
Getting Steve Jobs Wrong - blinkingled
http://daringfireball.net/2011/11/getting_steve_jobs_wrong
======
n8agrin
Theories on Jobs' character aside, the Jobs biography is an utter mess. Some
sentences feel like they were pulled from a 6th grade book report. It's
riddled with obvious statements and reads like it should have been published
in People magazine. I realize I'm probably being too harsh, but I wish that I
felt like Isaacson had invested into this biography, this once-in-a-lifetime-
opportunity, the way Jobs likely invested in developing any of his products.

~~~
steve8918
I 100% agree. I'm basically finished the book (2 more chapters to go, but I
skipped ahead to the last 2 chapters out of boredom). It reads like 2
different books: before coming back to Apple the second time, and after.

The first half really makes him look like an utter wretch, and almost suggests
that his success was a mistake. It basically talks about what an asshole Jobs
was, and how he would yell at everyone, etc, and it wouldn't talk about what
actually made him a success in his early years. There was almost nothing on
it, just anecdotes from people about how he smelled, he was rude, he cried all
the time, and made people hate him. I would have loved a more balanced
approach to hearing about how he was able to bring the Macintosh team together
through inspiration. It basically felt like "Jobs was able to get the
Macintosh team together by manipulating and exploiting them with his reality
distortion field." I didn't find it very good at all. I also would have liked
to have read more about NeXT and what problems he had besides overspending,
etc. Were there successes?

The second half of the book was more interesting, because it stopped ragging
on Jobs being an asshole and talked more about what he did. There were far
more anecdotes, I guess maybe because he interviewed more people from this
era. But at least I got a sense of what he actually did for Apple, vs feeling
like he was more lucky than good.

Overall, I think the biography stunk. It's useful in that he did get access to
Jobs in the final months, and getting insight into his illness, etc, was
interesting and sad, but still overall I think he did a very poor job,
especially about the early years.

~~~
paul
I think you're missing the point. He was an intense, emotional visionary. He
believed in what he felt, not what others told him. That's why he smelled, why
he was rude, why he cried all the time, and why he made people hate him. It's
also why he was successful, and why he was able to unite teams.

Most people spend their lives engaged in a kind of Keynesian beauty contest,
always trying to do or be what they think they are supposed to do or be. A
true visionary has their own internal sense of beauty.

~~~
steve8918
I think you're missing the point. I was commenting on the impression I got
from the book.

------
blinkingled
I've been criticizing Gruber more often than not, but I found this one to be a
to the point, fairly balanced piece - especially around the visionary vs.
tweaker vs. inventor part.

But his gripe about the Jobs' biography still doesn't make enough sense to me,
particularly this part -

 _What it was that Jobs actually did is much of the mystery of his life and
his work, and Isaacson, frustratingly, had seemingly little interest in that,
or any recognition that there even was any sort of mystery as to just what
Jobs’s gifts really were._

I attribute that to personality traits, intuition, timing, persistence,
character and may be some other intangibles that we don't yet fathom. It's not
one single tangible thing that you can point to and say - hey this is it, if
you do it this way you can be another Steve Jobs, another Einstein, another
Picasso etc. It's more like art than science - you can't really nail it down,
pin point it, list it - it's certain basic elements of the art mostly covered
with the artist's expression ability, personality, imagination, composition
et.al and that's not really something that a biographer can resolve in a
biography. Biographer's job is to lay out the life and work of the person and
let people make their own inferences of the subtleties, of where it worked,
why and why not. Some will "get" it, many won't. Some will be able to apply it
in many nondescript ways and many won't have any use of it.

~~~
tomlin
> I've been criticizing Gruber more often than not, but I found this one to be
> a to the point, fairly balanced piece - especially around the visionary vs.
> tweaker vs. inventor part.

I as well. And I like Gladwell, I just think he and Isaacson have seriously
misrepresented Steve Jobs and what he did in his life & at Apple.

~~~
evanlong
Specific points please.

~~~
pilsetnieks
Don't get me wrong, I like Gladwell and his writing but the usual criticism is
that he cherrypicks useful facts and disregards conflicting ones so that he
can build up his case. If you try to refute him point by point, you can't
because every fact in his essays is correct. Every specific point is going to
be correct and irrefutable but conclusion drawn from them would be just so
wrong.

------
jroseattle
Tweaker. Inventor. Visionary.

Could we get a few _more_ subjective terms in the mix?

This is all about interpretation, and a highly subjective one at that.

Jobs is cemented as an industry icon. He is different things to different
people. Why his stalwart supporters (and lapdogs like Gruber) continue to be
annoyed when anyone's interpretation doesn't match their own is childish.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Why his stalwart supporters (and lapdogs like Gruber) continue to be annoyed
> when anyone's interpretation doesn't match their own is childish.

Jobs and Apple (for whatever reason) inspired in a lot of people the kind of
religious fervor that companies rarely can. Jobs' death has only further
amplified this.

There are a lot of tech industry icons. What I think sets Jobs apart is the
level of devotion he was able to extract from his customers/fans.

------
steve8918
The post is not very good.

Jobs was a visionary but he most certainly stood on other ideas that people
already had. BUT THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. He took other people's ideas
and made them revolutionary.

Macintosh was someone else's idea that he hijacked, and made better, but he
also caused a lot of divisiveness because of it, and this ultimately caused
him being kicked out of Apple.

He bought Pixar because of its hardware and software. Not because of the
animation. He even admitted that if he knew that the hardware and software
wasn't going to be successful, he never would have bought Pixar in the first
place.

I could go on and on. Even the iPad was because of the dinner he had at some
MSFT employee's house. And Apple Stores was still a store, just reimagined to
make it cater to what people wanted.

Steve Jobs was an artist. He WAS an engineer, and he WAS a designer. People
forget that he was into electronics just as much as Wozniak was, except
Wozniak was better. He did design many elements of Apple products which is why
he is on 200+ patents. His gift was being able to apply his sense of artistry
to technology and make it truly beautiful, without much compromise in his
vision. His artistry and unwillingness to compromise was also a curse when he
almost ran out of money funding Next. He was wrong often and struck out a lot,
but when he was right, they were home runs.

~~~
lukifer
> Even the iPad was because of the dinner he had at some MSFT employee's
> house.

I call bullshit. Steve was interested in tablets since learning about Alan
Kay's DynaBook concept in the 70's. The MSFT engineer angered him into
pursuing the concept sooner, nothing more.

~~~
warmfuzzykitten
Not quite. Steve liked DynaBook, but he thought it was a laptop computer. If
he'd taken the job as head of Apple Research, that's what he would have
produced. Apple had a tablet - the Newton - and Steve killed it when he came
back. It turned out what he hated about tablets was the need for a stylus,
which was the Microsoft approach (like the Newton), and that's what he wanted
to prove wrong.

~~~
pinwale
It should be noted that Apple was interested in smart pens rather than
styluses. Apple has at least 13 patents relating to smart pens.

source: [http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/09/apple-
wi...](http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/09/apple-wins-a-
patent-for-a-super-smart-pen-which-predates-livescribe.html)

------
pohl
Another great take on the extent to which Walter Isaacson biography misses the
mark is John Siracusa's criticisms on the "Hypercritical" podcast. Skip to
about 17 minutes and 45 seconds in, which is when they start discussing it. It
looks to be part 1 of an epic two-fer.

<http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42>

~~~
robterrell
I think Siracusa's critique goes off the rails when he's complaining about
things like the book missing the details in the PA Semi acquisition -- yes,
that would have been interesting and ironic, I would have enjoyed reading it,
but I bet my wife wouldn't. That's more appropriate for a book about Apple in
general, not a personal bio of Jobs.

But I agree completely with Siracusa about the book's general laziness. Many
early chapters are poorly-written (and poorly-understood) summaries of
previous books and interviews.

~~~
pohl
I noticed that too, but I stuck with him and didn't consider it "going off the
rails" so much as just being the typical Siracusa obsessively-detailed
critique. Have you ever read one of his reviews of new MacOS X releases?
They're agonizingly nitpicky, and the presence of any particular criticism
doesn't really imply that this particular detail has as much weight as any
other criticism he has. He was clearly reading off of long, detailed notes
that he had organized into sections. Still, he does also obsess about how he
writes and edits his work, and had he written a review of the biography rather
than stepping up to a microphone for a podcast, the thing about PA Semi may
not have made the cut. Who knows.

------
evanlong
I guess I don't fully understand the idea that the biography is a "mess" or
"flawed." Keep in mind, Jobs wanted Walter Isaacson to write his biography.
Don't blame the author. Blame Jobs. You all so easily give him credit when he
stands on the shoulders of giants. This seems like a logical leap. Give him
credit for this too because it was actually genius.

More seriously, what points make the biography flawed or a mess? A biography
isn't meant to be enjoyed. Its meant to inform the reader. Jobs defined
technology but more than just technology defined him. The point was to capture
that.

I guess most of you truly are shallow. You appreciated the icon of Steve Jobs.
Jobs as the man that brought you computing power to your desk, your lap and
your hand. Most of you look up to him. Followed him. Admired him. Felt your
work inspired by him. But you all failed to understand his final stroke of
genius. He wanted to be remember beyond a set of products.

Jobs understood biography. You all obviously don't.

~~~
gnaffle
Like Siracusa said, Jobs picked the wrong guy:
<http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42> <http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/43> (Edit: I
could go on for several pages to point out the books flaws, but this podcast
does a good job of it.)

Do you really think people dislike the book because it was honest? Most of the
criticism you see here is because the book never went much deeper than stating
facts (and sometimes the wrong facts). This applies to more than just
products.

Two non-product examples: We never get any good analysis on how Zen Buddhism
affected him apart from his college days. When confronted with how cruel he
can be, Steve Jobs just says "that's who I am". No deeper analysis here either
(although Ive does try to give an explanation, Jobs isn't asked about that
theory).

------
ChuckMcM
tl;dr versions - Gruber thinks the title 'Tweaker' has less social value than
'Inventor' so he takes offense at Gladwell's argument which identifies Steve
Jobs a 'tweaker'.

Unlike Gruber's commentary, Gladwell's argument is both rational and self
consistent. From the tone of this piece by Gruber it is clear he is strugging
with the dissonance between the clarity of Gladwell's argument and a
perception that the term 'tweaker' is somehow pejorative and thus demeaning of
someone he idolizes.

~~~
diogenescynic
>tl;dr versions - Gruber thinks the title 'Tweaker' has less social value than
'Inventor' so he takes offense at Gladwell's argument which identifies Steve
Jobs a 'tweaker'.

The second sentence: Jobs was neither. These men make for a poor comparison to
Jobs because Jobs didn’t really “invent” anything

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yes, twice actually.

Gruber's rebuttal that Gladwell's comparison is invalid is itself a fallacy.
_Gruber_ claims that Steve Jobs wasn't an inventor but his use of the term is
different [1] than Gladwell's use. If you read Gladwell's comments (both the
excerpted parts and the entire thing) you will see that Gladwell equates Job's
'vision' for the iPod (as an example) which he was very much in control of, as
having both 'invented' the iPod (creative force behind it) and 'tweaked' in
the sense that it was a refinement of a previous invention (product).

[1] It's called an amphiboly. <http://blekko.com/ws/?q=define+amphiboly>

------
dean
_"Iteration — steady incremental improvements, prototype after prototype,
design after design, year after year, release after release — that process is
ingrained in Apple’s (and I think Pixar’s) culture."_

This process is ingrained in every software company. There's nothing special
or new about Apple (or Jobs) here.

~~~
tristan_juricek
Since every software company has this process, why does Apple stand out?

That's the question I think Gruber wants answered, and where this huge Bio of
Jobs, probably our best opportunity to find out, has fallen short.

I would take a guess that if someone were to really publish the "secret sauce"
you might find it less like a recipe - i.e., "do this and you will win" - and
more like a history of a company that found smart, productive people, made
them focus, and then got the f __k out of the way.

I'm not sure a Biography would illuminate this. But I think Gruber's right in
that Jobs probably wasn't a "tweaker" in the sense of someone actually making
a tech decision. He probably tweaked people.

------
Tichy
That photograph where Jobs displays the pre-iPhone phones really doesn't prove
anything. The Palm Pilot didn't have a keyboard, and it was an obvious idea to
eventually give it calling capabilities (incidentally, my "omg this can't be
true, I have been waiting for this all my life" was when I saw the first ad
for a Palm Pilot, not for an iPhone). Trust in the big vendors to screw it up
anyway, but still. It's not as if nobody besides Job had the capability of
envisioning a phone without a keyboard.

~~~
pkamb
I asked an interesting question here, why the Palm Pilot (and Newton) _didn't_
originally ship with a hardware keyboard. It's fascinating to me that devices
originally used handwriting recognition, then moved to physical keyboards,
then to on-screen keyboards.

[http://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Apple-Newton-and-Palm-
Pilot...](http://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Apple-Newton-and-Palm-Pilot-use-
handwriting-recognition-rather-than-a-mini-physical-keyboard)

~~~
glenra
One reason is because keyboards that small are hard to type on and take up
valuable screen real estate. Another reason is that there's something about
_writing_ on a pad that seems less intrusive, more casual, than typing. If you
take a few notes at a meeting on a pad of paper you're more obviously still
mentally present at the meeting - less involved with your note-taking process
- than if you type at a keyboard.

I still miss the Newton Notepad app and want something like it - including the
stylus and handwriting recognition - on an iPhone and iPad.

------
metalsahu
You will find that Steve Jobs (aka Apple's) path to success aligns itself very
well to Gladwell's 10,000hour rule. Gladwell proposed that it takes almost
10year to become an expert as you go through the do, learn, tweak cycle. Steve
Jobs took something which was existing but questioned a lot of assumptions to
come up with new inventions (an approach which Elon Musk mentions in his
"Reasoning from First Principles" interview). On the other end of the spectrum
are people like Einstein who clearly wrote the first principle because there
was none before that. I am personally encouraged that Steve Jobs was able to
bring about massive change in the world with this approach....the valuable
lesson for budding entrepreneurs like me is that given time, identification of
good ideas and persistence, we could also do something similar though on a
smaller scale without being born with an IQ > 140.

------
catfish
Jobs was no Edison or Einstein. Hopper, Ritchie, Turing, and even Gates
contributed more to our collective future...

~~~
jshen
I completely disagree. Watch a 1 year old child learn to use an iPad in a day!
There is something very new and very revolutionary about that.

~~~
burgerbrain
It may seem more amazing to you, but I would argue that is only because you
are not likely in a position to be amazed by the magnitude of the importance
people like Edison and Turing had on this world.

This is forgivable, but please note that he was talking about _contribution_
to society, not _"wow factor"_.

~~~
TetOn
IMHO a computer that is usable within the hour by a one year old goes far
beyond "wow factor" and well into _contribution_ realm.

~~~
catfish
Cost 600 bucks. How does that help civilization. Oh maybe a few well pampered
hipster's children get access to it, but how does that work for the rest of
the world that averages 2 bucks a day income levels?

~~~
wizzard
So if something doesn't help every single person in the world, rich or poor,
it's not a contribution? Wow, you have some high standards.

~~~
burgerbrain
If we're comparing it to things as ubiquitous as _computer technology itself_
and electric lighting, then I don't think it is unreasonable to point out that
the relatively exclusive nature of the ipad puts it at a disadvantage in such
a contest.

~~~
mikeklaas
Thomas Edison did not invent electric lighting.

~~~
burgerbrain
He made it ubiquitous.

~~~
mikeklaas
…kinda like how Jobs makes all the ideas he's accused of 'tweaking'
ubiquitous?

~~~
burgerbrain
I will _repeat_ myself and _again_ state that I am not saying that Jobs did
not have an effect on society.

I am saying it is _not on the same order of magnitude_ as _fucking electric
lighting_.

Why must this be difficult?

------
zlotty
The sentiment in this post reflects a larger frustration with Malcolm
Gladwell's oversimplified, reductionist writing in which complex systems are
dumbed down into highly marketable archetypes.

------
jpalomaki
Based on the biography I would say Steve's magic sauce was the ability and
willingness to build a winning team and get everything out of it. He was a
"generalist" who knew enough about various things (design, marketing,
electronics, software, etc) to be able to judge people and to challenge the
experts opinions.

------
iletina
This is really a silly article. I would really recommend that you guys read
Gladwell's piece as it is at least well written. Gruber's Fireball is mostly
thrown at straw-men.

Gladwell makes a distinction between "visionaries" who invent new things and
"tweakers" who refine, perfect and make new inventions work. Gladwell proceeds
to argue that Jobs falls into the tweaker category.

Gruber keeps talking about "innovations", a word Gladwell does not use,
without bothering to explain what he means by it or how it is different from
Gladwell's idea of "tweaks." But he has no problems claiming that Jobs
"innovations" were not tweaks. He asks: "Does anyone really think Apple’s
entry into the music industry was a 'tweak'?" Yes, according to Gladwell's
definition of the term it was. It seems that Gruber did not bother to try to
understand what Gladwell meant by the term "tweak."

~~~
jeremymcanally
The Gladwell article was a travesty. It was hastily written piece, basically
copied and pasted from the Isaacson biography with a thin layer of crappy pop
psychology on top.

The whole time I was reading it I was wondering why Gladwell didn't refer to
any other material than the biography since they offered a deeper, more
balanced picture of his work, but then I remembered they were probably trying
to cash in on the Steve Jobs aura by putting his article on the cover.

~~~
iletina
Jeremy, as far as I could notice, Gladwell's article had no pop psychology.
It's interpretation of "tweakers" was based on a paper by two economists, "The
Rate and Direction of Invention in the British Industrial Revolution:
Incentives and Institutions." Gladwell then argues that Jobs' contribution
fall more in the "tweaking" category, which is not meant as a criticism or
denigration. Remember that in this interpretation it is the tweakers who
brought us the Industrial Revolution, not the visionary inventors.

------
angersock
This article was a bit annoying to read, as it was full of a lot of the
deification of Jobs that's been around since his death.

 _"What it was that Jobs actually did is much of the mystery of his life and
his work, and Isaacson, frustratingly, had seemingly little interest in that,
or any recognition that there even was any sort of mystery as to just what
Jobs’s gifts really were."_

Why this insistence on mystery? Why this insistence that Jobs had some magical
special sauce that all of us are lacking? I see this over and over in the
article, as the author tries to complain that not enough lip service in the
quotes he brings up is being paid to the Great and Mysterious Steven Paul
Jobs.

We pride ourselves on all being innovative and hopeful engineers and business
folks, right? So, why do we see so much praise for these unexplainable
qualities? This has got to stop.

The article is particularly bad when quoting a definition of innovation and
then simultaneously arguing that Jobs wasn't a mere "tweaker" and that
innovation doesn't require completely original thought. Unless I completely
misparsed that section, it appears that the author is trying to assert
contradictory claims: if Jobs wasn't a tweaker, and he was innovative, then he
must have been completely original--yet the author states that this need not
be the case! This is crap rhetoric, and I'm bummed to see it appear in an
otherwise good blog.

Some of the assertions made are also laughable:

 _"The Macintosh was no “tweak”. Pixar was no “tweak”. The iPod is maybe the
closest thing among Jobs’s career highlights that one could call a “tweak” of
that which preceded it — but it’s hard to separate the iPod, the device, from
the entire iTunes ecosystem in terms of measuring its effect on our culture
and the way everyone today listens to music. Does anyone really think Apple’s
entry into the music industry was a “tweak”?"_

All of these are tweaks, as substantiated by the quotes used by the author.
The Mac was a "tweak" insofar as it was modification to cheaply make a Star.
Pixar work prior to '86 was very much laying the groundwork for future CG--
Job's purchase perhaps gave funding but likely little else. The contortions
used to try and justify the iPod without calling it a "tweak" are hilarious.
The online music aspect _might_ get a pass, but still, it's basically just
"RECORDS.... ON THE INTERNET!". None of the examples really address the "Jobs
was a tweaker" argument.

 _"If anyone is the “tweaker” in the PC industry, a la Gladwell’s 18th century
steam engine inventors, clearly it’s Bill Gates, not Steve Jobs."_

And then this. It's completely extraneous, serving no other function than to
scratch the fanboy "Fuck Microsoft" itch. It needn't have even been mentioned
--and yet, here it is. No real attempt is even made to justify why it is
there, nor to try and explain all of the damning with faint praise of senor
Gates.

This article is a well-written but poorly justified. We deserve better.

~~~
yannickt
> All of these are tweaks

The word "tweak" does not mean the same thing to hackers as it does to the
general public. To the average person, "tweaking" means making minor
modifications to an essentially finished product. This of course would do a
huge disservice to Apple's accomplishments, and I think that's what Gruber is
trying to fight, considering Gladwell and Isaacson write for a general
audience.

To put it another way, it took Microsoft and others several years to tweak the
Macintosh operating system, and this despite Apple essentially resting on
their laurels until the return of Steve Jobs.

There were tons of MP3 players before the iPod, and they were pretty much
decimated. iTunes is not just music on the Internet, it is also the first
music service that got the music majors and labels on board. Where are the
iPod/iTunes tweaks? Microsoft failed twice with PlaysForSure and Zune. Amazon,
Google and Spotify are doing interesting things in this space, yet most people
are still going to listen to music they download from them... on their iPod.

Similarly, the iPhone is much more than a pre-2007 smartphone without buttons,
and the iPad is much more than a Dynabook or a pre-2010 tablet with no stylus.

And I think you are mischaracterizing his observations about Gates.

------
briguy
I think that what differentiates Jobs from those other engineers mentioned in
the article is that the skills that a Steve Jobs brings to the table would
more llikely have been an asset to any type of product in any era. I am not an
iPhone guy, however as an engineer, I am a huge Steve Jobs fan and am in
constant awe on each example I read of the depth of his work ethic (perhaps
his greatest skill). I think a better choice as an author would have been
James Gleick.

------
alexwolfe
"The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.
The tweaker inherits things as they are, and has to push and pull them toward
some more nearly perfect solution."

Malcom fails to realize by his definition everyone would be a tweaker. Henry
Ford - tweaker, Einstein - tweaker, Jobs - tweaker...

I think its clear who the tweaker is and it isn't Einstein, Ford, or Jobs.

~~~
WalterBright
I don't think Einstein was a tweaker. His theories came completely out of left
field.

~~~
alexwolfe
Everyone in any field has had help or inspiration from others. I'm just not a
fan fo Malcom calling this tweaking, its is demeaning to everyone who's ever
done anything. If Steve Jobs just "tweaked" things and wasn't and inventor
than what does that say about everyone else in the world?

Its easy to take shots at someone after the fact, the reality is that maybe he
wasn't everything people thought he was. He might not have been a sweetheart
to work with, in fact he may have been a jerk. But, lets not kid ourselves
into believing he didn't do that much and was just some tweaker at Apple, I
call BS. Apple was basically dead when he returned, dead. It must have been a
little more than tweaking to make it the most successful company in the world.

------
jgon
I'm currently reading the Steve Jobs biography but I have not finished it, so
this comment is based on incomplete knowledge and you should take what I say
with a grain of salt.

I will agree that the biography is far from perfect, and of course we can all
find a bunch of things that we would have liked to see improved, especially
knowing technology as intimately as most of us. But looking at the backlash
against this biography I can't help but also feel that some of the criticism
is a case of sour grapes, or maybe dashed expectations.

Leading into the release of the biography there were considerable excitement
that finally someone would be able to tell the authorized story of Steve Jobs.
This person had been granted unprecedented access to the man and people close
to him, and had been working over a period of several years to put the book
together. Finally, after the "smears" that were books like iCon, unauthorized
and frankly pretty critical of Mr. Jobs we would finally get some real insight
into his greatness.

And of course, a few weeks before the book is released the person is about
passes away tragically at far too young of an age. I mean it sincerely when I
say it was a pretty big loss. But look at everything written about the man in
the days and weeks after, and the reaction to people who didn't toe the party
line of deification. I mean even articles discussing Jobs' "dark side" then
went to say how this was actually a positive and was integral to his success.

So now, finally, we can get our hand on the book we were all waiting for, the
one where the biographer who actually got to talk to Jobs and people close to
him reveals to us that, yes, he truly is as great as you believe. Actually
he's even better, honestly he's the man of the century.

Instead, we get a portrait of a man with some very, very sharp edges, a mean
ruthless streak that I think would startle most people on the other end of it,
and of course a man who revolutionized several industries and did some pretty
remarkable things.

It is definitely not the hagiography that I think some people secretly wanted,
and I can't help but feel that this disappointment is behind a lot of the
backlash. No biography is ever going to perfectly encompass anyone's life,
especially so someone who has accomplished so much. But I also think that it
is entirely fair to paint a portrait of the man that acknowledges his numerous
flaws, the fantastic luck that accompanied some of his decisions, and the many
failures he had. Because without this would his many successes, his vision,
and his inspiring drive for perfection seem as impressive?

So in the end, I am actually enjoying the book and I am sure that someone else
will come along and work from the notes and publish something even better. But
to say that it is an utter mess, or a hack job, or any of the other brutal
criticisms I have read is, in my opinion, pretty unfair.

~~~
absconditus
The problem is that a work about Jobs's private life is not terribly
compelling and the author of the work did not understand any of the important
parts of Jobs's life enough to provide insight into them. Some of us were not
looking for a long-form People Magazine article nor a hagiography.

------
joejohnson
Oh my god. John Gruber is really showing his true fanboy colors here again and
again. He is going to cry about these "misrepresentations" of the great
visionary Steve Jobs until people stop listening to him (and posting this
garbage on HN). I understand why people are so drawn to studying a successful
individual's life, but we must accept that every story must make some educated
assumptions. Ultimately, who cares?!

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mkramlich
Jobs was a visionary and a tweaker, an artistic/design idealist, and a
businessman. he strove for subjective perfection, but ultimately shipped
product and charged for it. there is no conflict here. because he was all of
these things is a big reason why he accomplished so much and became a
billionaire.

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georgieporgie
Ugh. Short of, perhaps, Tesla, I don't think I've ever read about any inventor
or innovator whose contributions weren't the results of countless iterations
to both their own and others' work.

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hello-trolls
<ethics

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warmfuzzykitten
Here's the problem with Gruber's argument. He's using something Malcolm
Gladwell wrote to criticize a book that Walter Isaacson wrote. Isaacson didn't
say Steve Jobs was a tweaker.

Granted that Gladwell's article reveals how little he understands the nature
of invention. As punishment, he should be forced to read every patent for
paper clips. Nearly all invention is a change to an existing thing because the
inventor thinks some (could be very small) aspect of it should be better.
That's a pretty good description of Steve Jobs.

I'm only midway through the book, but frankly I don't see so far where the
criticism is coming from.

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anonymouslambda
I think he's criticizing Issacson's book for being light on the details of
Jobs' actual work, thus allowing Gladwell to write an article that is
uninformed in calling Jobs a tweaker.

Had Issacson done the task justice, we would all have insight into Jobs' work,
which in Gruber's opinion, rises far above the level of a tweaker.

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warmfuzzykitten
I wonder if critics have actually read the book. There's quite a bit about
Jobs' actual work and you get quite a bit of insight into what he did and how
he went about it.

Gladwell is quite capable of spinning some idiotic theory on his own. You
can't blame Isaacson for his shortcomings.

