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Comment by knight17 | Hacker News Reader

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knight17·

There are many who believe that Jobs made a mistake by choosing Issacson for his biography:

John Siracusa : http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42

Gruber : http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/walter_isaacson_steve_jobs

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I skimmed Gruber's piece and it was written with the reverence of someone who understands tech and design, as well as something about Apple. The Isaacson book was massive, so I am sure there are some points to dispute or interpret, however I feel it was a pretty good appraisal given some of the interviews of jobs, woz, gates, etc, reading Isaacson and Return to the Little Kingdom, and general other tid bits. I don't think it was a hatchet job at all but a tribute to the man who had been part of making a huge piece of tech and hunan history. It just underscored that with his humanity. I quite liked it, although Isaacson's prose and depth are somewhat trying. Job's really was a social engineer and he and Woz are both amazing individuals.

Edit: just to add, I think Gruber had some valid opinions, but even if correct, don't really discount the larger corpus produced by Isaacson.

If I recollect what I read, Siracusa and Gruber are saying Walter Issacson doesn't understand technology well enough to do justice to Jobs. They see possibilities missed in putting thoughtful questions about the technology side to Jobs and get answers from the man himself. Thrust of their criticism is not the characterisation of Jobs, but lack of knowledge of the technological canon that Jobs worked with. A better equipped author could have done more justice to Jobs life by avoiding those errors.

The discussion here was about the portrayal of Jobs himself in the book not the technical errors the biographer might have made, yeah, so I could have made that clearer.

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