special place in the tech world.
- jeswin 15y agoThere is some truth to what Dave is saying here. I felt the author made an attempt to romanticize Jobs life to appeal to a wider audience. Starting with the first chapter, where he says 'Abandonment, Special, Chosen' were three words that played a big role in defining Steve's character. And then he goes on to subtly downplay Steve insisting that it actually did not matter. What is wrong with Steve just making intelligent decisions about products, than attributing it to scars from his childhood? Nothing, except that it isn't as interesting. In Dave's article, what I really liked was when he said they weren't really all that special. That is so very true. Real life heroes in the tech industry may not be that heroic. They don't need to be, at least to some of us. Sometimes I feel some of the most successful people in our industry (like Steve, Zuck, BillG) are actually peers, who had somewhat better intuition, better timing, better business sense; they certainly did a few things better. But definitely not beyond the comprehension of some people (though, not me) who comment here. And there are of course people who are actually heroes to me, not merely peers who do a lot better. For example Scott Aaronson, though I understand very little of what he writes. I just know that even if I had chosen a different path in life, that stuff would still be way beyond me. Don't know if this made any sense. :)
- audionerd 15y agoWhat happened to Dan Kottke? The Wikipedia article doesn't seem to get into it.
- albedoa 15y agoI'd like to express my interest in this as well if someone could please share. I keep seeing it mentioned passively.
- gregsadetsky 15y agoKottke was a close friend to Jobs and an early Apple employee; when the time of the Apple IPO came around, Jobs denied him any stock options. Wozniak, on the other hand, gave shares to employees he felt had been left out, including Kottke...
- mlinsey 15y agoKottke was one of Jobs' friends at Reed, then later traveled with him to India and also was one of Apple's first employees, helping to assemble computers in the garage. He stayed with Apple for eight years. The story Winer is referring to is how Kottke never got any stock options. According to Isaacson's book, Jobs refused to even talk to him about the issue, instead brushing him off and steering him toward other execs who told him that as a technician he was ineligible for any options. Eventually, Wozniak ended up giving Kottke some of his own options.
- tptacek 15y agoThis is like complaining that T. J. Stiles didn't know enough about trains to write a biography of Cornelius Vanderbildt. One tends to get the sense that any time Winer writes something negative, his real concern is that people aren't paying him enough attention.
- davewiner 15y ago"One tends to get the sense that" I like your honesty. You know you don't know what you're talking about, and you have the guts to say it.
- exit 15y agoi wonder what minimum change of circumstances would have derailed jobs' success. what would he have become had wozniak not tolerated him?