Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by MperorM 1949 days ago
What other things were terrible about the biography? It's my favorite biography of all time. I'd love to know better what important parts were left out.
3 comments

It's been a few years but I also found Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography to be terrible.

I was looking for deeper analysis of what made Steve Jobs' tick, and how he approached building products. Walter Isaacson didn't have a technological understanding of Apple's products of the time, so I found his history pretty superficial.

I learned much more about Steve Jobs approach from listening to the interviews he did over the years.

It doesn't enquire into anything technically, directly misquotes people (Bill Gates at one point says a disk drive has "too low latency"), ignores his wife, and seems to be really invested in embarrassing his kids. One of his sons Reed is quoted like three times and every time he's making a dick joke.
It's well-written, but reads like fan fiction. Isaacson seems to be unable to separate himself from the "reality distortion field" he describes Jobs having.