17 ms·

Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

73 points by pmattos 15y ago

cooldeal 15y ago
Any transcript of the podcast available so that people at work can actually read what he's talking about?
- MattBearman 15y ago
  Can't find a transcript, but on the podcast (http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42) the biography talk starts at about 18:00
- Synaesthesia 15y ago
  Siracusa's chief complaint is that Isaacson doesn't have enough insight into the tech world, or technology in general. The book also just not outstandingly written. The first half is also stuff that's pretty much known from other books or sources, so if you've read a lot about Apple or Steve Jobs, there's nothing really new.
  - vacri 15y ago
    It's not much of a complaint to say that a biography about a famous man about whom a great deal has been written contains some well-known stuff.
    - armandososa 15y ago
      Except that the other half, the less know, was lazy and shallow.
  - slantyyz 15y ago
    Siracusa's chief complaint is that Isaacson doesn't have enough insight into the tech world, or technology in general. I'm just speculating, but maybe that is the reason why Jobs chose Isaacson. In the same way Apple products are designed not for nerds, but the "rest of us", perhaps Jobs wanted the same for his biography.
    - togasystems 15y ago
      Brilliant reply. Most people don't want to read about technical pieces and when they are presented with them, they will most likely flip past.
- timmins 15y ago
  5by5 doesn't have transcripts. However, here's the links to the two podcasts Gruber is referring to: Hypercritical 42 - http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 The Talk Show - http://5by5.tv/talkshow/66 http://5by5.tv/talkshow/66 Careful when you listen... the entire network of podcasts is highly addictive (if you're into podcasts).
- watmough 15y ago
  I'd suggest that the podcast is worth listening to. It's slow moving, but once Siracusa gets rolling, you can taste his frustration with the crappy job that Isaacson did with it. edit: typo.
jellicle 15y ago
TLDL; Jobs biography not fawning enough for Apple fanboys. The complaints include that Isaacson used "spike it" in reference to killing a story, without explaining it, and that Isaacson wrote "ATM machine" in the book - which if not originally correct, is clearly in popular use today (see also "PIN number"). Clear, penetrating, insightful grammar criticism from Gruber.
- rimantas 15y ago
  > TLDL; Jobs biography not fawning enough > for Apple fanboys. FYI, that book is anything but fawning.
  - mapgrep 15y ago
    The person you are replying to was suggesting that since the book "is anything but fawning," as you say, the "fanboy" critics are upset. The OP, in other words, already knows what you are telling him; in fact it was the basis of his comment. (I don't even necessarily agree with the OP, but there seems to be some rushed reading/lack of comprehension in this thread [not just you!] and I thought I'd correct this one.)
- sant0sk1 15y ago
  You cherry picked two minor quibbles – both of which the quibbler (John Siracusa, not Gruber) admitted were minor – which were part of a litany of complaints about the book. He has so many problems with it that he didn't even finish in a single sitting. Clear, penetrating, insightful criticism, indeed.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    Maybe I'm just a slow reader but according to amazon the book is 656 pages long, I've never read a book of that length in a single sitting.
    - ugh 15y ago
      He didn’t finish his complaints in one seventy minute podcast. It’s actually a great and hilarious podcast – independently of what you think about Jobs. Siracusa is in his element.
loboman 15y ago
I'm reading and it's good so far, what is everyone complaining about? So far it seems unbiased, instead of the typical heroic novel you get in most other biographies.
- phillmv 15y ago
  I listened to the podcast over the weekend. In a nuthsell, Isaacson doesn't understand computing, or the computing industry, and so he let a lot of errors in (OS X contains no NEXT code) and spends a lot of time focussing on things that don't matter. It's more important because he was the one and only guy that was given that much access and he blew it. He didn't ask hard questions, he didn't perform a lot of research; all the bits in the book that seem extensively well researched were cribbed from other sources (hello folklore.org!) and for everything else he takes people at their face value.
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  - pwthornton 15y ago
    This is really it. For a journalist, I would have expected him to ask my questions, push back at Steve more and do more research.
  - slantyyz 15y ago
    He didn't ask hard questions, he didn't perform a lot of research; all the bits in the book that seem extensively well researched were cribbed from other sources (hello folklore.org!) and for everything else he takes people at their face value. I think you've just summed up modern mainstream journalism.
- martingordon 15y ago
  I actually found the first half of the book more engaging than the second half. I think part of it was that the second half felt rushed - Isaacson covered too many things without going into much detail for any of them and he made more grammatical mistakes. My main stylistic gripe, however (which Gruber mentioned on The Talk Show), was that you couldn't tell if Jobs' quotes from the interviews or from the time the events were taking place. The book was originally scheduled to come out early next year, I believe, and was moved up to late October around the time Steve resigned. The publishers wanted the bio to coincide (read: cash-in on) with Steve's death and we got a rushed product.
blinkingled 15y ago
It sounds like some people were looking for a hagiography. I for one very much liked the biography - the fact that Isaacson made efforts to present all sides of the story is greatly valuable even though it makes the book a bit depressing to read. I think the other issue is that the book being a bit too factual and multifaceted doesn't go well with the opinionated audience.
- nirvana 15y ago
  False Dichotomy. Isaacson didn't present "all sides", he only presented one side, which was his uninformed and ignorant opinion. Often he would quote Steve saying something and then say "but that's a lie" or "that's the reality distortion field talking", or "even Steve seems to believe the reality distortion field", as if he (Isaacson's) opinion of the truth was sacrosanct and what Steve (The guy who was present for the events) was saying was obviously false because Steve is "well known" to have a "reality distortion field". At best, Isaacson quotes people who are uninformed or being dishonest in "proving" that Jobs is wrong-- most hilarious example was quoting Bill Gates claiming that none of NeXTSTEP made it into OS X. Apparently Isaacson wasn't aware enough hot the issues to realize how absurd that claim is. IF the book had presented all sides, say, quoted Steve, and then Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld on an issue and then gotten Woz's or Raskin's opinion of who was right, and Steve, Bill and Andy disagreed in what they said, and the reader was given the opportunity to decide for themselves what the truth was... then that would be "presenting all sides." However, I can not think of a single incident where Isaacson quoted more than one person, and in most cases he just asserts that Steve is lying. The truth is, there is no "Reality Distortion Field". The term itself is a joke. The claim that Steve can get away with lying is a piece of propaganda that has ben perpetuated for decades by Apple haters. (and they have to, because the people who hate Apple are jealous because Apple produces better products, they can't really bash Apple for being better, so they have to resort to smears.) I've paid close attention, and in every case of Steve Jobs saying something that people claimed was a lie, I've yet to find one where he publicly tells a flat out lie. He's been wrong in his opinions, but that's quite different than lying. For instance, he was quoted as saying that "people don't read anymore"... haters claim this means that he claimed Apple would never make a kindle competitor, but that's not what he said. He identified a core problem that the kindle, and later Apple, were trying to solve. That's not a lie-- people don't read anymore, compared to how much they used to read in the past. People lying about Steve Jobs-- as Isaacson does-- does not change the facts about what Steve Jobs said and did. I know that's the strategy. For decades haters have been lying about the PARC visit, and claiming that Apple "Stole" from PARC. They simply ignore the fact that Apple got a license agreement from Xerox, paid Xerox in pre-IPO Apple shares, and that the whole thing was on the up and up. They feel that if they just repeat this lie, over and over, and in every context, even when places where it isn't relevant, they win every argument. In fact, it has gotten to the point where some apple haters really are completely ignorant-- they've just heard the lie that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox (impossible since there was no GUI at Xerox at the time, in fact) enough time that they think they can repeat it and not be held accountable. Here on Hacker News, one actually said to me "Its widely accepted that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox, why do you even bother disputing this fact?" .... when it is not a fact at all. Now these same people are spreading the lie that Google is Open while Apple is closed. Truth: Both Apple and Google release the operating system as open source, and both Apple and Google keep as closed source the application layer where their proprietary apps live. For Apple, that's the UI, for google that's the Google Apps. The Lie: Touch screens have existed for years before the iPhone: The truth: Multi-touch is a new, non-obvious, and very innovative invention. You can't change reality be repeating a bunch of lies over and over and over and over and over.... but you can make a lot of uninformed people believe it. And that's the goal. Unfortunately, Isaacson's book perpetrates many of these lies, despite having access to the sources of truth. I don't think Isaacson is an Apple hater... I just think that he felt there was more profits for himself by feeding the myth of Steve Jobs, rather than biographying the real Steve Jobs. Edit: Whoops. Bill Gates was "claiming", not "flaming"!
molecularbutter 15y ago
The gist of the complaints seem to be that the bio is about Steve Jobs and not more about specific Apple events (maybe they missed the title?) and that Isaacson's editors didn't catch a few typos in their rush to publish soon after the death of Jobs.
- gnaffle 15y ago
  I think the gist of it rather seems to be that the lack of technical knowledge means that there's a lot of insights into Steve Jobs thinking that isn't there because Isaacson doesn't know which questions to ask and what stuff to research. After all, that is part of what made Jobs noteworthy. The book is full of detailed examples from early Apple history, but that's only because they've been well documented by other people. Likewise, he barely touches on Jobs personal beliefs and his connection to Zen Buddhism. Wouldn't it be interesting to ask Jobs more about that? We only get a few quotes, the most substantial is lifted from his graduation speech.
  - molecularbutter 15y ago
    Yes true, but I suspect publishing was rushed forward due to his untimely passing, and thus there was not adequate time to elaborate on some of the personal things we'd all like to know more about. I am satisfied with the book, but I do hope that Isaacson publishes his notes or better yet, his recorded interviews, down the road.
benreyes 15y ago
I haven't finished listening to the podcast highlighted in this post but a point to note is that the book was rushed into print which may have affected the Isaacson's writing quality.
- pwthornton 15y ago
  It's written in the bare prose of a journalist. It's not bad writing, but it's not the kind of writing that is enjoyable to read for the sake of how well it is written. It reads like a string of a newspaper or magazine pieces strung together. I suspect the many typos and small errors were caused by the book being rushed, however.
ljlolel 15y ago
I thought it was a bit too fawning. Isaacson's thesis is exactly the one Jobs wanted to build: that Steve was at the intersection of technology and humanity and succeeded. This theme is ever-present and is included at the end with Steve's own words. A more critical book might have investigated more whether that is true rather than rehashing a lot of stories that I had already read. I loved the book anyway.
- slantyyz 15y ago
  Really? While I have high regard for Jobs' many accomplishments, after reading (or more accurately, listening) this book, I didn't end up with nearly as much regard for him as a human being.
bgurupra 15y ago
I think it is time to move on with the critique of Jobs' bio and life.I read the whole bio and the net net I got out of it is that 1)Awesome design not just has aesthetic value but also a lot of practical business value 2)Focus Focus Focus on a few things to make them as perfect as possible - may be expensive in the short run but generally pays off in the long run
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ckenst 15y ago
Looking forward to reading this book but thought the podcast was interesting.
pwthornton 15y ago
The complaints are not that the book isn't nice enough towards Jobs, but rather that Isaacson doesn't know enough about technology to make this interesting or insightful, nor did he try to educate himself before writing this book. Isaacson is at his best when he dives into the more human and social aspects of Jobs's life. As soon as things get remotely technical, the book begins to fall a part. He misquoted Bill Gates as saying that the problem with the NeXT computer was that the optical drive had too low latency. Either Gates didn't say this and Isaacson got it backwards because he doesn't know any better, or Gates had a momentary slip of the tongue that Isaacson should have known enough about to correct. Isaacson asserts that Apple did not use NeXT for the basis of OS X, which is just patently false (Isaacson also refers to OS X as OSX). He claims that Apple evolved the existing Mac OS into something NeXT like. The truth is that Apple took the NeXTStep operating system and added some classic Mac OS APIs and features to it. OS X wasn't a complete break from the past, but it's entire core and its Cocoa API (and objective-C) are pure NeXT. Because Isaacson doesn't understand this distinction, he completely glosses over the importance of OS X to Apple's revival. Without OS X, Apple would probably be dead today or maybe just making portable music players. Classic Mac OS was not going to cut it and it was falling behind Windows. Classic Mac OS was significantly worse than NT-based Windows OSes, and would have been completely crushed by XP. OS X, on the other hand, provided a viable alternative to XP and it successors. Apple has gained market share because of OS X and how good of a modern OS it is. The Classic Mac OS was about to sink the entire company. There are plenty of other examples like this in the book. Isaacson also doesn't ask many followup questions or do in-depth research. The best researched parts of the book are the beginnings chapters which are based on previous books by other authors. This is a good biography for people not that into technology, but for anyone remotely interested in the technology, it's not that good. I'd still give it a 6 or 7 out of 10, but it could have been so much more. This is the only guy who ever got this kind of access to Steve and the people close to him and he botched it.
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sounddust 15y ago
My complaint about the bio is that Isaacson had exclusive access to Jobs for at least a dozen multi-hour sessions, and yet there's actually very little content in the bio that hasn't already been retold through other sources. What I hadn't already heard could have probably filled one chapter. It doesn't matter that Isaacson isn't tech-minded; any competent reader can deduce the correct meanings from his mistakes. Nor is it being too positive or negative toward Jobs, as the reader can make their own conclusions from other sources anyway. It's that he seems to have squandered the only opportunity anyone had to obtain more information about Jobs' life.
- Florin_Andrei 15y ago
  Maybe media's access to Jobs was bigger than everyone thought, after all. Maybe. I don't really know, I'm just hypothesizing.
joejohnson 15y ago
Ah, god. Please stop posting this garbage. He says barely anything (usually a rant with little details or insight) and people eat it up. Gruber is a dramatic fanboy.
dinde 15y ago
My main complaint from the book is that Isaacson injects his own opinion too strongly and too often. He writes it like a novel, with him guiding us to the conclusions he has prepared for us. Instead I would have preferred it be written like a well-written wikipedia entry, with numerous sources presented and the reader being granted the freedom to come to his own conclusions. This bothered me much more than any technical inaccuracies. I think this touches on a larger social issue. I believe that the younger generation is more sensitive to being manipulated about what to think and feel. Before the internet, we relied on experts to present us with the facts and the conclusions; there is now greater awareness that there are always multiple sides to any story, and we prefer hearing all of them before making up our minds. As an example, I recently watched an investigative journaling television show with my parents about the dangers of laser eye correction. I was struck by how unaware they were of the different methods that were being used in the show to guide their opinions (music, poor-quality hidden cameras, etc). To me, I wasn't given nearly enough objective facts to come to any sort of conclusion, but to my parents, the conclusions presented by the experts were enough. Isaacson writes like an expert, but we don't want an expert, we want a fact-gatherer.
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jbail 15y ago
"Hypercritical" is a great name for that podcast. Over an hour of nitpicking was more than I could stomach. I haven't finished the book, but what I've read wasn't that bad.
igorgue 15y ago
I think he's being "hypercritical" literally, I also think that Gruber and Siracusa are more like jealous that they didn't get to write the book (not that they qualify for that job). The book is not perfect but we (the tech community) are not the target.
cstefanovici 15y ago
Gruber blew it. This is a bunch of nonsense.
- Hari_Seldon 15y ago
  With all due respect, I disagree. This book was widely anticipated and given the unprecedented access that Isaacson had to Jobs' family and Apple execs past and present, this book was mediocre at best. Personally I was really looking forward to it, when I started reading the book I kept making allowances, thinking that maybe I was expecting too much. I don't read many biographies, so perhaps this is how it's done, after all, the Author wrote an apparently well regarded biography on Einstein. But Siracusa nails it, when he says most people don't understand theoretical physics, so a biographer can get away with not understanding the stuff that Einstein is famous for (paraphrase). The same is not true for tech, it's forgivable to not know this stuff, but it is unforgivable that seemingly he didn't even try, as evidenced by his obvious lack of insight into the motivations of the man he was writing about. I would love to see someone like Gruber or Siracusa write the definitive biography of Steve Jobs, because the Isaacson biography isn't that book.
Newky 15y ago
I know that a lot of people state Isaacson's lack of knowledge in the technical area as a failing but I must disagree fully with the fact that the book is anything but a revelation. For weeks afterwards, Hacker News and pretty much every other news resource on the internet was full of posts about how Steve Jobs had affected people, almost all were positive. This book, although at times, the design genius of Job's shines forth, paints a very realistic picture of this demanding, hurtful person who painted a picture of how he wanted his own life to be, and never erred from that. Although said like that it seem's like a very driven goal, he neglected those he was supposedly close to, while again and again putting his need for perfection in front of everything including his own flesh and blood. I completely disagree with the post, and think Isaacson unveiled the true person behind the visionary and wonderful facade.
shareme 15y ago
I think you guys are blowing it.. ISaacson blew it not because he goofed on tech details.. but because he put forth a failed thesis that a human being that fails at enjoying and passing on humanity to others somehow succeeded at device items to change humanity.. In comparison, the founder of Be Inc and MS come closer to matching Isaacson's thesis than Jobs does..
S_A_P 15y ago
I finished this bio a few weeks ago, and I remember just a sense of wanting more. There were a few parts I found very painful to get through, and I felt that some of the early apple II/Lisa/Macintosh stuff paraphrased from Folklore.org. I also kind of feel that Isaacson kept his analysis and insight into Steve very superficial. I wanted to know more about how he thinks than was presented. More about his creative process, more about his philosophy on design. While these subjects were addressed to some extent, they were very superficial and high level. I also recognize that I may not be the typical person who reads this, as I have spent time reading folklore.org and other sources. On the whole though, I just feel that it did miss they mark a bit.
deyan 15y ago
I read the other comments here and found them lacking significantly. It seems that many folks did not actually listen to the full podcast (available here: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42). Personally, I am usually extremely skeptical of Gruber and about as far from an "Apple fanboy" as you can get. I also approached the show very skeptically. However, the critique in the podcast was very good. The technical and factual errors and the shallowness and the retelling are all things that many others have pointed out and they are all good points. But the critique makes a bigger point: Namely, that Isaacson did not do his job of actually giving us important new insights into what and how Steve Jobs "ticked." There are some great examples of that point towards the end of the podcast. For instance, the point about the ad hominum fallacy is fantastic and I really wish Steve was called on that and we had a deeper understanding of what he really thought. Or the various examples of Apple building its strategy from the ground up rather than the image that the media likes to paint of Steve Jobs as the all-knowing ship captain who knows and foresees everything. It's all too bad because I think we as a society and of course Silicon Valley in particular could have benefited tremendously from a deeper exploration of Steve Jobs.
marchdown 15y ago
Is there a transcript? Or, alternatively, can anyone recommend some speech recognition software that could facilitate transcription?
hollerith 15y ago
>Isaacson blew it, a one-time opportunity forever squandered. I wish someone had given Jobs the fizzbuzz test and reported the results.

73 points by pmattos 15y ago

cooldeal 15y ago

Any transcript of the podcast available so that people at work can actually read what he's talking about?

MattBearman 15y ago
Can't find a transcript, but on the podcast (http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42) the biography talk starts at about 18:00
Synaesthesia 15y ago
Siracusa's chief complaint is that Isaacson doesn't have enough insight into the tech world, or technology in general. The book also just not outstandingly written. The first half is also stuff that's pretty much known from other books or sources, so if you've read a lot about Apple or Steve Jobs, there's nothing really new.
- vacri 15y ago
  It's not much of a complaint to say that a biography about a famous man about whom a great deal has been written contains some well-known stuff.
  - armandososa 15y ago
    Except that the other half, the less know, was lazy and shallow.
- slantyyz 15y ago
  Siracusa's chief complaint is that Isaacson doesn't have enough insight into the tech world, or technology in general. I'm just speculating, but maybe that is the reason why Jobs chose Isaacson. In the same way Apple products are designed not for nerds, but the "rest of us", perhaps Jobs wanted the same for his biography.
  - togasystems 15y ago
    Brilliant reply. Most people don't want to read about technical pieces and when they are presented with them, they will most likely flip past.
timmins 15y ago
5by5 doesn't have transcripts. However, here's the links to the two podcasts Gruber is referring to: Hypercritical 42 - http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 The Talk Show - http://5by5.tv/talkshow/66 http://5by5.tv/talkshow/66 Careful when you listen... the entire network of podcasts is highly addictive (if you're into podcasts).
watmough 15y ago
I'd suggest that the podcast is worth listening to. It's slow moving, but once Siracusa gets rolling, you can taste his frustration with the crappy job that Isaacson did with it. edit: typo.

jellicle 15y ago

TLDL; Jobs biography not fawning enough for Apple fanboys. The complaints include that Isaacson used "spike it" in reference to killing a story, without explaining it, and that Isaacson wrote "ATM machine" in the book - which if not originally correct, is clearly in popular use today (see also "PIN number"). Clear, penetrating, insightful grammar criticism from Gruber.

rimantas 15y ago
> TLDL; Jobs biography not fawning enough > for Apple fanboys. FYI, that book is anything but fawning.
- mapgrep 15y ago
  The person you are replying to was suggesting that since the book "is anything but fawning," as you say, the "fanboy" critics are upset. The OP, in other words, already knows what you are telling him; in fact it was the basis of his comment. (I don't even necessarily agree with the OP, but there seems to be some rushed reading/lack of comprehension in this thread [not just you!] and I thought I'd correct this one.)
sant0sk1 15y ago
You cherry picked two minor quibbles – both of which the quibbler (John Siracusa, not Gruber) admitted were minor – which were part of a litany of complaints about the book. He has so many problems with it that he didn't even finish in a single sitting. Clear, penetrating, insightful criticism, indeed.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Maybe I'm just a slow reader but according to amazon the book is 656 pages long, I've never read a book of that length in a single sitting.
  - ugh 15y ago
    He didn’t finish his complaints in one seventy minute podcast. It’s actually a great and hilarious podcast – independently of what you think about Jobs. Siracusa is in his element.

loboman 15y ago

I'm reading and it's good so far, what is everyone complaining about? So far it seems unbiased, instead of the typical heroic novel you get in most other biographies.

phillmv 15y ago
I listened to the podcast over the weekend. In a nuthsell, Isaacson doesn't understand computing, or the computing industry, and so he let a lot of errors in (OS X contains no NEXT code) and spends a lot of time focussing on things that don't matter. It's more important because he was the one and only guy that was given that much access and he blew it. He didn't ask hard questions, he didn't perform a lot of research; all the bits in the book that seem extensively well researched were cribbed from other sources (hello folklore.org!) and for everything else he takes people at their face value.
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- pwthornton 15y ago
  This is really it. For a journalist, I would have expected him to ask my questions, push back at Steve more and do more research.
- slantyyz 15y ago
  He didn't ask hard questions, he didn't perform a lot of research; all the bits in the book that seem extensively well researched were cribbed from other sources (hello folklore.org!) and for everything else he takes people at their face value. I think you've just summed up modern mainstream journalism.
martingordon 15y ago
I actually found the first half of the book more engaging than the second half. I think part of it was that the second half felt rushed - Isaacson covered too many things without going into much detail for any of them and he made more grammatical mistakes. My main stylistic gripe, however (which Gruber mentioned on The Talk Show), was that you couldn't tell if Jobs' quotes from the interviews or from the time the events were taking place. The book was originally scheduled to come out early next year, I believe, and was moved up to late October around the time Steve resigned. The publishers wanted the bio to coincide (read: cash-in on) with Steve's death and we got a rushed product.

blinkingled 15y ago

It sounds like some people were looking for a hagiography. I for one very much liked the biography - the fact that Isaacson made efforts to present all sides of the story is greatly valuable even though it makes the book a bit depressing to read. I think the other issue is that the book being a bit too factual and multifaceted doesn't go well with the opinionated audience.

nirvana 15y ago
False Dichotomy. Isaacson didn't present "all sides", he only presented one side, which was his uninformed and ignorant opinion. Often he would quote Steve saying something and then say "but that's a lie" or "that's the reality distortion field talking", or "even Steve seems to believe the reality distortion field", as if he (Isaacson's) opinion of the truth was sacrosanct and what Steve (The guy who was present for the events) was saying was obviously false because Steve is "well known" to have a "reality distortion field". At best, Isaacson quotes people who are uninformed or being dishonest in "proving" that Jobs is wrong-- most hilarious example was quoting Bill Gates claiming that none of NeXTSTEP made it into OS X. Apparently Isaacson wasn't aware enough hot the issues to realize how absurd that claim is. IF the book had presented all sides, say, quoted Steve, and then Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld on an issue and then gotten Woz's or Raskin's opinion of who was right, and Steve, Bill and Andy disagreed in what they said, and the reader was given the opportunity to decide for themselves what the truth was... then that would be "presenting all sides." However, I can not think of a single incident where Isaacson quoted more than one person, and in most cases he just asserts that Steve is lying. The truth is, there is no "Reality Distortion Field". The term itself is a joke. The claim that Steve can get away with lying is a piece of propaganda that has ben perpetuated for decades by Apple haters. (and they have to, because the people who hate Apple are jealous because Apple produces better products, they can't really bash Apple for being better, so they have to resort to smears.) I've paid close attention, and in every case of Steve Jobs saying something that people claimed was a lie, I've yet to find one where he publicly tells a flat out lie. He's been wrong in his opinions, but that's quite different than lying. For instance, he was quoted as saying that "people don't read anymore"... haters claim this means that he claimed Apple would never make a kindle competitor, but that's not what he said. He identified a core problem that the kindle, and later Apple, were trying to solve. That's not a lie-- people don't read anymore, compared to how much they used to read in the past. People lying about Steve Jobs-- as Isaacson does-- does not change the facts about what Steve Jobs said and did. I know that's the strategy. For decades haters have been lying about the PARC visit, and claiming that Apple "Stole" from PARC. They simply ignore the fact that Apple got a license agreement from Xerox, paid Xerox in pre-IPO Apple shares, and that the whole thing was on the up and up. They feel that if they just repeat this lie, over and over, and in every context, even when places where it isn't relevant, they win every argument. In fact, it has gotten to the point where some apple haters really are completely ignorant-- they've just heard the lie that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox (impossible since there was no GUI at Xerox at the time, in fact) enough time that they think they can repeat it and not be held accountable. Here on Hacker News, one actually said to me "Its widely accepted that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox, why do you even bother disputing this fact?" .... when it is not a fact at all. Now these same people are spreading the lie that Google is Open while Apple is closed. Truth: Both Apple and Google release the operating system as open source, and both Apple and Google keep as closed source the application layer where their proprietary apps live. For Apple, that's the UI, for google that's the Google Apps. The Lie: Touch screens have existed for years before the iPhone: The truth: Multi-touch is a new, non-obvious, and very innovative invention. You can't change reality be repeating a bunch of lies over and over and over and over and over.... but you can make a lot of uninformed people believe it. And that's the goal. Unfortunately, Isaacson's book perpetrates many of these lies, despite having access to the sources of truth. I don't think Isaacson is an Apple hater... I just think that he felt there was more profits for himself by feeding the myth of Steve Jobs, rather than biographying the real Steve Jobs. Edit: Whoops. Bill Gates was "claiming", not "flaming"!

molecularbutter 15y ago

The gist of the complaints seem to be that the bio is about Steve Jobs and not more about specific Apple events (maybe they missed the title?) and that Isaacson's editors didn't catch a few typos in their rush to publish soon after the death of Jobs.

gnaffle 15y ago
I think the gist of it rather seems to be that the lack of technical knowledge means that there's a lot of insights into Steve Jobs thinking that isn't there because Isaacson doesn't know which questions to ask and what stuff to research. After all, that is part of what made Jobs noteworthy. The book is full of detailed examples from early Apple history, but that's only because they've been well documented by other people. Likewise, he barely touches on Jobs personal beliefs and his connection to Zen Buddhism. Wouldn't it be interesting to ask Jobs more about that? We only get a few quotes, the most substantial is lifted from his graduation speech.
- molecularbutter 15y ago
  Yes true, but I suspect publishing was rushed forward due to his untimely passing, and thus there was not adequate time to elaborate on some of the personal things we'd all like to know more about. I am satisfied with the book, but I do hope that Isaacson publishes his notes or better yet, his recorded interviews, down the road.

benreyes 15y ago

I haven't finished listening to the podcast highlighted in this post but a point to note is that the book was rushed into print which may have affected the Isaacson's writing quality.

pwthornton 15y ago
It's written in the bare prose of a journalist. It's not bad writing, but it's not the kind of writing that is enjoyable to read for the sake of how well it is written. It reads like a string of a newspaper or magazine pieces strung together. I suspect the many typos and small errors were caused by the book being rushed, however.

ljlolel 15y ago

I thought it was a bit too fawning. Isaacson's thesis is exactly the one Jobs wanted to build: that Steve was at the intersection of technology and humanity and succeeded. This theme is ever-present and is included at the end with Steve's own words. A more critical book might have investigated more whether that is true rather than rehashing a lot of stories that I had already read. I loved the book anyway.

slantyyz 15y ago
Really? While I have high regard for Jobs' many accomplishments, after reading (or more accurately, listening) this book, I didn't end up with nearly as much regard for him as a human being.

bgurupra 15y ago

I think it is time to move on with the critique of Jobs' bio and life.I read the whole bio and the net net I got out of it is that 1)Awesome design not just has aesthetic value but also a lot of practical business value 2)Focus Focus Focus on a few things to make them as perfect as possible - may be expensive in the short run but generally pays off in the long run

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ckenst 15y ago

Looking forward to reading this book but thought the podcast was interesting.

pwthornton 15y ago

The complaints are not that the book isn't nice enough towards Jobs, but rather that Isaacson doesn't know enough about technology to make this interesting or insightful, nor did he try to educate himself before writing this book. Isaacson is at his best when he dives into the more human and social aspects of Jobs's life. As soon as things get remotely technical, the book begins to fall a part. He misquoted Bill Gates as saying that the problem with the NeXT computer was that the optical drive had too low latency. Either Gates didn't say this and Isaacson got it backwards because he doesn't know any better, or Gates had a momentary slip of the tongue that Isaacson should have known enough about to correct. Isaacson asserts that Apple did not use NeXT for the basis of OS X, which is just patently false (Isaacson also refers to OS X as OSX). He claims that Apple evolved the existing Mac OS into something NeXT like. The truth is that Apple took the NeXTStep operating system and added some classic Mac OS APIs and features to it. OS X wasn't a complete break from the past, but it's entire core and its Cocoa API (and objective-C) are pure NeXT. Because Isaacson doesn't understand this distinction, he completely glosses over the importance of OS X to Apple's revival. Without OS X, Apple would probably be dead today or maybe just making portable music players. Classic Mac OS was not going to cut it and it was falling behind Windows. Classic Mac OS was significantly worse than NT-based Windows OSes, and would have been completely crushed by XP. OS X, on the other hand, provided a viable alternative to XP and it successors. Apple has gained market share because of OS X and how good of a modern OS it is. The Classic Mac OS was about to sink the entire company. There are plenty of other examples like this in the book. Isaacson also doesn't ask many followup questions or do in-depth research. The best researched parts of the book are the beginnings chapters which are based on previous books by other authors. This is a good biography for people not that into technology, but for anyone remotely interested in the technology, it's not that good. I'd still give it a 6 or 7 out of 10, but it could have been so much more. This is the only guy who ever got this kind of access to Steve and the people close to him and he botched it.

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sounddust 15y ago

My complaint about the bio is that Isaacson had exclusive access to Jobs for at least a dozen multi-hour sessions, and yet there's actually very little content in the bio that hasn't already been retold through other sources. What I hadn't already heard could have probably filled one chapter. It doesn't matter that Isaacson isn't tech-minded; any competent reader can deduce the correct meanings from his mistakes. Nor is it being too positive or negative toward Jobs, as the reader can make their own conclusions from other sources anyway. It's that he seems to have squandered the only opportunity anyone had to obtain more information about Jobs' life.

Florin_Andrei 15y ago
Maybe media's access to Jobs was bigger than everyone thought, after all. Maybe. I don't really know, I'm just hypothesizing.

joejohnson 15y ago

Ah, god. Please stop posting this garbage. He says barely anything (usually a rant with little details or insight) and people eat it up. Gruber is a dramatic fanboy.

dinde 15y ago

My main complaint from the book is that Isaacson injects his own opinion too strongly and too often. He writes it like a novel, with him guiding us to the conclusions he has prepared for us. Instead I would have preferred it be written like a well-written wikipedia entry, with numerous sources presented and the reader being granted the freedom to come to his own conclusions. This bothered me much more than any technical inaccuracies. I think this touches on a larger social issue. I believe that the younger generation is more sensitive to being manipulated about what to think and feel. Before the internet, we relied on experts to present us with the facts and the conclusions; there is now greater awareness that there are always multiple sides to any story, and we prefer hearing all of them before making up our minds. As an example, I recently watched an investigative journaling television show with my parents about the dangers of laser eye correction. I was struck by how unaware they were of the different methods that were being used in the show to guide their opinions (music, poor-quality hidden cameras, etc). To me, I wasn't given nearly enough objective facts to come to any sort of conclusion, but to my parents, the conclusions presented by the experts were enough. Isaacson writes like an expert, but we don't want an expert, we want a fact-gatherer.

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jbail 15y ago

"Hypercritical" is a great name for that podcast. Over an hour of nitpicking was more than I could stomach. I haven't finished the book, but what I've read wasn't that bad.

igorgue 15y ago

I think he's being "hypercritical" literally, I also think that Gruber and Siracusa are more like jealous that they didn't get to write the book (not that they qualify for that job). The book is not perfect but we (the tech community) are not the target.

cstefanovici 15y ago

Gruber blew it. This is a bunch of nonsense.

Hari_Seldon 15y ago
With all due respect, I disagree. This book was widely anticipated and given the unprecedented access that Isaacson had to Jobs' family and Apple execs past and present, this book was mediocre at best. Personally I was really looking forward to it, when I started reading the book I kept making allowances, thinking that maybe I was expecting too much. I don't read many biographies, so perhaps this is how it's done, after all, the Author wrote an apparently well regarded biography on Einstein. But Siracusa nails it, when he says most people don't understand theoretical physics, so a biographer can get away with not understanding the stuff that Einstein is famous for (paraphrase). The same is not true for tech, it's forgivable to not know this stuff, but it is unforgivable that seemingly he didn't even try, as evidenced by his obvious lack of insight into the motivations of the man he was writing about. I would love to see someone like Gruber or Siracusa write the definitive biography of Steve Jobs, because the Isaacson biography isn't that book.

Newky 15y ago

I know that a lot of people state Isaacson's lack of knowledge in the technical area as a failing but I must disagree fully with the fact that the book is anything but a revelation. For weeks afterwards, Hacker News and pretty much every other news resource on the internet was full of posts about how Steve Jobs had affected people, almost all were positive. This book, although at times, the design genius of Job's shines forth, paints a very realistic picture of this demanding, hurtful person who painted a picture of how he wanted his own life to be, and never erred from that. Although said like that it seem's like a very driven goal, he neglected those he was supposedly close to, while again and again putting his need for perfection in front of everything including his own flesh and blood. I completely disagree with the post, and think Isaacson unveiled the true person behind the visionary and wonderful facade.

shareme 15y ago

I think you guys are blowing it.. ISaacson blew it not because he goofed on tech details.. but because he put forth a failed thesis that a human being that fails at enjoying and passing on humanity to others somehow succeeded at device items to change humanity.. In comparison, the founder of Be Inc and MS come closer to matching Isaacson's thesis than Jobs does..

S_A_P 15y ago

I finished this bio a few weeks ago, and I remember just a sense of wanting more. There were a few parts I found very painful to get through, and I felt that some of the early apple II/Lisa/Macintosh stuff paraphrased from Folklore.org. I also kind of feel that Isaacson kept his analysis and insight into Steve very superficial. I wanted to know more about how he thinks than was presented. More about his creative process, more about his philosophy on design. While these subjects were addressed to some extent, they were very superficial and high level. I also recognize that I may not be the typical person who reads this, as I have spent time reading folklore.org and other sources. On the whole though, I just feel that it did miss they mark a bit.

deyan 15y ago

I read the other comments here and found them lacking significantly. It seems that many folks did not actually listen to the full podcast (available here: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42). Personally, I am usually extremely skeptical of Gruber and about as far from an "Apple fanboy" as you can get. I also approached the show very skeptically. However, the critique in the podcast was very good. The technical and factual errors and the shallowness and the retelling are all things that many others have pointed out and they are all good points. But the critique makes a bigger point: Namely, that Isaacson did not do his job of actually giving us important new insights into what and how Steve Jobs "ticked." There are some great examples of that point towards the end of the podcast. For instance, the point about the ad hominum fallacy is fantastic and I really wish Steve was called on that and we had a deeper understanding of what he really thought. Or the various examples of Apple building its strategy from the ground up rather than the image that the media likes to paint of Steve Jobs as the all-knowing ship captain who knows and foresees everything. It's all too bad because I think we as a society and of course Silicon Valley in particular could have benefited tremendously from a deeper exploration of Steve Jobs.

marchdown 15y ago

Is there a transcript? Or, alternatively, can anyone recommend some speech recognition software that could facilitate transcription?

hollerith 15y ago

>Isaacson blew it, a one-time opportunity forever squandered. I wish someone had given Jobs the fizzbuzz test and reported the results.