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Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

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Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#41

Post by pwthornton »

phillmv wrote: post #15
loboman wrote: post #4

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.

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…

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.

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#42

Post by tghw »

pwthornton wrote: post #19

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 Gate…

I haven't listened to the podcast, but it sounds like one of the biggest nits they picked was that "Isaacson asserts that Apple did not use NeXT for the basis of OS X". Looking back through the book, I can't find that assertion, but I can find the following, at location 6379 of the Kindle version (the Kindle app tells me it's page 366):

"At the January 2000 Macworld in San Francisco, Jobs rolled out the new Macintosh operating system, OSX, which used some of the software that Apple had bought from NeXT three years earlier. It was fitting, and not entirely coincidental, that he was willing to incorporate himself back at Apple at the same moment as the NeXT OS was incorporated into Apple’s. Avie Tevanian had taken the UNIX-related Mach kernel of the NeXT operating system and turned it into the Mac OS kernel, known as Darwin. It offered protected memory, advanced networking, and preemptive multitasking. It was precisely what the Macintosh needed, and it would be the foundation of the Mac OS henceforth. Some critics, including Bill Gates, noted that Apple ended up not adopting the entire NeXT operating system. There’s some truth to that, because Apple decided not to leap into a completely new system but instead to evolve the existing one. Application software written for the old Macintosh system was generally compatible with or easy to port to the new one, and a Mac user who upgraded would notice a lot of new features but not a whole new interface."

Reading that, it seems to me he got it right, except for misspelling "OS X".

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#43

Post by pwthornton »

ugh wrote: post #31
jiggy2011 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

It may have been Siracusa's finest hour. He should start a book review podcast series called "OCD Book Reviews."

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#44

Post by pwthornton »

tghw wrote: post #42
pwthornton wrote: post #19

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 Gate…

I haven't listened to the podcast, but it sounds like one of the biggest nits they picked was that "Isaacson asserts that Apple did not use NeXT for the basis of OS X". Looking back through the book, I can't find that assertion, but I can find the following, at location 6379 of the Kindle version (the Kindle app tells me it's page 366): "At the January 2000 Macworld in San Francisco, Jobs rolled out the new Macintosh…

No, there is more than that. I don't have the Kindle version, so I can't easily search through the book. But he talks a bit about Avie Tevanian and that essentially that is what NeXT gave Apple.

If I get some more time, I'll try to find the exact passage, but it's different from the one you are citing. I'm fine with that one.

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#45

Post by vacri »

mapgrep wrote: post #32
tvon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TLDL Perhaps it is not good form to comment on a podcast you didn't listen to...? edit: As a response I take TLD[R|L] to mean "it was too long so I didn't bother", however I have also seen it (more recently) as a summary to one's own long text. I took the above comment to mean the former.

A "TLDR" is written by someone who HAS read something for the benefit of those who haven't. Thus, TLDL, when followed by an explanation (as in this case) is implied to be written by someone who HAS listened. (Note that there is a difference between posting "TLDR." to mean "I have not read this" and posting a "TLDR:" or "TLDR;", which means "I have read this long thing, and am trying to be helpful." It is, understanda…

tldr is 'too long, didn't listen', not 'too long, don't listen'. It means that the person didn't finish reading it, not that they're exhorting you do not read it. Some people even put tldr summaries at the end of their own longwinded passages

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#46

Post by vacri »

pwthornton wrote: post #19

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 Gate…

OSX vs OS X is an editorial failure. Unless Isaacson self-published the book and let no-one view it beforehand, of course.

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#47

Post by slantyyz »

ljlolel wrote: post #12

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.

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.

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#48

Post by vacri »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #9
cooldeal wrote: post #2

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

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.

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.

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#49

Post by pchristensen »

ugh wrote: post #33
jellicle wrote: post #3

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.

Oh man, this is beautiful! A clear cut demonstration that it’s sufficient to write Gruber on anything and some people will completely irrationally hate it, hate it, hate it.

It's funny, you can put "Yegge" at the top and people will complain about it being too long. Even his tweets are over 6000 words.
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