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> This really makes me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Jobs. I tried to work with Jobs in the late 70s and early 80s, and I couldn't stand him. After a brief spe

by lutusp 13y ago

> This really makes me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Jobs. I tried to work with Jobs in the late 70s and early 80s, and I couldn't stand him. After a brief spell I refused to work with Apple any more. Since then I've been waiting for the world to catch up with my already low opinion. :) Apropos, everyone should read the Isaacson biography. Regardless of how you feel about the topic, it's a terrific book.

sneak 13y ago
> Apropos, everyone should read the Isaacson biography. Regardless of how you feel about the topic, it's a terrific book. Despite never having met or worked with the guy, I gotta side with Gruber's take on this one: Isaacson totally missed the boat. He was granted unprecedented (and now, unfortunately, impossible) access to a fiercely interesting person's life, and either his lack of contextual understanding or lack of domain knowledge led to a book that is, at best, underwhelming. His questions, his analysis, it all seemed so pedestrian and boring. Maybe the lack of hard questions or deep insights is why Jobs chose him in particular to be granted such access, but I personally expected a whole fuck of a lot more from something that had so much promise to begin with. I feel like Mossberg or maybe even someone who doesn't write as their profession (Ive? Kottke? Kawasaki?) might have done a vastly better job. Maybe I just wish I'd had a chance to know the guy, deeply flawed character and all, and no text will ultimately be sufficient - but Isaacson's effort left me with so many more basic questions than it even began to attempt to ask, much less answer. And now, all that potential wisdom to be gleaned from this specific instance falls into the realm of the unlearnable. Perhaps that was the plan. Who are we to assume his legacy was any less meticulously crafted than anything else he unleashed upon the world?
- lutusp 13y ago
  > His questions, his analysis, it all seemed so pedestrian and boring. I agree to some extent, but I also think this is a commonly heard complaint about books about an insider in a field or art, written by an outsider -- other insiders inevitably see the shortcomings of a generalist's way of describing a specialist. I like the book precisely because it's the view of an outsider, who didn't necessarily understand all the minutiae of his subject or the field, but to some degree that circumstance can confer a kind of universality and accessibility to the end result. There's also the handicap of writing a biography of a living person who has granted special access -- the writer must feel tremendous pressure to avoid saying anything that might end his access. That's always lurking between the lines when reading the biography of a person who was living when the book was written -- it can't compare to the more classic tell-all, "Mommy Dearest" kind of biographies of people no longer among the living. But the latter have their own problems. In the final analysis, good writing is defined by what you leave out, not what you put in. I think Isaacson passes this test.

by lutusp 13y ago

sneak 13y ago

> Apropos, everyone should read the Isaacson biography. Regardless of how you feel about the topic, it's a terrific book. Despite never having met or worked with the guy, I gotta side with Gruber's take on this one: Isaacson totally missed the boat. He was granted unprecedented (and now, unfortunately, impossible) access to a fiercely interesting person's life, and either his lack of contextual understanding or lack of domain knowledge led to a book that is, at best, underwhelming. His questions, his analysis, it all seemed so pedestrian and boring. Maybe the lack of hard questions or deep insights is why Jobs chose him in particular to be granted such access, but I personally expected a whole fuck of a lot more from something that had so much promise to begin with. I feel like Mossberg or maybe even someone who doesn't write as their profession (Ive? Kottke? Kawasaki?) might have done a vastly better job. Maybe I just wish I'd had a chance to know the guy, deeply flawed character and all, and no text will ultimately be sufficient - but Isaacson's effort left me with so many more basic questions than it even began to attempt to ask, much less answer. And now, all that potential wisdom to be gleaned from this specific instance falls into the realm of the unlearnable. Perhaps that was the plan. Who are we to assume his legacy was any less meticulously crafted than anything else he unleashed upon the world?

lutusp 13y ago
> His questions, his analysis, it all seemed so pedestrian and boring. I agree to some extent, but I also think this is a commonly heard complaint about books about an insider in a field or art, written by an outsider -- other insiders inevitably see the shortcomings of a generalist's way of describing a specialist. I like the book precisely because it's the view of an outsider, who didn't necessarily understand all the minutiae of his subject or the field, but to some degree that circumstance can confer a kind of universality and accessibility to the end result. There's also the handicap of writing a biography of a living person who has granted special access -- the writer must feel tremendous pressure to avoid saying anything that might end his access. That's always lurking between the lines when reading the biography of a person who was living when the book was written -- it can't compare to the more classic tell-all, "Mommy Dearest" kind of biographies of people no longer among the living. But the latter have their own problems. In the final analysis, good writing is defined by what you leave out, not what you put in. I think Isaacson passes this test.