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It surprises how so many simply disbelieve what Isaacson has written because, in their heart of hearts, they can't believe it's true. Denial, or do they actuall

It surprises how so many simply disbelieve what Isaacson has written because, in their heart of hearts, they can't believe it's true. Denial, or do they actually have personal insight into Jobs? There has been a lot of vilification of Isaacson's book, much of it seeming to draw ire because it presents Jobs as a mere human.

twoodfin 15y ago
I'm not sure what part of Gruber's article you're responding to.
- huggyface 15y ago
  The entire article is Gruber hand-picking Jobs quotes that serve his vision of Jobs, and discounting the quotes that Isaacson picked -- or holding them as misunderstandings/misinterpretations -- because they don't conform with Gruber's opinion. Gruber has commented on Isaacson's book numerous times with incredible disdain (because, Gruber thinks, it misrepresents Jobs), so this is just a continuation of that theme.
  - reidmain 15y ago
    Gruber makes multiple references to Jobs' faults in that article. He is simply shredding the quotes that Issacson used without actually thinking about what they meant or checking the facts. What about this article do you think is Gruber twisting Issacson's words?. Every example has a well documented reason on why Issacson is flat out wrong.
    - huggyface 15y ago
      Did we read the same article? Where does Gruber "shred" anything? Bill Gates says that "Instead the purchase ended up bringing in Avie Tevanian, who could help the existing Apple operating system evolve so that it eventually incorporated the kernel of the NeXT technology.", and Gruber says "Mac OS X 10.0 was a hybrid of Mac and NeXT technology, but it was clearly the NeXT system with Mac technologies integrated, not the other way around." What Bill Gates said was absolutely true! Rhapsody with the NeXT Mach kernel, a pulled-in, non-NeXT BSD application layer, and then various other Mac layers (GUI, Cocoa, etc). Technically there is nothing wrong with his statement. But it doesn't sound as impressive to Steve Jobs to say that only the microkernel (which we know is a critical part of a system), so better still to simply claim Gates is the liar?
      - sjwright 15y ago
        > and then various other Mac layers (GUI, Cocoa, etc). Incorrect. The GUI wasn't ported, it was rewritten for OS X. Cocoa's heritage is NeXT to the core. Nothing vaguely resembling Cocoa existed in the classic Mac environment. > a pulled-in, non-NeXT BSD application layer Incorrect. There is little of "BSD" in the Mac OS X environment, save for some FreeBSD userland components, most of which only matter on the command line. The application layer of Mac OS X is Cocoa. (There is also the Carbon application layer which does partially derive from classic Mac, but that existed solely to ease application porting of existing Mac apps. But even Carbon is a hybrid, and was actually back-ported to Mac OS 9.) > Technically there is nothing wrong with his statement. Any Mac OS X software developer will know enough to confidently refute the accuracy of Gates' claims.
        jonhendry 15y ago
        "There is little of "BSD" in the Mac OS X environment, save for some FreeBSD userland components, most of which only matter on the command line. " The same was true of NeXTStep and OpenStep/Mach. Mach kernel. BSD user land. NeXT GUI.
      - reidmain 15y ago
        I'm curious, have you actually done any Mac or iOS development?
        huggyface 15y ago
        I'm curious, Have you actually done NeXTStep development?
        lurch_mojoff 15y ago
        Yes, I have. And I can confidently say that Mac OS X, even today after a decade of evolution and sweeping changes, is clearly a direct descendant of NeXTStep and has little in common with System 7. I'll also reiterate what others said -- there is everything wrong with Gates' statement.
  - twoodfin 15y ago
    But it's not about the quotes at all, except insofar as the quotes that Isaacson chose leave the reader with an impression that is simply wrong. The Bill Gates quote about the NeXT acquisition stuck out for me, too. Are you disagreeing with Gruber's thesis that Isaacson really didn't understand the complementary contributions of software to "design"? Why? I'm typically not a defender of John's, but he seems to me to be on target here.
brianwillis 15y ago
It's pretty clear from the second-to-last paragraph that Gruber understands that Jobs was a fallible human being. The criticisms in this post revolve around Isaacson's handling of technical accuracy, and Isaacson's repeated implication that design and engineering are two adversarial ideas.
- Volpe 15y ago
  Gruber managed to do that without offering much evidence to the contrary. Do Apple engineers and Designers really work side by side? Or is it just that Apple prioritise design over engineering. So rather than the engineers throwing a brick over the fence and saying "Designers, make it look good" it's designers throwing a sleek brick over the fence and saying "Engineers, make it work." The antennae-gate was a REAL problem, that Apple changed it's design for (in the 4S)... Can we really accept there is no tension in Apple over these things (As Gruber is suggesting)?
  - ugh 15y ago
    But it’s an engineering issue, not a design issue. The iPhone 4 had an external antenna to fit in a larger battery. That’s all engineering.
    - Volpe 15y ago
      Regardless whether it's a design or engineering problem. It is pretty clear evidence there is tension between the teams (design and engineering). Which is the opposite of what Gruber is arguing.
  - jonhendry 15y ago
    "The antennae-gate was a REAL problem, that Apple changed it's design for (in the 4S)" Really? It looks the same.
    - Volpe 15y ago
      Mostly the same, Volume/Silent switch are a little bit higher. And the steel rim now has more breaks in it (which was apparently a cause of the reception problems, when your finger went over the only break)
subpixel 15y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. It's hard when you find out that your hero was in many ways a contemptible person. And it's not a noble reaction, but certainly a human one, to go looking for some fault with the source of this news.
sjwright 15y ago
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Mac OS X (and iOS) history and internals knows that Gates' (and therefore the book's) claim that NeXT technology wasn't the basis of OS X is laughably false. In fact I think Gruber himself continued to understate the role NeXT technology played. Gruber writes: > It is in fact, completely and utterly wrong. > NeXTStep was not “just warmed over UNIX”. > Apple did get NeXT’s OS to run on Mac hardware. > Mac OS X 10.0 was a hybrid of Mac and NeXT > technology, but it was clearly the NeXT system > with Mac technologies integrated, not the > other way around. Gruber should have gone further and pointed out that Mac OS X wasn't even a hybrid, but rather the latest iteration of NeXT technology combined with new code that reimplemented the Mac experience. The modest quantity of ported or migrated Mac technology (e.g. the Carbon APIs) existed purely to form a compatibility layer with existing Mac apps, and don't form the basis of any future development path. It would be also fair to say that iOS does not have any legacy "Mac" technology in its stack, and shares its spiritual lineage with NeXT alone.
- SeanLuke 15y ago
  > The modest quantity of ported or migrated Mac technology (e.g. the Carbon APIs) existed purely to form a compatibility layer with existing Mac apps, and don't form the basis of any future development path. I dunno. Post-Rhapsody, Apple worked hard to unify Carbon and Cocoa to provide a consistent user experience across applications. IIRC, in a surprising number of cases, the way unification was achieved was to make the Cocoa element be little more than a compatibility layer on top of Carbon. For example, I believe the save and open panels, print and page layout panels, and various dialog APIs worked this way. It seems to me that if Carbon was viewed as a dead-end from the get-go, embedding it in many cases under Cocoa was a funny way of demonstrating that. Carbon was a big project, and wasn't modest by any standard. Again IIRC, Apple rewrote the entire Finder in Carbon (and not in Cocoa) in order to test the Carbon library for bugs. Other things came from the Mac while their NeXTSTEP equivalents were abandoned: for example, UFS was blown away and replaced with HFS+. Quicktime was ported, as were 3D facilities and game APIs. NeXT's Soundkit was deprecated in favor of stuff for OS 9. Java, up through 1.3.x at any rate, came from OS 9. I think the font facility, always an ugliness in NeXTSTEP, was replaced with Apple's (including support for OpenType etc.). I think your depiction of this stuff as "modest" is not particularly accurate. So anyway, Isaacson's depiction of OS X as being basically Mac technologies with a little NeXTSTEP kernel is ridiculous. But don't make the same mistake in the other direction.

twoodfin 15y ago

I'm not sure what part of Gruber's article you're responding to.

huggyface 15y ago
The entire article is Gruber hand-picking Jobs quotes that serve his vision of Jobs, and discounting the quotes that Isaacson picked -- or holding them as misunderstandings/misinterpretations -- because they don't conform with Gruber's opinion. Gruber has commented on Isaacson's book numerous times with incredible disdain (because, Gruber thinks, it misrepresents Jobs), so this is just a continuation of that theme.
- reidmain 15y ago
  Gruber makes multiple references to Jobs' faults in that article. He is simply shredding the quotes that Issacson used without actually thinking about what they meant or checking the facts. What about this article do you think is Gruber twisting Issacson's words?. Every example has a well documented reason on why Issacson is flat out wrong.
  - huggyface 15y ago
    Did we read the same article? Where does Gruber "shred" anything? Bill Gates says that "Instead the purchase ended up bringing in Avie Tevanian, who could help the existing Apple operating system evolve so that it eventually incorporated the kernel of the NeXT technology.", and Gruber says "Mac OS X 10.0 was a hybrid of Mac and NeXT technology, but it was clearly the NeXT system with Mac technologies integrated, not the other way around." What Bill Gates said was absolutely true! Rhapsody with the NeXT Mach kernel, a pulled-in, non-NeXT BSD application layer, and then various other Mac layers (GUI, Cocoa, etc). Technically there is nothing wrong with his statement. But it doesn't sound as impressive to Steve Jobs to say that only the microkernel (which we know is a critical part of a system), so better still to simply claim Gates is the liar?
    - sjwright 15y ago
      > and then various other Mac layers (GUI, Cocoa, etc). Incorrect. The GUI wasn't ported, it was rewritten for OS X. Cocoa's heritage is NeXT to the core. Nothing vaguely resembling Cocoa existed in the classic Mac environment. > a pulled-in, non-NeXT BSD application layer Incorrect. There is little of "BSD" in the Mac OS X environment, save for some FreeBSD userland components, most of which only matter on the command line. The application layer of Mac OS X is Cocoa. (There is also the Carbon application layer which does partially derive from classic Mac, but that existed solely to ease application porting of existing Mac apps. But even Carbon is a hybrid, and was actually back-ported to Mac OS 9.) > Technically there is nothing wrong with his statement. Any Mac OS X software developer will know enough to confidently refute the accuracy of Gates' claims.
      - jonhendry 15y ago
        "There is little of "BSD" in the Mac OS X environment, save for some FreeBSD userland components, most of which only matter on the command line. " The same was true of NeXTStep and OpenStep/Mach. Mach kernel. BSD user land. NeXT GUI.
    - reidmain 15y ago
      I'm curious, have you actually done any Mac or iOS development?
      - huggyface 15y ago
        I'm curious, Have you actually done NeXTStep development?
        lurch_mojoff 15y ago
        Yes, I have. And I can confidently say that Mac OS X, even today after a decade of evolution and sweeping changes, is clearly a direct descendant of NeXTStep and has little in common with System 7. I'll also reiterate what others said -- there is everything wrong with Gates' statement.
- twoodfin 15y ago
  But it's not about the quotes at all, except insofar as the quotes that Isaacson chose leave the reader with an impression that is simply wrong. The Bill Gates quote about the NeXT acquisition stuck out for me, too. Are you disagreeing with Gruber's thesis that Isaacson really didn't understand the complementary contributions of software to "design"? Why? I'm typically not a defender of John's, but he seems to me to be on target here.

brianwillis 15y ago

It's pretty clear from the second-to-last paragraph that Gruber understands that Jobs was a fallible human being. The criticisms in this post revolve around Isaacson's handling of technical accuracy, and Isaacson's repeated implication that design and engineering are two adversarial ideas.

Volpe 15y ago
Gruber managed to do that without offering much evidence to the contrary. Do Apple engineers and Designers really work side by side? Or is it just that Apple prioritise design over engineering. So rather than the engineers throwing a brick over the fence and saying "Designers, make it look good" it's designers throwing a sleek brick over the fence and saying "Engineers, make it work." The antennae-gate was a REAL problem, that Apple changed it's design for (in the 4S)... Can we really accept there is no tension in Apple over these things (As Gruber is suggesting)?
- ugh 15y ago
  But it’s an engineering issue, not a design issue. The iPhone 4 had an external antenna to fit in a larger battery. That’s all engineering.
  - Volpe 15y ago
    Regardless whether it's a design or engineering problem. It is pretty clear evidence there is tension between the teams (design and engineering). Which is the opposite of what Gruber is arguing.
- jonhendry 15y ago
  "The antennae-gate was a REAL problem, that Apple changed it's design for (in the 4S)" Really? It looks the same.
  - Volpe 15y ago
    Mostly the same, Volume/Silent switch are a little bit higher. And the steel rim now has more breaks in it (which was apparently a cause of the reception problems, when your finger went over the only break)

subpixel 15y ago

I wholeheartedly agree. It's hard when you find out that your hero was in many ways a contemptible person. And it's not a noble reaction, but certainly a human one, to go looking for some fault with the source of this news.

sjwright 15y ago

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Mac OS X (and iOS) history and internals knows that Gates' (and therefore the book's) claim that NeXT technology wasn't the basis of OS X is laughably false. In fact I think Gruber himself continued to understate the role NeXT technology played. Gruber writes: > It is in fact, completely and utterly wrong. > NeXTStep was not “just warmed over UNIX”. > Apple did get NeXT’s OS to run on Mac hardware. > Mac OS X 10.0 was a hybrid of Mac and NeXT > technology, but it was clearly the NeXT system > with Mac technologies integrated, not the > other way around. Gruber should have gone further and pointed out that Mac OS X wasn't even a hybrid, but rather the latest iteration of NeXT technology combined with new code that reimplemented the Mac experience. The modest quantity of ported or migrated Mac technology (e.g. the Carbon APIs) existed purely to form a compatibility layer with existing Mac apps, and don't form the basis of any future development path. It would be also fair to say that iOS does not have any legacy "Mac" technology in its stack, and shares its spiritual lineage with NeXT alone.

SeanLuke 15y ago
> The modest quantity of ported or migrated Mac technology (e.g. the Carbon APIs) existed purely to form a compatibility layer with existing Mac apps, and don't form the basis of any future development path. I dunno. Post-Rhapsody, Apple worked hard to unify Carbon and Cocoa to provide a consistent user experience across applications. IIRC, in a surprising number of cases, the way unification was achieved was to make the Cocoa element be little more than a compatibility layer on top of Carbon. For example, I believe the save and open panels, print and page layout panels, and various dialog APIs worked this way. It seems to me that if Carbon was viewed as a dead-end from the get-go, embedding it in many cases under Cocoa was a funny way of demonstrating that. Carbon was a big project, and wasn't modest by any standard. Again IIRC, Apple rewrote the entire Finder in Carbon (and not in Cocoa) in order to test the Carbon library for bugs. Other things came from the Mac while their NeXTSTEP equivalents were abandoned: for example, UFS was blown away and replaced with HFS+. Quicktime was ported, as were 3D facilities and game APIs. NeXT's Soundkit was deprecated in favor of stuff for OS 9. Java, up through 1.3.x at any rate, came from OS 9. I think the font facility, always an ugliness in NeXTSTEP, was replaced with Apple's (including support for OpenType etc.). I think your depiction of this stuff as "modest" is not particularly accurate. So anyway, Isaacson's depiction of OS X as being basically Mac technologies with a little NeXTSTEP kernel is ridiculous. But don't make the same mistake in the other direction.