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Reading this reminded me of a post by Miguel de Icaza:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Nov-07.html

Basically, Miguel argues that Walter Isaacson failed, as did many who tried to describe Steve Jobs recently:

>Whenever the story gets close to an interesting historical event, or starts exploring a big unknown of Steve's work, we are condescendingly told that "Steve Activated the Reality Distortion Field".

>Every. Single. Time.

>Not once did the biographer try to uncover what made people listen to Steve. Not once did he try to understand the world in which Steve operated. The breakthroughs of his work are described with the same passion as a Reuters news feed: an enumeration of his achievements glued with anecdotes to glue the thing together.

It's great to see a real account of working with him, minus the “magic” BS.

2 comments

Isaacson made several telling errors about Apple products, showing he didn't really know them--for example, he seems not to understand how NeXT technology is still the core of OS X and iOS. This is not a trivial detail, since if Jobs was all about products you're not going to understand his work if you don't understand the products.

So, Isaacson fails as a book that will help you understand Job's work, or his management style, or what he did to turn Apple around--which I think had quite a bit to do with Apple's habit of leveraging technologies across products, developing economies of scale, and having people work in small, autonomous teams.

It's still a good book, though--I think it painted a balanced picture of an obsessive and mercurial man who, slowly, almost became a normal person.

You're spot on about Apple relying on NeXT technologies in OS X / iOS renaissance. I too was surprised this wasn't really mentioned in the book.

I wanted to buy the book hoping to read more about the transition from NeXT to OS X. Thanks for telling me I shouldn't buy the book!

I dunno. The book had a bunch of stuff that was interesting enough that I was happy to have bought it. But it was still disappointing.

After reading his biography by Walter Isaacson. I lost all respect I had for Steve Jobs.

At the end of the book it felt like he rode on the successes of other geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive and many others. His biggest advantage seems to have be, that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 were made.

After that it was riding on others success and building cult of personality around him.

Walter Isaacson sort of ruined it.

Oh no no no! I thought the same about Jobs back in 1985 but everything that we've learned about him since points up how irreplaceable he was. Without Jobs, Wozniak would have been a brilliant, happy, but obscure engineer at HP, Ive talents would have been mostly wasted, and Jef Raskin would still have, maybe, gotten a shot to build the Swyft and the Archy which even in our universe are obscure. Without Jobs you would never have heard of any of them. Instead you would be claiming that Steve Jobs rode on the success of <unknown brilliant people whom Steve worked with>.

EDIT: I should be clear that I thoroughly admire Steve Wozniak (one of my first heroes), Jony Ive, and Jef Raskin.

And that's more or less the thing.

Maybe iWoz is more sympathetic towards Jobs (even if it narrates a deception of Woz by Jobs)

Because it shows Jobs getting free chips for Woz, getting deals, etc, it shows a more 'powerless' side of Jobs.

This linked article is one of the first things that has made me think of Steve in a positive light.

I'm generally fairly negative about him because 1. I have a natural aversion to cults of personality and all that goes with them and 2. the Apple vision of the world is about consumer products. I think this is exactly the wrong direction for all of society (producer products are the future), and I worry that if they ever 'won' or even came as close to winning as Microsoft did for a while that there would be no place for me in such a world. No plausible endgame for Apple is good for me (although they've done a lot of good in breaking the stranglehold of windows and making the concept of other OS more mainstream).

There's a little bit of 3. too, which is that most of what I've read of him makes him come across as a bit of a nightmare as a person.

Anyway, this article felt very real, and just talked about a guy with passion who left the CEO hat at the door. That would be a guy I could potentially respect.

> the Apple vision of the world is about consumer products. I think this is exactly the wrong direction for all of society (producer products are the future),

I think iMovie and the iMac DV phase was a period where Apple actually aspired to this, though. They obsessed over making the best possible computers and software for people to make great home movies, just as they were obsessing over Final Cut and the Power Mac for the professional market. The Mac used to have a reputation as the platform for creative people in all fields, and the "think different" campaign was an effort to reinforce that.

Unfortunately, most people don't want to be creative and Apple had an opportunity to pursue the consumer market. They still try, with Garageband and iPhoto and iMovie, but it's less of a focus.

> #2 the Apple vision of the world is about consumer products (...) producer products are the future.

In one sense, Apple has encourage people to be producers by making it easier to produce financially-viable software. Are you comparing Apple's vision with Microsoft's, or do you have something else in mind?

> I have a natural aversion to cults of personality and all that goes with them and 2. the Apple vision of the world is about consumer products. I think this is exactly the wrong direction for all of society (producer products are the future)

But producers produce products for consumers to consume. You can't just eliminate the consumer side of the equation. Without one there isn't the other.

> But producers produce products for consumers to consume.

Not necessarily. You can be a producer for yourself. I think the GP is arguing that technologies like 3D printing and practices like home gardening will flourish in the near future. Rather than buy stuff per se, people will buy equipment and tools that allow them to produce for themselves the stuff they would have bought.

Sure, but in that case, you're a consumer for the printer, and the more useful it is, the more it will cost.

  > that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2
  > were made

This sound like Apple was happening at some garage and Jobs and Wozniak were just walking by. Did the same happen with NeXT and Pixar? Jobs was responsible for Apple happening, and he was also responsible for Wozniak being at Apple. You may not like the guy, but denying that he had a visions is silly. Videos available online show that he envisioned what he have now back in 1995 or even 1987.

Catmull and Lasseter are the main geniuses behind Pixar. Jobs came in later and provided a lot of money to keep the dream alive (which shouldn't be underestimated) and apparently did some amazing negotiation with Disney but the initial spark of genius came from those two (and many other talented people they worked with).

True, but genius is not enough. Jobs seemed to have a quality that acted as a catalyst for genius to do 'great' stuff (where 'great' is debatable, of course).

Based on my personal experience with 'Jobsian' types, I have found this to be true as well. I've met many people who were brilliant at things, but under these types, even those with less brilliance often performed better. Anecdotal evidence, true, but still. My point is that it is fine to acknowledge their genius AND that he might have played a more important role than just money/power.

To be fair, he looked at what was happening in research and thought "I can make this happen in the market" – all the ingredients were there in PARC, etc. That he was able to fixate on that goal and make it happen, however, is a triumph.

I don't think that's quite it. It wasn't simply about taking it to market, it's seeing research that you know needs to be in a product because you want to use it right now.

I get that feeling a lot from research, concepts, and so on. I end up building the products I want to use, and it turns out that's a really good way to build something people like.

The way you word it makes it sound like it's all about selling things to other people — where I really believe that Steve Jobs under Apple and NeXT was designing the computers, devices and software that he personally wanted to exist. Selling them was a way to continue to fund that process.

Book really gave a huge negative image to him, after which frankly I lost all respect for the man. You build impressions on what you read.

What he was in reality I have no clue of.

But I have to wonder if Jobs manipulated Isaacson so people would worry less about Apple after his passing away? Isaacson's book was very poorly done and offered very few actual insights other than Jobs getting to see his father. In fact after I read Inside Apple I was left wondering how Isaacson got away with writing something so lightweight.

I was rather disappointed too. Maybe his approach was the only one that would provide a good story for non-techies, but I didn't like it. But then I'm a geek.