Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>I think the other issue is that the book being a bit too factual and multifaceted doesn't go well with the opinionated audience.

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.

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: <a href="http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42" rel="nofollow">http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42</a>).<p>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:<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Isaacson writes like an expert, but we don't want an expert, we want a fact-gatherer.

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.<p>I loved the book anyway.

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.

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I completely disagree with the post, and think Isaacson unveiled the true person behind the visionary and wonderful facade.

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.

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).<p>The book is not perfect but we (the tech community) are not the target.

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.

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.

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.

"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 <i>that</i> bad.

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

&#62;Isaacson blew it, a one-time opportunity forever squandered.<p>I wish someone had given Jobs the fizzbuzz test and reported the results.

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

Gruber blew it. This is a bunch of nonsense.

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

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..<p>In comparison, the founder of Be Inc and MS come closer to matching Isaacson's thesis than Jobs does..

TLDL; Jobs biography not fawning enough for Apple fanboys.<p>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").<p>Clear, penetrating, insightful grammar criticism from Gruber.

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<p>1)Awesome design not just has aesthetic value but also a lot of practical business value<p>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