
Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’ - mrshoe
http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/walter_isaacson_steve_jobs
======
tjogin
I agree with Gruber, but I'd like to add that these are not small errors on
Walter Isaacson's part. They're huge errors. The biggest errors any biography
author _could_ make about Steve Jobs.

Why? Why are we even interested in reading a biography about Steve Jobs to
begin with? Because he was a narcissistic asshole? Really? Because that's the
part Isaacson nailed. There are plenty of assholes, and that characteristic
alone does not make for a best-selling biography. No, the reason anyone is
interested in reading Steve Jobs's biography is because of _his work_.

And yet, Steve's _work_ is the part Isaacson doesn't get. Isaacson falls into
the same traps that the media does with regularity; thinking Apple's design
obsession is about _veneer_ , thinking it's about _marketing_ , about fooling
people, about lying. It's not, that might sell a _few_ products, but it does
not sell record quantities of products and achieve top customer satisfaction.

You'd think a person with full access to Steve Jobs and people close to him
would be able to at the very least ask a few questions about what he saw that
others could not, that lead to the successes of eg. the iPhone. Recall other
industry big wigs laughing it off, from RIM to Nokia to Microsoft. The iPhone
was a _joke_ to them. What did Steve see that they did not? What was his
thought process? What made Steve Jobs so different for him to be able to upset
industry after industry? These are things I'd have wanted to know and I can't
help feel a bit sad that now we will never know. Because Isaacson squandered
the only chance we got.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
You shouldn't really get upset at CEOs trash-talking their competitors. It's
their job. In fact, it's a compliment. Trash talking something means it's
registered as a threat. How many of them trash-talked OpenMoko? (Conversely,
what did Jobs trash-talk? Kindle and Android mainly)

Ironically enough Gruber is a big fan of taking offense at these entirely
predictable comments from CEOs. He's basically trolling himself by taking
obvious talking points seriously and trolling his massive readership by
continually re-broadcasting these comments that are entirely without merit or
interest.

~~~
jonhendry
"You shouldn't really get upset at CEOs trash-talking their competitors."

There's nothing wrong with that in general, but if you have special, unique
access to an important industry figure, who is not going to be around for very
long because he's dying, and you're writing what ought to be the canonical
biography of the man, you really shouldn't be wasting your time putting false
competitor trash-talking on the page, and certainly not without adding "but in
fact Gates is wrong about this" and similar qualifiers.

------
tatsuke95
>What computer would you rather use? A MacBook running Windows 7, or, say, a
Lenovo ThinkPad running Mac OS X 10.7?

Being as how I run a Macbook Air with Windows 7, and don't even remember what
OSX looks like, my answer is pretty obvious. I've never used a laptop that
feels as good (the touchpad is the best).

But Apple software? Meh.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
My thoughts exactly after reading those first paragraphs. My ideal setup is
MacbookAir, gorgeous hardware/ascetic design, Linux for teh business end.

~~~
pbreit
Do you guys think this is a common feeling? I don't.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
No, maybe not exactly. But keep in mind, we here in the tech world, I think,
(or this is just coming from my experiences) pretty much concede that Apple
wins the design award. I have several non-tech friends whom still love
windows, and are all about windows 7. I know people who are thinking about
switching to a mac, and but are afraid of not knowing what the hell is going
on. (I was honestly concerned at first)

I guess what I'm trying to say is, that other Software out there has a huge
huge presence, with non-techie people, who are tempted by Apple only because
of the "ooo shiny" effect of their slim devices, backlit keyboards, and the
fanboism surrounding them. That's decidedly the hardware that is converting
people. Windows users are more than happy to just use windows forever. Until
their devices don't look as pretty as the guys next to them in the coffee
shop.

(results may be different for mobile, but only because I think Android hasn't
got it's act together with it's vendors yet. Some aspects of the biz take
longer to sort out than technical development, unfortunately)

------
6ren
A nit: Hardware isn't just industrial design. Apple manages to squeeze a lot
more performance out of the same components as others, because they do design
in an integrated, interdependent way, rather than modular. This gives less
flexibility to customize/mix-and-swap, but better performance (for whatever
you want to optimize: speed, weight, size, power consumption etc). This was
extremely important in the early days of the iPhone, but now that components
have improved so dramatically, we are nearing the point where there's
performance to spare, and it needn't be optimized. The upshot is that "iOS on
an Android" with the _same specs_ wouldn't have performed as well. It would
have been less smooth, less responsive etc. So that, at least _then_ ,
hardware was crucial for the experience.

The same was true for the iPod and _especially_ Woz's Apple computer. It's
still true for the iPad. I believe it will be true for Apple's next product
category, because (hopefully) they'll continue to move to the edge of what is
possible - where optimization is absolutely essential to be the first to get
over that edge.

tl;dr hardware matters.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Can you give more technical details, I don't really understand at all how iOS
would run worse on a similarly spec'd phone? I can understand how hardware
component design would affect the physical build, but I don't see how it makes
the processor or memory faster.

~~~
twoodfin
One marginal example: Rumor has it that the A5 ARM chip used in the iPhone 4S
integrated technology from a company named "Audience" to better handle voice
recognition for Siri:

[http://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/06/audiences-earsmart-
techn...](http://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/06/audiences-earsmart-technology-
explains-siris-iphone-4s-exclusivity/)

As time goes by, I'd expect "third party" SoC vendors to offer their customers
an ever wider range of custom silicon, but there will likely always be
advantages to being the "first party".

~~~
6ren
Reports indicate Siri computes primarily in the cloud (the whole sound file is
sent), and that it's not on iPhone 4 for other reasons (e.g. reduce server
load, increase 4S sales)

~~~
replax
That is true, as people have ported Siri to the iPod Touch and iPhone 4, and
it is performing exactly the same. Therefore, they either emulated a whole
chip (highly unlikely) or everything is processed in the cloud/on the A4/5/#.

------
redthrowaway
Interesting, but as a software guy I disagree entirely on the
hardware/software side. I'd much rather have a 4s running ICS than one of the
others running iOS, and I'd much rather have my MBP run Linux than even OSX
(stupid EFI...). Granted, I have different tastes and needs than most, but I
view Apple products not as the OS "in a pretty box", as Jobs put it, but
rather as a pretty box with a good-not-great OS in it.

~~~
Steko
Correct me if I'm wrong but you're not disagreeing the conclusion that
software is more important, you're just arguing the details as to which
software is superior.

If I could mix and match here is what I'd take:

Software: iOS

Hardware: Nokia

Customer Service: Apple

Ecosystem: Amazon

Carrier: none of the above (the US sucks so bad...)

~~~
redthrowaway
That's basically right. Apple makes fantastic hardware. None of the other
manufacturers come close on design and execution. As far as software goes, I'm
more concerned about what I can do with it than the polish.

I'm curious as to why you would prefer a Nokia handset to an Apple one. I've
found their designs to be uninspiring.

~~~
cheald
If I had to guess, it's because Nokia's hardware could generally survive a
nuclear explosion at ground zero and emerge unscathed.

~~~
GFischer
All my Nokia phones still work or should work, (Nokia 5110 from 1999, Nokia
5125 from 2001, Nokia 1100 from 2004, Nokia 5200 from 2007, Nokia N86 from
2009).

My carrier had to convince me to leave my 5125 as they were turning off the
analog service (it's now used as an alarm clock), and I still use the 1100
sometimes.

However, I finally switched (partways) to Samsung, entirely due to the
software (I wanted an Android phone), even though my N86 is better built and
has a better camera (and hardware camera button, which I prefer).

------
martythemaniak
It's hard to dispute the excellent hardware Apple makes, but quite easy to do
that to their software. My MBP dual-boots into Ubuntu so I can actually do my
work and the 4S would make a great Android phone, though it still wouldn't be
my choice due to its small screen.

What it really comes down to is that their software is too opinionated. At
every turn I get frustrated by one inanity or another until I give up and just
use something that works without requiring mental contortions on my part.

~~~
jamesrom
Funny how the iPhone suddenly has a "small screen"... When it first came out
the phone and screen were criticized for being impractical due to it's large
size.

<http://dcurt.is/2011/10/03/3-point-5-inches/>

~~~
cheald
That blog post is horrible. I did this when it first hit, and I'll do it
again:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6857506/3.5in.png>

Purple is the Galaxy SII circle. Orange is the iPhone circle.

Apparently the iPhone gives you magically larger hands for your smaller
device. The confirmation bias is so thick it hurts.

~~~
jamesrom
Yeah I just figured that it wasn't to scale... Looking on <http://phone-
size.com> it seems like it _is_ to scale. So that diagram is clearly biased
and hurts his argument, but I think that what he says is still valid.

I don't see any advantage to having a bigger screen. Especially when the
bigger screen has less pixels (i.e. Galaxy S II). In that case, you actually
have less pixel space for UI elements, text, video, etc. than you would with
the smaller, denser screen.

------
doron
I am probably a very small minority in this regard, but in this , for me, and
to grubers point, it's the hardware not the software.

The hardware is an aesthetic superior design. But I run windows 7 on it. I
find windows 7 to be a far superior user experience to osx, faster, and at
least on this hardware more stable. Apple provides the easiest driver install
procedure for windows then any other provider, I just find osx itself...
Rather primitive, most likely imo due to the insistence of Apple on providing
a hermetic user experience.

No tech company, no matter how smart, has all the answers in one box.

------
jroseattle
I disagree with Gruber's interpretation here. Apple wants to do _everything_
well; excellent software is a by-product. But as a focus? Not really.

This is not to say Apple doesn't make good software, but there is very little
in the actual output of the company that supports Gruber's notion.

Back in early iPhone days, one of the biggest complaints was a lack of multi-
tasking in iOS -- you could only ever have one app running at a time. There
were no push notifications, etc. The Apple explanation, per Jobs, was that
they consciously chose to exclude that capability. A few versions later, voila
-- iOS supports multi-tasking. This sort of cycle -- explain why a feature
didn't exist due to some chosen policy/belieft, then include it in later
revisions -- became a pattern for Apple.

Flip to the hardware side, and the story is different. When has Apple
hardware, since Jobs return in the nineties, ever been a compromise? It
hasn't, because Jobs focused on the hardware. While the software is important,
it is really a means to an end. The hardware meets this condition too, but it
is much higher in the pecking order of consideration than software.

~~~
thomasjoulin
well people complained about the lack of 3G, and now LTE. Some also complained
about the lack of radio or full bluetooth support. I think your right, Apple
wants to do everything well, not just "everything". If they can't do it well
(copy pasting, multitasking...) they don't do it until they can.

I think we have yet to see the full spectrum of Apple's focus on software.
Until the iPhone, they were hardware oriented (the Mac, the iPod). But since
then, they are moving towards software. They make some of the best Mac and iOS
apps after all.

------
RockyMcNuts
Using a howitzer to kill a flea.

Isaacson writes fluidly, put in the research and reporting (also rehashed a
lot of other people's), but doesn't know the technology or the tech business.
In fact I don't get a sense he likes them or 'got' Steve Jobs.

Hatchet job might be strong. But he dwells a lot on the charismatic and
narcissistic and mercurial personality and not on why so many great people
loved Jobs and worked so hard for him. Or what his insights about products and
the business were (besides being a control freak and perfectionist).

The book is a good read, it's a creditable first draft of history, contains
some first-hand stuff I never saw before about the genesis of the iPod and
iPhone and iPad.

Isaacson gives the who, what, when, where, but doesn't really explain why. To
his credit, he lets the people speak for themselves.

Jobs could have picked a lot of other people, but he picked a non-tech, non-
business writer. I guess he wanted someone to just tell the story, not the
strategy or product vision that makes Apple great.

Maybe Gruber should interview a bunch of people and give it a shot. It's not
what Isaacson set out for or was in a position to do.

~~~
smackfu
The only person who could really answer the Why was Jobs himself, and even
though this was an authorized bio, I never really felt that there was much
personal insight from Jobs himself. Did Isaacson really not ask the questions,
or did Jobs not know the answers himself?

~~~
RockyMcNuts
or maybe Jobs was a control freak and didn't want to give them, and wanted to
get everyone to read a somewhat shallow historical treatment and suck all the
air out of the mass market for books about him, before someone wrote something
more serious.

------
padobson
I had two problems with this post. First: 'NeXTStep was not “just warmed over
UNIX”.'

It was, and so was Mac OSX. What Gruber doesn't seem to get is that warmed
over unix provides a much more stable OS than Windows NT or DOS. He should be
proudly admitting its warmed over unix.

Second: "It’s almost impossible to overstate just how wrong Bill Gates is
here, but Isaacson presents Gates’s side as the truth."

It should be mentioned more clearly that Gates was saying this on a sales call
- his ultimate goal being to have every consumer computer made running Windows
NT. If he stretched the truth a bit, he shouldn't be blamed for being
ignorant, only ambitious.

This is what often irks me about Gruber - he makes disagreeing with Apple out
to be an act of incompetence. Most engineers that don't like Apple products
simply want greater customization over their tech, something Apple denies
their users to promote ease of use.

~~~
gnaffle
It wasn't, unless you're completely ignoring the one thing that made OSX and
NeXTStep unique, the OpenSTEP framework and Display Postscript/PDF GUI engine.
That they were able to use these components made it possible to provide an
operating system with a nice, well performing GUI running on a stable UNIX
foundation.

Had NeXTStep only been a warmed over UNIX, wouldn't it have been better for
Apple to just use Linux and X11, or even better use A/UX which already had a
Mac-like interface?

Gruber is not really blaming Gates, he's blaming Isaacson for not doing proper
research. He could have literally asked anyone for more information about
this, and the answers he would have gotten would have provided more insight
into what really happened and why Apple succeeded.

It enabled Apple to have OSX running on Intel from day one, and it made
launching the iPhone and iPad possible without reinventing the wheel (which is
what Nokia, Microsoft, RIM and Palm all had to do in response to the iPhone).

~~~
sauravc
So is Ubuntu a new OS since it has it's own window manager?

~~~
gnaffle
No, not necessarily, but do you think Android or PalmOS both fit the
description "a warmed-over Linux distro"? The fact that they both run Linux is
not what makes any of them unique or interesting.

------
Steko
I think it bears mention here that Isaacson has acknowledged there may be some
places the book could be improved in and may be putting out a version 2 soon
(or maybe 1S? I'll show myself out...). The whole thing was a bit rushed to
press.

~~~
gojomo
Indeed – the original target publication date was March 2012. It was rushed to
completion as Jobs' health worsened, leaving a lot of loose ends.

------
gojomo
_Even the original iPod, which wasn’t based on NeXT technology, used the
column-view concept for hierarchical navigation that NeXT pioneered._

Those are called Miller Columns, and NeXT popularized them, but they were
pioneered much earlier:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns>

------
klausa
I don't have any particular feeling toward Gruber's work, but (apart for odd
timing.) I really liked this piece.

But I had this nagging 'hey, I read that before!' feeling back in my head -
and I was right, although I heard similar complaints before - voiced by John
Siracusa (you know the guy that writes 10+ pages reviews of new versions of OS
X on Ars Technica? That's him.) on his 'Hypercritical' podcast.[1] It's long
(1h15m, and it's only the first part.), but in my opinion absolutely worth
listening to.

If you have free time, or have nothing to listen to while commuting - give
this one a shot.

[1] <http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42>

~~~
jmelloy
Both the Hypercritical and the Talk Show around that time had in-depth
discussions around the book; I believe Gruber started iwth "I mostly agree
with Siracusa."

I was also a little surprised by the timing of this piece, because I also felt
like I'd seen/heard some of it before -- but I realize the audience for DF is
bigger than the audience for the Talk Show & Hypercritical, so it makes sense
& is well sourced.

------
scj
The good news is that the story isn't lost yet, even if Steve can't tell it.

I am hoping that Avie Tevanian writes a really good memoir. In a perfect
world, one on par with Hertzfeld.

~~~
twoodfin
That would really be something. Sadly, I think there was barely a sufficient
market for a deeply geeky coffee table book on the Mac's creation. I'm sure
the market for an even more deeply geeky look at the development of a modern
microkernel-based OS is even smaller.

------
nhangen
I don't know what I'm more surprised at - Isaacson's piss poor job of doing
Jobs' life justice, or that Jobs chose him to write the book. Either way, I
walked away very disappointed, ready to never think about the book again.

~~~
zak_mc_kracken
This is what puzzles me the most about Jobs fans, such as Gruber: they think
Jobs is a genius who just can't get anything wrong, except... when he picked
the person to write his biography.

~~~
twoodfin
Eh. I agree with the Siracusian critique (echoed by Gruber) that Jobs "picked
the wrong guy", at least for us hackers. But I don't think Jobs really gave a
damn what Isaacson wrote about what went on under the kimono at Apple. If
anything, he'd probably have preferred a biographer who would have left the TV
"cracked it" quote on the cutting room floor, lest Samsung know what was about
to hit them.

He wanted a bio that would help his kids get to know him better, and that's
what he got. It's not a coincidence that the most intimate moments in the book
all revolve around Jobs outside of Apple. That's what he talked to Isaacson
about, and that's what Isaacson put to paper.

~~~
alabut
" _I don't think Jobs really gave a damn what Isaacson wrote about what went
on under the kimono at Apple._ "

You nailed it.

That's the opinion I heard from Gruber on The Talk Show podcast and it makes
sense - that Jobs would've picked someone like Steven Levy if he really wanted
to explain the inner workings of Apple and alternatively, Isaacson was perfect
for a human interest puff piece.

All of the stuff that I wish Isaacson would've written about well - the years
in the NeXT wilderness, lessons learned from Pixar, the inner workings of
Apple from 97 on - are the things written about and examined in the exactly
one place in the planet where it can help only Apple: the secretive internal
executive training program known as Apple University, formed in 2008 and
headed up by Joel Podolny, the former dean of Yale Business School. You didn't
think someone that planned things at the scale that Jobs did would just have a
succession program that stopped at Tim Cook taking over, did you?

Jobs' greatest creation wasn't any one product, it was Apple itself, a company
engineered to innovate on a regular and ongoing basis for years to come.

------
kleiba
I know quite a few people who run Windows on MacBooks as their primary OS. Of
course, the different mac clones that run the OS on generic hardware were
pretty successful too (before being shut down by Apple's legal department).

------
dkarl
_What computer would you rather use? A MacBook running Windows 7, or, say, a
Lenovo ThinkPad running Mac OS X 10.7?_

Gruber, like everyone else, knows that the ThinkPad is a legendary design and
that there are many people who prefer it over everything else. Picking it to
serve as his example of inferior hardware was his signal that only true Mac
fans should read on, so I didn't. Kudos to him for letting me know up front
that the rest of the article wasn't my cup of tea.

Wouldn't it be nice if my MacBook Pro wasn't... didn't... was less... I'll
spare you the complaints, and the praise for the ThinkPad T-series. They could
both learn from each other.

I realize it's a matter of opinion which piece of hardware is superior. That's
the point. Gruber threw up a billboard in paragraph four that says, if you
think it's _at all unclear_ that the MacBook Pro is the greatest laptop design
of all time, read no further. If even he doesn't think this bit of hagiography
ought to be read by a broader audience, who are we to contradict him and post
it to a broader audience on HN?

~~~
siglesias
The point is that we, he, and Jobs would pick our preferred software on an
inferior hardware device over our preferred hardware running inferior
software, not the particulars of the choice.

~~~
dkarl
The particulars of the choice are telling. The context called for a piece of
clearly inferior hardware, and he picked a design legend. There are many
_outstandingly_ crappy examples of laptop hardware, and instead he picked a
polarizing but very highly regarded design. He did it _on purpose_ \-- you
don't accidentally choose the only laptop on display at the Museum of Modern
Art as your exemplar of bad design (though, if you're a bit arrogant and
poncey, it's a clever mistake to pretend to make.) You do it to polarize the
debate and filter your readership to the folks who are likely to agree with
you.

~~~
simonw
"The context called for a piece of clearly inferior hardware"

No, you misunderstood the article. The context called for a piece of SUPERIOR
hardware. Your entire complaint here is based on a fundamental
misunderstanding of the point Gruber was trying to make.

------
gojomo
Isaacson leaving those Gates quotes unremarked upon doesn't imply agreement;
he's just relaying interesting details.

For example, the post-NeXT acquisition rant, which comes by way of Amelio, is
effectively refuted by the whole life story that follows. So there's no need
to spoon-feed a conclusion to the reader: "look how wrong Gates was!" Everyone
gets it just about as well as Gruber does.

~~~
gnaffle
It does imply agreement if it's the only viewpoint being presented.

When he says that OSX used "some of the software that Apple had bought from
NeXT", that's not a quote from anyone, it's still wrong (or grossly misleading
at best, when the main reason to buy NeXT was to get the operating system). He
could have asked anyone familiar with the topic, and he would have gotten the
correct answer, which is that OSX is a direct descendant of NeXTStep.

~~~
gojomo
_It does imply agreement if it's the only viewpoint being presented._

Not at all; the entire rest of the book _demonstrates_ the truth more richly
than any sort of immediate-pairing-with-an-alternate-take would. It's not a
compact newspaper story or a children's textbook: take it as a whole. Does it
_demonstrate_ the truth of Gates' quotes? Clearly not.

Even where Gates says, "let’s be frank, the NeXT OS was never really used", I
don't see that as being presented as gospel by Isaacoson. It's just another
accurately quoted viewpoint. (The presence of puffery like "let's be frank"
and weasel words like "really" are clues to any reader that this assessment is
very perspective-dependent.)

Gruber is probably right that Isaacson doesn't quite appreciate software or
NeXT's technologies. I think Gruber was also right to refute the Gladwell
'tweaker' label, interpreted from Isaacson's work. But Gruber is wrong that
leaving Gates' quotes dangling at the end of "this section of the chapter,
with no additional commentary" leaves the average reader "to believe that the
above is an accurate description of Apple’s NeXT acquisition." The average
reader knows it's just an accurate quote of Gates' opinion, to be interpreted
along with all the other info in the book, before and after.

~~~
gnaffle
Can you point out to me how the rest of the book demonstrates the truth about
the origins of OSX? My impression is that Isaacson just got this wrong. The
quote is just part of that. Let a random person read the last few pages of
chapter 28, and I'd think that they would draw the same conclusion.

I'd recommend just listening to Siracusas podcast to get all the details on
what he got wrong, from small nitpicks to big issues.

------
pooriaazimi
If you liked this piece (and didn't like Isaacson's book at all), don't miss
John Siracusa's great critic of the book - Hypercritical, episodes 42 and 43.
Well worths listening to...

<http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42> (about 18 minutes into)

<http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/43>

------
barrkel
The rhetorical questions at the start of this article were easy for me too -
but surprisingly, they were the complete opposite of Gruber's. I primarily run
Windows 7 on my MBA.

------
tomkin
After listening to Hypercritical's take [1], I have to agree with Gruber on
this one as well. Some of the errors in this book aren't your run-of-the-mill
misinterpretations, or lost in translation. They are glaring, fundamental
errors regarding how Apple was run as a company, Steve Jobs himself and the
people in his life.

When you write a book about a technology giant's CEO and you can't even get
the name of the company right ("Apple Computers"), you have to wonder what
else is wrong.

[1] <http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42>

------
rbanffy
Allow me to disagree. Apple is a systems company. They, of course, use
software and hardware, but those are made to match each other. It's also Jobs'
company - and it is what NeXT was probably meant to be.

If software were the only priority, OSX (and iOS) would be more modular,
easily customizable and extensible - and it would be much more advanced than
it is and than what its Unix roots allow it to be. And it would run on PCs
since the 286 days (maybe with a decent graphics board). If hardware were the
priority, they would have designed their own CPUs, embedded memory management
functionality within the memory itself. By now, you would probably be able to
SHA1 a block of memory without it ever touching the CPU data bus.

Much like a glass cockpit of a plane or your in-car entertainment system, you
don't care what OS it runs or what types of CPUs are built into it. A Mac, an
iP*d or an iPhone are devices you buy to cover a specific need - you want to
write, crunch numbers, make phone calls, read books, listen to music, even
write software... Of course, Macs are more flexible and allow a lot of
customization, but it only goes that far. If you boot a Mac with Linux or
Windows, is it still a Mac? Hasn't it lost something in the process? If you
install OSX on an HP Envy, is it a Mac?

Jobs was a very flawed person, but he also saw differently, and did a lot of
amazing things less flawed people failed at.

~~~
revscat
> If software were the only priority, OSX (and iOS) would be more modular,
> easily customizable and extensible - and it would be much more advanced than
> it is and than what its Unix roots allow it to be.

OS X is very customizable, and you mention the proof of this yourself: iOS.
Apple was able to take the fundamentals of OS X and, within a few years,
maintain it, and move code between iOS back into OS X. I don't think the
evidence supports your premise, here.

> And it would run on PCs since the 286 days (maybe with a decent graphics
> board).

NextStep _did_ run on Intel processors, from the get-go.[1]

> If hardware were the priority, they would have designed their own CPUs,

Starting with the iPhone 4, Apple did just this with their A5 chip.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhhFQ-3w5tE#t=15m>

~~~
rbanffy
> OS X is very customizable

Only if you are Apple.

> NextStep did run on Intel processors, from the get-go.

No. It ran originally on Motorola 68K processors (030 and 040) on NeXT's own
hardware. It was then ported to other platforms.

> Starting with the iPhone 4, Apple did just this with their A5 chip.

But Macs ran PowerPCs (which were heavily influenced by Apple) and switched to
commodity Intel processors. Apple did, for some time, design its own exotic
hardware, but didn't went much beyond rendering expansion _very_ difficult.

------
michaelpinto
In retrospect the biggest problem I had with Isaacson’s book was that he
really seemed to dumb down his subject. I realize that Isaacson may have had
to do this to appeal to a non-tech audience and to fit an entire complex
lifespan into one book — but the result is that Jobs becomes a flat cartoon
character of sorts and everything becomes oversimplified. And maybe that's
what Joe and Jill Average want to read -- but as a fanboy and geek it left me
feeling a bit empty and uninspired.

------
Havoc
>Isaacson clearly believes that design is merely how a product looks and
feels, and that “engineering” is how it actually works.

The author doesn't seem to understand that Isaacson isn't writing for a HN
audience. To the vast majority of people "design" _does_ mean only aesthetics,
so the author is to some extent justified in following the same route.

Same thing with de-emphasis of software. It is pretty much impossible to
explain why a certain piece of software is good using words to a non-
programmer audience - who may not even have seen an Apple device. I'd have
glossed over software too especially since everyone associates Apple with
brushed aluminium hardware anyway.

Just because some aspect isn't discussed in the book doesn't mean the author
is ignorant of it.

These types books are meant for mass market entertainment, not a technically
literate HN crowd. Of course if you measure the book against the wrong bloody
benchmark then it fails miserably. And yet somehow after pages of doing
exactly that the author manages to highlight his own mistake in the final 2
sentences:

>Isaacson’s book may well be the defining resource for Jobs’s personal life —
his childhood, his youth, his eccentricities, cruelty, temper, and emotional
outbursts. But as regards Jobs’s work, Isaacson leaves the reader profoundly
and tragically misinformed.

~~~
jonhendry
" To the vast majority of people "design" does mean only aesthetics, so the
author is to some extent justified in following the same route."

If he's writing about Jobs, then it's pretty much inexcusable to fail to put
it the way Jobs would, rather than how "the vast majority of people" would.

------
SeoxyS
I've read the book in its entirety, and while I don't refute the inaccuracies
on some of the technical details covered, I don't really this it's all that
important. As a reader, I was not interested in the technology aspect and
technical details: that is already well documented. If this is what you're
looking for as a reader, then this is not the book for you.

Isaacson was the perfect writer for this biography, in my opinion, thanks to
his lack of technical knowledge. When you know the technology, it's easy to
get lost in the things that don't matter. Isaacson has a fresh and often more
objective perspective than any tech writer could. The details surrounding
which kernel was used in Mac OS X and how much NeXT was responsible for really
does not bring much value to me as a reader. Like I said, if I cared deeply
about this, it's well documented already and easy to get from other sources.

What I got out of the book was a remarkably intimate look at the man himself:
What made him tick, what his philosophies were, what the politics were and
what the major obstacles were that he had to overcome. All of this, wrapped in
an enthralling narrative and surprisingly intimate detail.

Isaacson may not have understood the technology, but he definitely understood
Jobs' humanity, or sometimes lack thereof.

~~~
gnaffle
But why couldn't we have had _both_? The technological history of Apple post
Steves return is very poorly documented due to its secretive nature.

Even so, Isaacson did a really poor job of analyzing Steves personality, and
never really confronts him about it. The closest we really get is Steve saying
"well, that's just who I am", and a theory by Ive (or Hertzfeld?) about Steves
motivations for being so cruel at times.

Couldn't Isaacson have confronted Steve about this theory? How about asking
him how this fits in with his relation to Buddhism? Or maybe that would be too
technical..?

Isacsson said that the book "wrote itself". As someone else pointed out, books
rarely make good authors.

------
dasil003
I love this:

> _But, as a thought experiment, which is more important to you? What phone
> would you rather carry? An iPhone 4S modified to run Android or Windows
> Phone 7? Or a top-of-the-line HTC, Samsung, or Nokia handset running iOS 5?_

This is a fascinating question to me because though I agree with Gruber on
preferring OS X on the PC hardware (for now anyway, at least vs Windows rather
than Linux), I think I actually would prefer Android on an iPhone. My biggest
gripe with Android is the shitty hardware and the seeming inability of any
manufacturer to make a touch-screen that is not glitchy as fuck all. When it
comes to software I concede iOS has more polish and there tend to be better
designed apps. But on the other hand, Android has the more powerful apps. For
instance, I use DoggCatcher for podcasts on android, and I've tried a half-
dozen iOS podcast apps, many of which are more elegant, but they are extremely
under powered feature-wise. Apple's philosophy of only have a home button is
elegant serves discoverability, but I don't think it's inherently better, and
for power users I think it can be a disadvantage.

------
untangle
I'm a big fan of Apple's products. Have been since the Apple II. But when I
look dispassionately at the core capabilities, I do not see uniform
excellence.

Apple clearly excels at: marketing/brand, hardware, and partner/supply chain
management. But Apple's software quality is all over the map. Further, Apple
does not "get" the internet (and never has).

Since "hardware vs software" was the focus of JG's post, I'll briefly state my
case around those two elements.

Apple gets hardware. I doubt that anyone would argue otherwise. Fabulous
objects-of-desire emerge from amazing industrial designs. I can't even think
of a laptop I'd consider in the same league as the Air. Ditto the iPad, iPod,
and Airport. (The iPhone is in a much closer race with the Samsung gear.)

Apple also sports price-performance advantages In certain key areas. iPods
have held more memory per dollar since the earliest days of MP3 players, for
example. HP was unable to match the iPad. And now the Air and other "computer
products" have closed the gap. This is an under-appreciated aspect of Apple's
game.

Apple sometimes gets software too. I personally loath the one-button-ultra-
modal aspect of IOS. But the myriad of brilliant features (e.g., pinch,
scroll, etc.) blow me away, in both a design and execution sense. Apple is
great at UX-in-the-small. But at application-level, things aren't so balmy.

iTunes and its syncing model are frustrating at best. Mail, iCal, and Address
Book are only now getting better than (elegant) toys. These three have had
serious bugs for years. iWork - forget it. App uninstall is incomplete,
leaving many remnants. OSX's underlying file system is a joke, as is MacPorts.
Lion's desire to mimic IOS is frustrating at best.

Apple is the greatest show on earth based mainly on their brand development
and their ability to produce must-have objects.

Oh, and I'd (reluctantly) take Win7/Air and IOS/Samsung -based on the
strengths of the hardware in each case. A split decision.

Bob

------
buff-a
_What computer would you rather use? A MacBook running Windows 7, or, say, a
Lenovo ThinkPad running Mac OS X 10.7?_

I'd take the ThinkPad running 10.6 thanks. 10.7 is a total clusterfuck. It
pisses me off (a seasoned developer) and it confuses the fuck out of my wife
(who isn't).

------
evoxed
Not related to the article, but this is what I had to say to my dad after I
lent him my copy: Writing biographies about living people is weird. Writing a
biography of someone who asked you to is F __*ING weird. Apparently Isaacson's
other books are better (though I haven't read them myself) but I'm sure the
future holds some better researched if not much less personal bios in the
future.

------
throwawaysnipe
A biography is not a hagiography. If Gruber wants the latter, he can write
one. He already has a lot of material for it.

------
msg
Dave Winer called from three months ago...

<http://scripting.com/stories/2011/10/27/theJobsBook.html>

[http://scripting.com/stories/2011/11/21/whyJobsChoseIsaacson...](http://scripting.com/stories/2011/11/21/whyJobsChoseIsaacson.html)

------
ynniv
I am disappointed with Gruber's "shades of grey" conclusion. He is of course
right that there are good parts as well as bad parts. Maybe I am too
"Jobsian", but that equates total crap to me. The abysmal failures of the book
leave room for someone else to write the definitive biography. Isaacson had
his chance but he blew it. He sold a lot of copies, but the people who
misunderstood Jobs won't be the ones spending their time telling the next
generation about him. A hundred years from now, the book that people quote
regarding Jobs will certainly be written by someone who properly understood
the man. Someone who writes that "greatest book ever". This superlative
attitude might seem overblown in everyday life, but it's what society values.
Second place is in the end the first loser (or at least the first forgotten).

And hat author could be one of us. It can only be someone with the perspective
to set it straight. It certainly won't be a writer thinking more about himself
than his subject. In history, perspective matters more than profession.

~~~
panacea
I don't think there are such things as 'the definitive
biography/history/story'. All such endeavours are filtered tellings of actual
fact through prisms of bias, limited knowledge and the limitations of
condensation.

~~~
ynniv
There is a limited amount of attention that we pay to events of the past.
Eventually one of them wins, and the others are mentioned only when the first
one is notably wrong. There will be other biographies written, and at least
one of them will be better than this one.

------
ZeroGravitas
As I read it Gates is defending his statement that buying NeXT was stupid
_given the known facts at the time the deal was done_. He does so by
downplaying the NeXT software lineage in Mac OS X, but also by claiming that
the real gem they got from NeXT was Steve Jobs, who Amelio couldn't have known
would go on to be a great CEO, because he was well known at the time to be a
maniac.

It seems like something Gruber would agree with if phrased slightly
differently (e.g. "the most important thing Apple got from NeXT was Steve
Jobs") so I don't know why he's getting so bent out of shape about a quote
from another book which Bill Gates himself immediately questions the truth of
in the the Jobs bio.

(And is it just me or is it a stretch to attribute the iPod interface to NeXT?
Choosing an item from a list and going to a sublist isn't something I remember
them inventing.)

~~~
tjogin
He doesn't have a problem with Gates's statement, he has a problem with
Isaacson's lack of research. Gates didn't write the book, Isaacson did. This
is just one example where Jobs says something true, Isaacson thinks he's lying
and instead trusts someone else who are either lying, or don't know the truth.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Who is Isaacson trusting? Bill Gates? If so why publish text that Gates
disagrees with the truth of. Amelio? If so why publish the fact that Gates
disputes that version? It sounds like he doesn't really "trust" either
account, and why should he?

Gruber presents this as the best example of Issacson not trusting something
true Jobs said and "trusting" the lies of others (as do you) but really it's
just nerdy nitpicking about how far you should emphasise and editorialise the
subjectivity of 3rd party accounts, there's no quote from Jobs being disproved
in this example it's just Amelio (who in the anecdote just picked NeXT over
NT!) describing Gates angry reaction at the time and Gates commenting about it
later. Gruber's reaction is a total non-sequitur. He can't cope with an angry
outburst by a rival that's just lost a business deal being left unchallenged,
when the context is clear.

------
phzbOx
I've got a macbook running arch, couldn't be happier.

~~~
milfot
I failed the thought experiment too..

------
aremie
Steve Jobs cared about the experience you have when using his products. It has
to be simple to use, reliable and look nice. Elegance

------
eyko
This whole "what do you think Steve Jobs would have done" is beginning to look
a lot like a "What Would Jesus Do" kind of following. I get it that he was a
visionary but come on…

------
nirvana
I'm critical of John Gruber on many topics, but in this essay he is exactly
right. Further, there are many examples, just like the Bill Gates one, where
Jobs says something that is true[1] and Isaacson assumes its the "reality
distortion field" and then quotes someone else, like gates, who has an agenda,
telling a lie as "proof" that Jobs is lying.

Lets talk about this "Reality Distortion Field". People claim that Jobs can
make you believe things that aren't true by simple application of charisma. Is
anyone here willing to admit to being swindled in this way? I am not. I am not
aware of Jobs ever saying something that was actually false (though I'm quite
aware of many manifold lies told _about_ Jobs.)

For instance, remember the introduction of the iPhone? How about the
introduction of the iPad? Everyone here should be old enough to remember one
or both of these keynotes. Surely Jobs "Reality Distortion Field" would be
deployed to maximum effect at such keynotes-- and after both of them I
remember much derision and claims that Jobs had the RDF on maximum and how
those products were going to be complete failures, and how everyone needed a
keyboard on their phones and how the iPad was a terrible, terrible name,
inspired by female hygiene products, etc. etc.

IF you go back and watch these, can you find a single lie? Can you find any
reality that was distorted? Sure, Steve Jobs called the iPhone revolutionary.
That's obviously a characterization based on an opinion, but that opinions
seems to have held up-- before it, there were only feature phones, really, and
now every phone that isn't an iPhone is some sort of iPhone counterfeit (e.g.:
has a touch screen) It clearly revolutionized the phone category, and created
the app ecosystem. Similar things happened with the iPad.

Because Apple is successful, and because Apple does things its own way, people
feel the need to attack Apple. And of course, they attack Jobs.

Most of these attacks have clear motivations-- people who bought another
product who want to feel it is superior, or people who work for a competitor,
or -- and this is the biggest source, I believe-- hack journalists who want to
create a sensational story (I still remember a claim that Apple switched from
ATI to NVIDIA chips in _laptops_ the _week_ before they were announced because
of a leak from ATI... as if Apple could even do that so quickly for a product
that was about to ship.... but people believe it. The story was "Steve got
really mad and now the new MacBooks will ship with NVIDIA chips!" I know for a
fact this is false because you can't change production that fast... but people
believe those kinds of lies. After all, they've been told for year that Steve
Jobs is an asshole, and, despite never showing this side of himself in public,
they believe it.

[1] True because I know it to be true either because I witnessed it, or I'm
more informed on the issue than Isaacson is. I've been an Apple watcher for 20
years, and I have noticed that much of what people believe about Apple is
based on oft repeated myth without substantiation in fact. I remember Apple
trivia fairly well, and the specifics of things that often happened before
people writing about them now were out of grade school. (EG: Just this weekend
I read in "Inside Apple" the long refuted claim that Apple "stole" Xerox
technology for the Mac. Amazing kind of a theft that was-- Apple paid for a
license to use that technology with stock which, if held to present, is worth
Billions of dollars. Quite the heist!) Another example: for quite a time
there, many windows fans believed that Bill Gates owned Apple, because to them
$150M is a big "investment" and they think Microsoft bought Apple in 1997.
(they didn't know that Apple had a lot more of that in cash already, and that
part of the deal-- the bigger part-- was burying the hatchet on all the
patents microsoft was violating, to the tune of several billion dollars a year
from Microsoft paid to Apple for several years. This latter bit was reported,
but kept quiet because Apple didn't care and microsoft wanted to save face...
so its not widely known.)

~~~
kahirsch
> Apple paid for a license to use that technology with stock which, if held to
> present, is worth Billions of dollars.

In return for the tour of Xerox PARC, Jobs gave Xerox the opportunity to _buy_
Apple stock (100,000 shares for $1 millon). Xerox did make money on that.

However, Xerox never gave Apple any license for its technology. Eventually,
after Apple sued Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple, but the lawsuit failed.[1]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/business/most-of-xerox-
s-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/business/most-of-xerox-s-suit-
against-apple-barred.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

~~~
flomo
Like the OP, I've been an "Apple watcher for 20 years", and it's always funny
to seeing people harping on this Xerox transaction, while missing most of the
actual facts.

For what's worth, Microsoft gave Xerox money too, and also hired key people
like Charles Simonyi from PARC. So it wasn't exactly like the movie where Bill
Gates was yelling "I got the loot Steve! I got the loot!"

~~~
nkassis
Yep, that made for tv movie has really ruined the debates on how the event
actually unfolded. It was a pretty terrible movie in a lot of ways and it got
a lot of facts wrong.

~~~
mark_integerdsv
We are talking about Pirates of Silicon Valley here, correct?

------
drivebyacct2
Interesting, I couldn't have disagreed more with the initial choice. I love
Linux and appreciate Android, but I drool over iPhone 4/4s and I love my MBP.
I'm surprised that people still fawn over OS X as much as they do, frankly.
Especially as it becomes increasingly annoying to use as a development machine
(at least personally).

~~~
Steko
I also "drooled over the 4" for quite awhile waiting but when I got the 4S I
found it didn't take me long to recall Edward Tufte's words:

"the elegant sharp edges that encase many touchscreens require users to
desensitize their hands in order to ignore the physical discomfort produced by
the aggressive edges. Last year in Cupertino, I yelled at some people about
touchscreens that paid precise attention to finger touches from the user but
not to how the device in turn touches the hands of the user (and produces
divot edge-lines in the flesh)."

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0003qM&topic_id=1)

It took me at least a full week to get my hand acclimated to the 4S edges.

~~~
cma
It lets the phone stand on edge for facetime; the htc solution would have been
a kickstand, adding tons of size and weight.

~~~
cheald
It seems like a terrible design choice to make the product uncomfortable to
use in the common case to accommodate a single far less common use case.

------
huggyface
It surprises how so many simply disbelieve what Isaacson has written because,
in their heart of hearts, they can't believe it's true. Denial, or do they
actually have personal insight into Jobs?

There has been a lot of vilification of Isaacson's book, much of it seeming to
draw ire because it presents Jobs as a mere human.

~~~
brianwillis
It's pretty clear from the second-to-last paragraph that Gruber understands
that Jobs was a fallible human being. The criticisms in this post revolve
around Isaacson's handling of technical accuracy, and Isaacson's repeated
implication that design and engineering are two adversarial ideas.

~~~
Volpe
Gruber managed to do that without offering much evidence to the contrary.

Do Apple engineers and Designers really work side by side? Or is it just that
Apple prioritise design over engineering.

So rather than the engineers throwing a brick over the fence and saying
"Designers, make it look good" it's designers throwing a sleek brick over the
fence and saying "Engineers, make it work."

The antennae-gate was a REAL problem, that Apple changed it's design for (in
the 4S)... Can we really accept there is no tension in Apple over these things
(As Gruber is suggesting)?

~~~
ugh
But it’s an engineering issue, not a design issue. The iPhone 4 had an
external antenna to fit in a larger battery. That’s all engineering.

~~~
Volpe
Regardless whether it's a design or engineering problem. It is pretty clear
evidence there is tension between the teams (design and engineering). Which is
the opposite of what Gruber is arguing.

------
CamperBob
Gruber: _But “Design is how it works” is a much better statement of Apple’s
philosophy_

Nope. Function is how it works. Design is what it _is_.

Jobs got that, whatever else anyone can say about him.

~~~
simonh
That was a quote from Steve Jobs himself.

------
mkramlich
I loved Isaacson's book but I think Gruber is right.

------
tjmc
tl;dr Gruber's still pissed he didn't get the official biographer gig.

