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Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

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Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#101

Post by snowwrestler »

msbarnett wrote: post #64
thought_alarm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree about NeXTSTEP, but it doesn't matter. Only geeks care about that stuff. Do you think Isaacson's goal was to simply tell Apple geeks what they already know? The real value and insight that the book provides is the access to Jobs during the last years of his life, as well as the people who played important roles in Apple's resurgence during the last 10 years. To nitpick the minor technical details in the book…

> To nitpick the minor technical details in the book is to completely miss the point. Which is why the criticism of those details appeared in the section of the podcast that Siracusa labelled as "minor nitpicks that didn't make the book necessarily bad, but which Siracusa was going to point out because this podcast is, after all, called Hypercritical". The main thesis of the podcast is that the biography is bad becau…

Each one of these decisions involved numerous other people; these stories are still out there ready to be told. I would ask Siracusa why he, as a tech journalist, has not run down more of these stories himself.

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#102

Post by mehwoot »

danthony wrote: post #86
blinkingled wrote: post #5

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

I don't think anybody was expecting a hagiography; Jobs has too many failures and flaws for any biographer to write that book. But just because Isaacson captured how Steve Jobs could be both terrible and compelling doesn't mean Isaacson succeeded. He didn't. He missed the point entirely about why people want to read about Jobs. We didn't buy the book to learn about Jobs' strained relations with his children or what h…

So you come in with a preconceived notion of what the book should be about, and then complain that it isn't that. Don't judge a book by it's cover! Most people do buy a biography to learn "about [their] strained relations with their children" etc. The business side of his life has already been covered endlessly by so many people- a book about that would uncover nothing new.

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#103

Post by gecko »

__david__ wrote: post #79
tghw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where exactly does he say that they didn't keep that stuff?

"There’s some truth to that, because Apple decided not to leap into a completely new system but instead to evolve the existing one." That's not really true. What they decided to do was build copious backwards compatibility with OS 9 into what was essentially NeXTStep and then re-skin the OS so it looked Mac-like. All the backwards compatibility stuff was essentially new, I believe, and not ports of the OS 9 internals…

I think it comes down to, which matters? I wrote code for OS 9 (via PowerMops, of all things), and for OS X (I shipped two major Cocoa apps), so I'll vouch for the fact that you are technically 100% correct. On the other hand, what became OS X had a radically different design than Rhapsody: even comparing OS X 10.0 to OS X 1.2, the former could run apps natively that could also run on OS 9, the former could read HFS+ filesystems, the former had apps like QuickTime, the former ran Classic apps that couldn't legitimately run natively right alongside the newer Cocoa/Carbon apps, the former had legacy APIs like OpenTransport that the latter lacked. You can argue, correctly, that, technically, OS X is more NeXTSTEP than Mac OS. But I'll give Isaacson some space. His misunderstanding is well within the bounds of what I experienced within the non-Apple programming community at the time. I'd cut him some slack.

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#105

Post by chc »

SeoxyS wrote: post #92
recoiledsnake wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Is there somewhere where Bill Gates said "none of the NeXT code made it into OS X". That's the impression I got the other day from this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?i…

> Is there somewhere where Bill Gates said "none of the NeXT code made it into OS X". You're twisting Isaacson's words. He said: > noted that Apple ended up not adopting the entire NeXT operating system This doesn't mean none of NeXT's code made it in, it means not all of it. But, putting aside the nitpicks, I, as a technical person, do not care much for the technical details. I'm much more interested in Jobs' hippie…

The book says Apple opted to evolve its existing operating system, which was OS 9. This strongly implies that NeXT's contribution was negligible, but even if you don't see it that way, there is just no reasonable way you can read it to make it true. Mac OS X was an evolution of NeXTSTEP, full stop. Even if OS X contained twice as much OS 9 code as it appeared to, it would still basically be NeXTSTEP.

To wit: Foundation, AppKit, the BSD underpinnings, Mail, TextEdit, Preview, the Dock and countless other components — even that silly beachball wait cursor! — were refugees from NeXT. Even Finder, which borrowed its name and some of its appearance from OS 9's Finder, was essentially a Carbon rewrite of NeXT's Workspace Manager.

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#106

Post by pwthornton »

snowwrestler wrote: post #100
pwthornton wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the passage. How could he not challenge Gates on that? Or clarify it. I'm not sure if he gets 100 percent what Gates is saying. This passage is just not accurate. OS X's importance to Apple can't be understated. Apple, the company that kicked off the personal computer revolution and gave us the GUI, was behind technologically in the mid-1990s. Apple was in such bad shape that they had to buy someone else's OS.…

I haven't read the book, but is the thesis of this discussion that the book is fatally flawed because Isaacson didn't challenge Bill Gates on the details of how NeXTStep evolved into OS X? This doesn't really seem like THE crucial moment in the entire life of Steve Jobs.

It's an important part of Apple's story. It shows that Isaacson didn't get the important of NeXT to Apple and how the NeXT purchase saved Apple. It was more than just getting Jobs back.

A big question I'd have is, why did NeXT have so much better technology than Apple?

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#107

Post by [deleted] »

cooldeal wrote: post #34
nirvana wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False Dichotomy. Isaacson didn't present "all sides", he only presented one side, which was his uninformed and ignorant opinion. Often he would quote Steve saying something and then say "but that's a lie" or "that's the reality distortion field talking", or "even Steve seems to believe the reality distortion field", as if he (Isaacson's) opinion of the truth was sacrosanct and what Steve (The guy who was present for…

Not sure if I am replying to a troll(plus much of the above is copy/paste or very similar to an earlier comment from you). >they've just heard the lie that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox (impossible since there was no GUI at Xerox at the time, in fact) The Apple haters also seem to uploading fake videos of a old Xerox GUI on Youtube! /sarcasm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYlYSzMqGR8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C…

[deleted]

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#108

Post by [deleted] »

cooldeal wrote: post #34
nirvana wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False Dichotomy. Isaacson didn't present "all sides", he only presented one side, which was his uninformed and ignorant opinion. Often he would quote Steve saying something and then say "but that's a lie" or "that's the reality distortion field talking", or "even Steve seems to believe the reality distortion field", as if he (Isaacson's) opinion of the truth was sacrosanct and what Steve (The guy who was present for…

Not sure if I am replying to a troll(plus much of the above is copy/paste or very similar to an earlier comment from you). >they've just heard the lie that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox (impossible since there was no GUI at Xerox at the time, in fact) The Apple haters also seem to uploading fake videos of a old Xerox GUI on Youtube! /sarcasm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYlYSzMqGR8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C…

[deleted]

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#109

Post by [deleted] »

blinkingled wrote: post #55
Pewpewarrows wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like cooldeal, I really can't tell if this is a troll or not, so I'm not going to even bother picking apart the dozens of inaccuracies.

FWIW, I too refrained from replying because of the same reason - felt too much like trolling to fall for the trap.

[deleted]

Re: Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

#110

Post by [deleted] »

blinkingled wrote: post #55
Pewpewarrows wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like cooldeal, I really can't tell if this is a troll or not, so I'm not going to even bother picking apart the dozens of inaccuracies.

FWIW, I too refrained from replying because of the same reason - felt too much like trolling to fall for the trap.

[deleted]
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