[skybrian]

The hype and celebrity worship (even at the time) make it nearly impossible to distinguish the man from his reputation. So in the end, there are few facts you can point to, just an awful lot of opinions.

I mean, you could point to the many products he was involved in, but there are a lot of subjective opinions there too.

[graeme]

There is a vast treasure trove of books, articles, interviews and stories from people that worked with him. Almost all of these include criticism.

Your comment gives the impression you've read none of this and only read meta-commentary. Or that you consider any person's story subjective and non-credible. In which case, what would you call a fact? The same standard would apply to any person.

(I wouldn't include the Isaacson bio, he regrettably focussed very little on Jobs' process.)

[skybrian]

Fair enough. Is there anything you particularly recommend reading?

[graeme]

I enjoyed Becoming Steve Jobs. Covered the period of Jobs' return to Apple and also his growth of Pixar. His more mature phase, where he was able to nurturr organizations and had less of the unhinged asshole side about him.

https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Steve-Jobs-Evolution-Visiona...

Haven't read it, but I've heard there is a section of Creativity Inc where Ed Catmull talks about working with Steve and how they operated.

Finally, there's a site that occasionally surfaces here which had stories from the original Mac team. Folklore.org I think? That was a more raw period with more of a mix of immaturity in there.

But all of those have a variety of firsthand accounts.

[jwdunne]

I enjoyed that book. I recommend it. Details how the Steve Jobs that left Apple wasn't the same as the one that returned, along with the journey of how he got there.

The Pixar stuff in there was really interesting. Creativity Inc has been on my reading list because of that book.

[machinecoffee]

Folklore.org is an excellent site, I loved reading about the early days of the mac and gained a great respect for the first Macintosh team.

In my opinion they really moved the needle on ubiquitous computing for the masses, and did a great job on their first attempt.