Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it

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 the events) was saying was obviously false because Steve is "well known" to have a "reality distortion field". At best, Isaacson quotes people who are uninformed or being dishonest in "proving" that Jobs is wrong-- most hilarious example was quoting Bill Gates claiming that none of NeXTSTEP made it into OS X. Apparently Isaacson wasn't aware enough hot the issues to realize how absurd that claim is.

IF the book had presented all sides, say, quoted Steve, and then Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld on an issue and then gotten Woz's or Raskin's opinion of who was right, and Steve, Bill and Andy disagreed in what they said, and the reader was given the opportunity to decide for themselves what the truth was... then that would be "presenting all sides." However, I can not think of a single incident where Isaacson quoted more than one person, and in most cases he just asserts that Steve is lying.

The truth is, there is no "Reality Distortion Field". The term itself is a joke. The claim that Steve can get away with lying is a piece of propaganda that has ben perpetuated for decades by Apple haters. (and they have to, because the people who hate Apple are jealous because Apple produces better products, they can't really bash Apple for being better, so they have to resort to smears.)

I've paid close attention, and in every case of Steve Jobs saying something that people claimed was a lie, I've yet to find one where he publicly tells a flat out lie. He's been wrong in his opinions, but that's quite different than lying.

For instance, he was quoted as saying that "people don't read anymore"... haters claim this means that he claimed Apple would never make a kindle competitor, but that's not what he said. He identified a core problem that the kindle, and later Apple, were trying to solve. That's not a lie-- people don't read anymore, compared to how much they used to read in the past.

People lying about Steve Jobs-- as Isaacson does-- does not change the facts about what Steve Jobs said and did.

I know that's the strategy. For decades haters have been lying about the PARC visit, and claiming that Apple "Stole" from PARC. They simply ignore the fact that Apple got a license agreement from Xerox, paid Xerox in pre-IPO Apple shares, and that the whole thing was on the up and up. They feel that if they just repeat this lie, over and over, and in every context, even when places where it isn't relevant, they win every argument. In fact, it has gotten to the point where some apple haters really are completely ignorant-- 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) enough time that they think they can repeat it and not be held accountable. Here on Hacker News, one actually said to me "Its widely accepted that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox, why do you even bother disputing this fact?" .... when it is not a fact at all.

Now these same people are spreading the lie that Google is Open while Apple is closed. Truth: Both Apple and Google release the operating system as open source, and both Apple and Google keep as closed source the application layer where their proprietary apps live. For Apple, that's the UI, for google that's the Google Apps. The Lie: Touch screens have existed for years before the iPhone: The truth: Multi-touch is a new, non-obvious, and very innovative invention.

You can't change reality be repeating a bunch of lies over and over and over and over and over.... but you can make a lot of uninformed people believe it. And that's the goal.

Unfortunately, Isaacson's book perpetrates many of these lies, despite having access to the sources of truth.

I don't think Isaacson is an Apple hater... I just think that he felt there was more profits for himself by feeding the myth of Steve Jobs, rather than biographying the real Steve Jobs.

Edit: Whoops. Bill Gates was "claiming", not "flaming"!

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.

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.

The book is very gossipy and does a decent job with Jobs messy personal life, but he completely failed to capture Jobs' and Apple's impact on the industry.