[pwthornton]

The complaints are not that the book isn't nice enough towards Jobs, but rather that Isaacson doesn't know enough about technology to make this interesting or insightful, nor did he try to educate himself before writing this book.

Isaacson is at his best when he dives into the more human and social aspects of Jobs's life. As soon as things get remotely technical, the book begins to fall a part. He misquoted Bill Gates as saying that the problem with the NeXT computer was that the optical drive had too low latency. Either Gates didn't say this and Isaacson got it backwards because he doesn't know any better, or Gates had a momentary slip of the tongue that Isaacson should have known enough about to correct.

Isaacson asserts that Apple did not use NeXT for the basis of OS X, which is just patently false (Isaacson also refers to OS X as OSX). He claims that Apple evolved the existing Mac OS into something NeXT like. The truth is that Apple took the NeXTStep operating system and added some classic Mac OS APIs and features to it. OS X wasn't a complete break from the past, but it's entire core and its Cocoa API (and objective-C) are pure NeXT.

Because Isaacson doesn't understand this distinction, he completely glosses over the importance of OS X to Apple's revival. Without OS X, Apple would probably be dead today or maybe just making portable music players. Classic Mac OS was not going to cut it and it was falling behind Windows.

Classic Mac OS was significantly worse than NT-based Windows OSes, and would have been completely crushed by XP. OS X, on the other hand, provided a viable alternative to XP and it successors. Apple has gained market share because of OS X and how good of a modern OS it is. The Classic Mac OS was about to sink the entire company.

There are plenty of other examples like this in the book. Isaacson also doesn't ask many followup questions or do in-depth research. The best researched parts of the book are the beginnings chapters which are based on previous books by other authors.

This is a good biography for people not that into technology, but for anyone remotely interested in the technology, it's not that good. I'd still give it a 6 or 7 out of 10, but it could have been so much more. This is the only guy who ever got this kind of access to Steve and the people close to him and he botched it.

[tghw]

I haven't listened to the podcast, but it sounds like one of the biggest nits they picked was that "Isaacson asserts that Apple did not use NeXT for the basis of OS X". Looking back through the book, I can't find that assertion, but I can find the following, at location 6379 of the Kindle version (the Kindle app tells me it's page 366):

"At the January 2000 Macworld in San Francisco, Jobs rolled out the new Macintosh operating system, OSX, which used some of the software that Apple had bought from NeXT three years earlier. It was fitting, and not entirely coincidental, that he was willing to incorporate himself back at Apple at the same moment as the NeXT OS was incorporated into Apple’s. Avie Tevanian had taken the UNIX-related Mach kernel of the NeXT operating system and turned it into the Mac OS kernel, known as Darwin. It offered protected memory, advanced networking, and preemptive multitasking. It was precisely what the Macintosh needed, and it would be the foundation of the Mac OS henceforth. Some critics, including Bill Gates, noted that Apple ended up not adopting the entire NeXT operating system. There’s some truth to that, because Apple decided not to leap into a completely new system but instead to evolve the existing one. Application software written for the old Macintosh system was generally compatible with or easy to port to the new one, and a Mac user who upgraded would notice a lot of new features but not a whole new interface."

Reading that, it seems to me he got it right, except for misspelling "OS X".

[pwthornton]

No, there is more than that. I don't have the Kindle version, so I can't easily search through the book. But he talks a bit about Avie Tevanian and that essentially that is what NeXT gave Apple.

If I get some more time, I'll try to find the exact passage, but it's different from the one you are citing. I'm fine with that one.

[wormwood28]

this is probably the other quote you're thinking of. it all seems to be from Gates' perspective, however. Isaacson fundamentally did not understand the relationship between nextstep and mac os x, that's for sure. it really is a dreadful book. i think some of these criticism are overblown tho. i doubt Isaacson is using "kernel of the NeXT technology" in the operating system sense, but who knows given how muddled it all is.

"""

After informing Gassée that Apple was buying NeXT, Amelio had what turned out to be an even more uncomfortable task: telling Bill Gates. 'He went into orbit,' Amelio recalled. Gates found it ridiculous, but perhaps not surprising, that Jobs had pulled off this coup. 'Do you really think Steve Jobs has anything there?' Gates asked Amelio. 'I know his technology, it’s nothing but a warmed-over UNIX, and you’ll never be able to make it work on your machines.' Gates, like Jobs, had a way of working himself up, and he did so now: 'Don’t you understand that Steve doesn’t know anything about technology? He’s just a super salesman. I can’t believe you’re making such a stupid decision. . . . He doesn’t know anything about engineering, and 99% of what he says and thinks is wrong. What the hell are you buying that garbage for?' Years later, when I raised it with him, Gates not recall being that upset. The purchase of NeXT, he argued, did not really give Apple a new operating system. 'Amelio paid a lot for NeXT, and let’s be frank, the NeXT OS was never really used.' Instead the purchase ended up bringing in Avie Tevanian, who could help the existing Apple operating system evolve so that it eventually incorporated the kernel of the NeXT technology. Gates knew that the deal was destined to bring Jobs back to power. 'But that was a twist of fate,' he said. 'What they ended up buying was a guy who most people would not have predicted would be a great CEO, because he didn’t have much experience at it, but he was a brilliant guy with great design taste and great engineering taste. He suppressed his craziness enough to get himself appointed interim CEO.' """ Isaacson, Walter (2011-10-24). Steve Jobs (pp. 302-303). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

[pwthornton]

That's the passage. How could he not challenge Gates on that? Or clarify it. I'm not sure if he gets 100 percent what Gates is saying. This passage is just not accurate.

OS X's importance to Apple can't be understated. Apple, the company that kicked off the personal computer revolution and gave us the GUI, was behind technologically in the mid-1990s. Apple was in such bad shape that they had to buy someone else's OS. Can you imagine the current Apple allowing iOS to get into such bad shape that they have to buy someone else's mobile OS?

There is a big story there, and Isaacson doesn't touch it because he doesn't see the story. And this doesn't have to be a technical story.

It's a story that anyone can understand: Here is a tech company that didn't have good tech anymore. How did this happen and how did Jobs and NeXT save Apple with modern tech?

[snowwrestler]

I haven't read the book, but is the thesis of this discussion that the book is fatally flawed because Isaacson didn't challenge Bill Gates on the details of how NeXTStep evolved into OS X? This doesn't really seem like THE crucial moment in the entire life of Steve Jobs.

[pwthornton]

It's an important part of Apple's story. It shows that Isaacson didn't get the important of NeXT to Apple and how the NeXT purchase saved Apple. It was more than just getting Jobs back.

A big question I'd have is, why did NeXT have so much better technology than Apple?

[tghw]

Updated with the entire quote. He seems to have a decent handle on it there.

[jonhendry]

I disagree. They kept just about all of NeXTSTEP, apart from the UI (but keeping browsers in the Finder, etc) and Display Postscript.

They kept the Mach stuff. They kept the Unix stuff. They kept Terminal.app so you could access the Unix stuff. They kept the Cocoa frameworks, Project Builder, and Interface Builder. They retained applications as file packages. They retained file extensions in favor of app/creator codes. They replaced interpreted DPS with Quartz. They changed the menu bar from floating tear-offs to a single menubar. They got rid of the Shelf on Finder windows.

What did they not use from NeXTSTEP/OpenStep that was of any significance? About all I can think of is YellowBox on Windows.

[tghw]

Where exactly does he say that they didn't keep that stuff?

[__david__]

"There’s some truth to that, because Apple decided not to leap into a completely new system but instead to evolve the existing one."

That's not really true. What they decided to do was build copious backwards compatibility with OS 9 into what was essentially NeXTStep and then re-skin the OS so it looked Mac-like. All the backwards compatibility stuff was essentially new, I believe, and not ports of the OS 9 internals.

You can maybe squint at that quote and say it's not really false, but it certainly doesn't get it right at the technology level.

[gnaffle]

Does he, though? He's sort of saying that they evolved the existing system instead of jumping to a new one, but AFAIK OS X was NeXT with a compatibility layer, prettier GUI and some other changes. Saying that anyone upgrading from OS 9 would not see a whole new interface seems wrong to me.

[recoiledsnake]

I believe the confusion arises from the use of the term "existing one". That could be construed as referring to NeXT, so it would mean they decided to evolve NeXT by making changes to it over many years, instead of switching to it at once.

If you read "existing one" as Mac OS 9, then that sentence would mean a completely different thing.

[gnaffle]

Well, the text talks about NeXT first, and then suddenly talks about MacOS. When he says that Apple used _some_ of NeXTs software and goes on to talk about the kernel, it seems like he gets it wrong and doesn't really understand what OS X was.

If he had, he would have realized its significance. For instance, I can't recall that he mentions how iOS relates to OSX, and the advantages this brings to Apple. He never mentions that NeXT was compatible with PowerPC and Intel and that Apple would have a working, parallel release running on Intel hardware internally.

[recoiledsnake]

>Some critics, including Bill Gates, noted that Apple ended up not adopting the entire NeXT operating system. There’s some truth to that, because Apple decided not to leap into a completely new system but instead to evolve the existing one.

Is there somewhere where Bill Gates said "none of the NeXT code made it into OS X".

That's the impression I got the other day from this comment:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229928

Quoting the relevant part:

>One example of this is Jobs talking about how NeXT's software gave the Mac new life. Isaacson says this is a lie, and then goes on to quote Bill Gates who says none of the NeXT code made it into OS X. Now, this is an obvious and bald faced lie on Gates' part, but Isaacson doesn't know any better. He's decided that Jobs is a liar, and therefore , whenever someone says anything that disagrees, it must be evidence that Jobs was lying.

>Reality is, OS X is NeXTSTEP with the Mac UI put on top of it, and at this point another 10 years of evolution. Gates was lying for whatever reasons Gates lies (and gates really is pathological in this regard).

From your quote from the book, Bill Gates seems to have said a very different thing, not sure one could call him a liar on that(even not allowing that people try to put a bad light on rivals).

[SeoxyS]

> Is there somewhere where Bill Gates said "none of the NeXT code made it into OS X".

You're twisting Isaacson's words. He said:

> noted that Apple ended up not adopting the entire NeXT operating system

This doesn't mean none of NeXT's code made it in, it means not all of it.

But, putting aside the nitpicks, I, as a technical person, do not care much for the technical details. I'm much more interested in Jobs' hippie counter-culture history and his philosophical view than the technical details of which system was the more important precursor to OS X.

[chc]

The book says Apple opted to evolve its existing operating system, which was OS 9. This strongly implies that NeXT's contribution was negligible, but even if you don't see it that way, there is just no reasonable way you can read it to make it true. Mac OS X was an evolution of NeXTSTEP, full stop. Even if OS X contained twice as much OS 9 code as it appeared to, it would still basically be NeXTSTEP.

To wit: Foundation, AppKit, the BSD underpinnings, Mail, TextEdit, Preview, the Dock and countless other components — even that silly beachball wait cursor! — were refugees from NeXT. Even Finder, which borrowed its name and some of its appearance from OS 9's Finder, was essentially a Carbon rewrite of NeXT's Workspace Manager.

[recoiledsnake]

I am not the one doing the purported twisting. Read the linked comment in my post above. My impression after reading that comment(written by someone else) was Bill Gates was quoted as saying that somewhere in the book(could be elsewhere for all I know).

[thought_alarm]

I agree about NeXTSTEP, but it doesn't matter. Only geeks care about that stuff. Do you think Isaacson's goal was to simply tell Apple geeks what they already know?

The real value and insight that the book provides is the access to Jobs during the last years of his life, as well as the people who played important roles in Apple's resurgence during the last 10 years. To nitpick the minor technical details in the book is to completely miss the point.

[msbarnett]

> To nitpick the minor technical details in the book is to completely miss the point.

Which is why the criticism of those details appeared in the section of the podcast that Siracusa labelled as "minor nitpicks that didn't make the book necessarily bad, but which Siracusa was going to point out because this podcast is, after all, called Hypercritical".

The main thesis of the podcast is that the biography is bad because it's so facile.

You write:

> The real value and insight that the book provides is the access to Jobs during the last years of his life, as well as the people who played important roles in Apple's resurgence during the last 10 years.

But I disagree. It doesn't actually provide much of any value or insight, and does almost nothing with its access to Jobs.

Siracusa picks out a couple of the many good examples of where it completely just glosses over an interesting story that could have been combined with the unprecedented access to Jobs to develop some real insights.

One is the whole arc of Apple being involved in the founding of ARM, starting a mobile initiative with the Newton, divesting their shares of ARM, and eventually relying heavily on them in their new mobile technologies. What does Jobs think of this arc? Was the divestiture of their investment in ARM a mistake, looking back?

This book sure as hell doesn't know, because none of this even occurred to Isaacson. He merely writes that "Apple uses ARM chips in their mobile devices".

Isaacson writes of Apple "buying PA Semi and using them to build the A4 chips". Facile overview fluff. They bought them years prior to the mobile stuff. Why were they purchased? Was there a plan to roll their own PPC chips when they first bought them? How did the transition to Intel impact their role in the company, and what expertise are they bringing to mobile? Unexplored.

"Antennagate". Isaacson gives it a one sentence "engineers were worried that the housing might interfere with antenna operations". He doesn't use his access to Jobs to dig into the story. Why was the decision made to go ahead with it? What was Jobs thinking in the run up to the press conference? How did they decide to take the tone they did in dealing with the issue?

Isaacson doesn't dig into this because Isaacson doesn't dig into anything. He just lays out facile overviews of events that could have been gleaned from any publicly available tech coverage. He completely squanders the unique position he was in with respect to unprecedented access to Apple and Jobs.

[thought_alarm]

> Was the divestiture of their investment in ARM a mistake, looking back?

Do you think there's an even remotely interesting, non-obvious answer to that question? And do we really need Steve Jobs to answer questions about PA Semi? Is that how you would spend your limited time with Steve?

Antennagate. Isaacson chose to focus on Jobs's the response to the problem, and I thought he did a great job. It is a book about Jobs after all, and for the most part I found it fascinating.

I can recommend better books about Apple history, but there are none better about the man himself.

[msbarnett]

> Do you think there's an even remotely interesting, non-obvious answer to that question?

I'm sure of it. The answers to those kind of multi-faceted, tradeoffs no matter which direction you favor questions are precisely what provide real insight into someone's character and decision making, and precisely what Isaacson failed to pursue.

> And do we really need Steve Jobs to answer questions about PA Semi? Is that how you would spend your limited time with Steve?

Getting answers to questions that no one else could answer about what his thoughts and motivations were for making moves that still aren't really understood by many observers? Absolutely.

It would be so much better than a 600 page mess of regurgitated material from folklore.org and fluffy, uncritical overviews of the last ten years.

Take the App Store. Isaacson devotes all of a couple of sentences to mentioning that Jobs was initially against it, but was talked around to the idea. He completely squanders a fascinating exploration of Apple, Jobs, the myth of Jobs as font of all of Apple's good ideas, and the dynamics of one of Apple's most critical successes in the last few years. What were his objections then, and what are his thoughts on it now? Who talked him into it, and how did that play out? How did they approach the idea once Jobs was convinced?

We get no investigation, no insight, nothing of value. Just a declarative sentence from Isaacson stating the obvious, and it's on to the next facile overview.

[snowwrestler]

Each one of these decisions involved numerous other people; these stories are still out there ready to be told. I would ask Siracusa why he, as a tech journalist, has not run down more of these stories himself.

[pwthornton]

I disagree. If Isaacson can't get these details right, which other details are wrong? And if he doesn't know the facts, does he know the right questions to ask?

I'd argue that because Isaacson doesn't understand OS X and how much different it is than OS 9, he doesn't understand how important it is to the company. Without OS X, there is no iOS. I'm not asking him to write a technical book, but I do feel that if he understood some of these points better, he might have asked Jobs about them and pushed him more on these topics.

The end of life stuff is certainly interesting. I do wish on that front as well that he would have asked more questions of professionals about whether or not it would have made a difference if Steve Jobs didn't act like Steve Jobs. It's sort of implied that Steve's diet (and at times lack thereof) may have inhibited his ability to fight the cancer. Isaacson doesn't really push Steve on this or consult with professionals on it either.

[jonhendry]

I disagree. The book could have been a seminal historical document of a major actor in business and technology of the late 20th century and start of the 21st century, the sort of thing that people could turn to for decades.

But if it's barely better than a celebrity bio, and didn't ask the relevant questions, then it's an opportunity missed.

Let's face it: yeah, the 'human interest' story of Jobs' fight with cancer is interesting and will sell books, but it's not what was of value for history.

If you read about George Washington, generally you want to know about the Revolution and the founding of the US, not his final illness and the bleeding treatments he underwent that may have killed him.

Too bad Jobs didn't pick someone a) more technical, and b) more experienced writing bios of living people.

[vacri]

OSX vs OS X is an editorial failure. Unless Isaacson self-published the book and let no-one view it beforehand, of course.

[azov]

OS X is technically correct, but it's 202M hits on Google for OS X vs 82M for OSX. As far as I'm concerned both are widely used by technical and non-technical people and mean the same thing. It's a tiny mistake that could be fixed in one second, why are we even mentioning it in the context of Isaacson allegedly blewing the biography?

[vaporstun]

A Google search is hardly the way to resolve that. OS X searches for anything with OS or X whereas OSX only searches for things with OSX so of course the former has more hits.

I mean you're right that it's technically "OS X", but your methodology for proof is flawed.

[vacri]

a search for:

os x

does what you say, but a search for

"os x"

does what the GP says, and matches with the numbers cited, too.

[leoh]

While Jobs didn't have any direct control over the biography, he did spend hundreds of hours with Isaacson and certainly would have mentioned things that he would have wanted in the book, technical and otherwise; and Isaacson certainly would have included more technical details if Jobs had mentioned them over and again during interviews.

The fact of the matter is, though, that the nitty-gritty technical details are just not part of the picture for Jobs. Jobs picked at tiny details only when designers and engineers did something wrong or did something didn't lend itself to Jobs' greater artistic vision. If you're interested in exceptional technical detail, Jobs just would not have been your man.

And let's face it, if you're interested in the technology. there will be dozens of engineers and a limitless number of other writers that can write about those matters later. Gross technical detail is just not seeing the forest for the trees; and if you don't realize that fact, then you are someone that would have probably have been met with Jobs' scorn.

[ssharp]

The title of the book is "Steve Jobs", not "Apple". I think Isaacson did a good enough job of capturing Steve Jobs the person. Missing some technical details about Apple isn't a huge deal to me. I already know them and if I didn't, I don't think I'd care.

I was much more interested in getting some perspective on Jobs the person, how he acted, how he thought, and why he behaved like he did, not some rehashing of resent technical history that is already well known.

Much like Apple's products, this book was created for the masses, not the engineers.