Getting Steve Jobs Wrong
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
The first half really makes him look like an utter wretch, and almost suggests that his success was a mistake. It basically talks about what an asshole Jobs was, and how he would yell at everyone, etc, and it wouldn't talk about what actually made him a success in his early years. There was almost nothing on it, just anecdotes from people about how he smelled, he was rude, he cried all the time, and made people hate him. I would have loved a more balanced approach to hearing about how he was able to bring the Macintosh team together through inspiration. It basically felt like "Jobs was able to get the Macintosh team together by manipulating and exploiting them with his reality distortion field." I didn't find it very good at all. I also would have liked to have read more about NeXT and what problems he had besides overspending, etc. Were there successes?
The second half of the book was more interesting, because it stopped ragging on Jobs being an asshole and talked more about what he did. There were far more anecdotes, I guess maybe because he interviewed more people from this era. But at least I got a sense of what he actually did for Apple, vs feeling like he was more lucky than good.
Overall, I think the biography stunk. It's useful in that he did get access to Jobs in the final months, and getting insight into his illness, etc, was interesting and sad, but still overall I think he did a very poor job, especially about the early years.
Most people spend their lives engaged in a kind of Keynesian beauty contest, always trying to do or be what they think they are supposed to do or be. A true visionary has their own internal sense of beauty.
Sorry the biography wasn't stimulating enough.
I take it you are a Jobs fan. Someone you look up to at and admire. So...
...would Jobs quit 2 chapters from the end? Or would he finish?
I think it's a little funny that people who don't personally know Steve Jobs have so many strong opinions on what he exactly was, and don't seem to want to give much credit to Isaacson for writing down what Jobs "chose" to share. I started reading Mark Twain's autobiography, and his assertion is that basically any autobiography is incomplete, as a person will end up backing out of telling the unflattering truth. So, while I may not be a huge fan of Jobs, the fact he let Isaacson paint a picture that wasn't total flattery is probably one of more impressive things about Jobs, in my eyes.
When there's a big cultural and news event, it's a huge marketing opportunity, and timeliness trumps other considerations. Because we live in a very fast and competitive media environment, this dynamic plays a very big role.
Siracusa pulls no punches and each and every one of his criticisms is well thought through.
One of Siracusa's main objections to the Jobs bio is that Isaacson does not understand technology enough to separate the important from the trivial.
Isaacson has faced this kind of problem begore. It seems from this review that he had advice from Brian Greene on his Einstein bio:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/books/09masl.html
I wonder if Isaacson did not have enough help with the tech on the Jobs book?
What would all of you have liked it to be?
But his gripe about the Jobs' biography still doesn't make enough sense to me, particularly this part -
What it was that Jobs actually did is much of the mystery of his life and his work, and Isaacson, frustratingly, had seemingly little interest in that, or any recognition that there even was any sort of mystery as to just what Jobs’s gifts really were.
I attribute that to personality traits, intuition, timing, persistence, character and may be some other intangibles that we don't yet fathom. It's not one single tangible thing that you can point to and say - hey this is it, if you do it this way you can be another Steve Jobs, another Einstein, another Picasso etc. It's more like art than science - you can't really nail it down, pin point it, list it - it's certain basic elements of the art mostly covered with the artist's expression ability, personality, imagination, composition et.al and that's not really something that a biographer can resolve in a biography. Biographer's job is to lay out the life and work of the person and let people make their own inferences of the subtleties, of where it worked, why and why not. Some will "get" it, many won't. Some will be able to apply it in many nondescript ways and many won't have any use of it.
I as well. And I like Gladwell, I just think he and Isaacson have seriously misrepresented Steve Jobs and what he did in his life & at Apple.
Could we get a few more subjective terms in the mix?
This is all about interpretation, and a highly subjective one at that.
Jobs is cemented as an industry icon. He is different things to different people. Why his stalwart supporters (and lapdogs like Gruber) continue to be annoyed when anyone's interpretation doesn't match their own is childish.
Jobs and Apple (for whatever reason) inspired in a lot of people the kind of religious fervor that companies rarely can. Jobs' death has only further amplified this.
There are a lot of tech industry icons. What I think sets Jobs apart is the level of devotion he was able to extract from his customers/fans.
Jobs was a visionary but he most certainly stood on other ideas that people already had. BUT THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. He took other people's ideas and made them revolutionary.
Macintosh was someone else's idea that he hijacked, and made better, but he also caused a lot of divisiveness because of it, and this ultimately caused him being kicked out of Apple.
He bought Pixar because of its hardware and software. Not because of the animation. He even admitted that if he knew that the hardware and software wasn't going to be successful, he never would have bought Pixar in the first place.
I could go on and on. Even the iPad was because of the dinner he had at some MSFT employee's house. And Apple Stores was still a store, just reimagined to make it cater to what people wanted.
Steve Jobs was an artist. He WAS an engineer, and he WAS a designer. People forget that he was into electronics just as much as Wozniak was, except Wozniak was better. He did design many elements of Apple products which is why he is on 200+ patents. His gift was being able to apply his sense of artistry to technology and make it truly beautiful, without much compromise in his vision. His artistry and unwillingness to compromise was also a curse when he almost ran out of money funding Next. He was wrong often and struck out a lot, but when he was right, they were home runs.
I call bullshit. Steve was interested in tablets since learning about Alan Kay's DynaBook concept in the 70's. The MSFT engineer angered him into pursuing the concept sooner, nothing more.
source: http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/09/apple-wi...
But I agree completely with Siracusa about the book's general laziness. Many early chapters are poorly-written (and poorly-understood) summaries of previous books and interviews.
More seriously, what points make the biography flawed or a mess? A biography isn't meant to be enjoyed. Its meant to inform the reader. Jobs defined technology but more than just technology defined him. The point was to capture that.
I guess most of you truly are shallow. You appreciated the icon of Steve Jobs. Jobs as the man that brought you computing power to your desk, your lap and your hand. Most of you look up to him. Followed him. Admired him. Felt your work inspired by him. But you all failed to understand his final stroke of genius. He wanted to be remember beyond a set of products.
Jobs understood biography. You all obviously don't.
Do you really think people dislike the book because it was honest? Most of the criticism you see here is because the book never went much deeper than stating facts (and sometimes the wrong facts). This applies to more than just products.
Two non-product examples: We never get any good analysis on how Zen Buddhism affected him apart from his college days. When confronted with how cruel he can be, Steve Jobs just says "that's who I am". No deeper analysis here either (although Ive does try to give an explanation, Jobs isn't asked about that theory).
Unlike Gruber's commentary, Gladwell's argument is both rational and self consistent. From the tone of this piece by Gruber it is clear he is strugging with the dissonance between the clarity of Gladwell's argument and a perception that the term 'tweaker' is somehow pejorative and thus demeaning of someone he idolizes.
The second sentence: Jobs was neither. These men make for a poor comparison to Jobs because Jobs didn’t really “invent” anything
Gruber's rebuttal that Gladwell's comparison is invalid is itself a fallacy. Gruber claims that Steve Jobs wasn't an inventor but his use of the term is different [1] than Gladwell's use. If you read Gladwell's comments (both the excerpted parts and the entire thing) you will see that Gladwell equates Job's 'vision' for the iPod (as an example) which he was very much in control of, as having both 'invented' the iPod (creative force behind it) and 'tweaked' in the sense that it was a refinement of a previous invention (product).
[1] It's called an amphiboly. http://blekko.com/ws/?q=define+amphiboly
This process is ingrained in every software company. There's nothing special or new about Apple (or Jobs) here.
That's the question I think Gruber wants answered, and where this huge Bio of Jobs, probably our best opportunity to find out, has fallen short.
I would take a guess that if someone were to really publish the "secret sauce" you might find it less like a recipe - i.e., "do this and you will win" - and more like a history of a company that found smart, productive people, made them focus, and then got the fk out of the way.
I'm not sure a Biography would illuminate this. But I think Gruber's right in that Jobs probably wasn't a "tweaker" in the sense of someone actually making a tech decision. He probably tweaked people.
Microsoft & others tend to start with one version and constantly evolve that. The difference is you can get stuck at local maxima / evolutionary dead ends.
For giggle though remember the first Android Emulator?
http://www.triviaburst.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-mati...
http://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Apple-Newton-and-Palm-Pilot...
I still miss the Newton Notepad app and want something like it - including the stylus and handwriting recognition - on an iPhone and iPad.
On the other hand, I get really frustrated with the autocorrect on the iPhone. It correct proper nouns FAR too often.
They were able to find success across multiple products through superior business skills and by sticking to their insight.
Finally, they each lived in a time where a new technology was coming to the masses, and they the business leaders bringing this to them. Due to their methods, the masses really appreciated them for what they did.
This is forgivable, but please note that he was talking about contribution to society, not "wow factor".
At a new location, can they identify the correct wireless network to use, and enter the password?
Or do they just use an easy subset of what the ipad offers? We don't go "Wow! the toy piano is easy enough for a toddler to use!" and gush over it, because we know the toddler isn't using the piano like some virtuoso.
In Ghana, more than 60% of people have a mobile phone, but that wouldn't be possible if the development of the hardware (both for the actual devices and the network infrastructure) hadn't been made cheap by years of development paid by the rich countries.
I am saying it is not on the same order of magnitude as fucking electric lighting.
Why must this be difficult?
If its not effective for all, forever, its just a blip on the time line. A thousand years from now we will remember Einstein.
Jobs? Not so much...
Turing, not by a long shot. In 200 years we'll still be talking about Turing machines and decidability. I don't think you can say the same for any of Edisons or Job's ventures.
Computers are very hard to use for people outside of our bubble. Changing that is a major contribution to society and far more than a "wow factor". Seeing disabled people use an iPad is an amazing site.
I'm not interested in ranking ligt bulbs vs iPads, it servers no real purpose. And I'm not particularly interested in having a discussion with an asshole, but I wanted to point out how absurd it is to call something that opens doors for so many people as merely a "wow factor". You are not likely in a position to understand much beyond your own narcissism.
Yes, I have an android phone and my wife has an iPhone. My 1 year old can navigate between apps, find the app she is looking for, and use them without assistance on any IOS device. She can't do the same on an android device.
Had Microsoft never existed, 8-bit home computers would have used another version of BASIC. There were a couple floating around (you can play with them with an Atari or BBC emulator). Had Microsoft never existed, IBM would have adopted CP/M as its OS and PC clones would have been built around it (and would be more diverse because CP/M was much more portable than MS-DOS), but I doubt they'd be as common as they are today. We would probably have a much more diverse hardware environment (think Amiga, Archimedes, Transputer), which could have created a cross-platform standard for software, most likely based on POSIX and X. Apple would still have launched the Lisa, and the Mac and they'd be successful. The web would be born anyway and so would be free and open source software (but there would probably be much less incentive to use it).
It's a horrible thing to say, but had Bill Gates decided to be a banker or a lawyer, the world would be a much better place. He would still be rich (because he was born that way).
Paul Allen would still have made his name in tech, possibly with MITS. Ballmer would have graduated from Stanford.
And, BTW, he didn't invent this idea of amassing vast resources with shady deals and then becoming a philanthropist and redeem himself with this. Andrew Carnegie did it first.
Gladwell makes a distinction between "visionaries" who invent new things and "tweakers" who refine, perfect and make new inventions work. Gladwell proceeds to argue that Jobs falls into the tweaker category.
Gruber keeps talking about "innovations", a word Gladwell does not use, without bothering to explain what he means by it or how it is different from Gladwell's idea of "tweaks." But he has no problems claiming that Jobs "innovations" were not tweaks. He asks: "Does anyone really think Apple’s entry into the music industry was a 'tweak'?" Yes, according to Gladwell's definition of the term it was. It seems that Gruber did not bother to try to understand what Gladwell meant by the term "tweak."
The whole time I was reading it I was wondering why Gladwell didn't refer to any other material than the biography since they offered a deeper, more balanced picture of his work, but then I remembered they were probably trying to cash in on the Steve Jobs aura by putting his article on the cover.
"What it was that Jobs actually did is much of the mystery of his life and his work, and Isaacson, frustratingly, had seemingly little interest in that, or any recognition that there even was any sort of mystery as to just what Jobs’s gifts really were."
Why this insistence on mystery? Why this insistence that Jobs had some magical special sauce that all of us are lacking? I see this over and over in the article, as the author tries to complain that not enough lip service in the quotes he brings up is being paid to the Great and Mysterious Steven Paul Jobs.
We pride ourselves on all being innovative and hopeful engineers and business folks, right? So, why do we see so much praise for these unexplainable qualities? This has got to stop.
The article is particularly bad when quoting a definition of innovation and then simultaneously arguing that Jobs wasn't a mere "tweaker" and that innovation doesn't require completely original thought. Unless I completely misparsed that section, it appears that the author is trying to assert contradictory claims: if Jobs wasn't a tweaker, and he was innovative, then he must have been completely original--yet the author states that this need not be the case! This is crap rhetoric, and I'm bummed to see it appear in an otherwise good blog.
Some of the assertions made are also laughable:
"The Macintosh was no “tweak”. Pixar was no “tweak”. The iPod is maybe the closest thing among Jobs’s career highlights that one could call a “tweak” of that which preceded it — but it’s hard to separate the iPod, the device, from the entire iTunes ecosystem in terms of measuring its effect on our culture and the way everyone today listens to music. Does anyone really think Apple’s entry into the music industry was a “tweak”?"
All of these are tweaks, as substantiated by the quotes used by the author. The Mac was a "tweak" insofar as it was modification to cheaply make a Star. Pixar work prior to '86 was very much laying the groundwork for future CG--Job's purchase perhaps gave funding but likely little else. The contortions used to try and justify the iPod without calling it a "tweak" are hilarious. The online music aspect might get a pass, but still, it's basically just "RECORDS.... ON THE INTERNET!". None of the examples really address the "Jobs was a tweaker" argument.
"If anyone is the “tweaker” in the PC industry, a la Gladwell’s 18th century steam engine inventors, clearly it’s Bill Gates, not Steve Jobs."
And then this. It's completely extraneous, serving no other function than to scratch the fanboy "Fuck Microsoft" itch. It needn't have even been mentioned--and yet, here it is. No real attempt is even made to justify why it is there, nor to try and explain all of the damning with faint praise of senor Gates.
This article is a well-written but poorly justified. We deserve better.
The word "tweak" does not mean the same thing to hackers as it does to the general public. To the average person, "tweaking" means making minor modifications to an essentially finished product. This of course would do a huge disservice to Apple's accomplishments, and I think that's what Gruber is trying to fight, considering Gladwell and Isaacson write for a general audience.
To put it another way, it took Microsoft and others several years to tweak the Macintosh operating system, and this despite Apple essentially resting on their laurels until the return of Steve Jobs.
There were tons of MP3 players before the iPod, and they were pretty much decimated. iTunes is not just music on the Internet, it is also the first music service that got the music majors and labels on board. Where are the iPod/iTunes tweaks? Microsoft failed twice with PlaysForSure and Zune. Amazon, Google and Spotify are doing interesting things in this space, yet most people are still going to listen to music they download from them... on their iPod.
Similarly, the iPhone is much more than a pre-2007 smartphone without buttons, and the iPad is much more than a Dynabook or a pre-2010 tablet with no stylus.
And I think you are mischaracterizing his observations about Gates.
I agree with this. The say I see it, Jobs' only superpower was obsessiveness, and the willingness to say "not good enough", over and over again.
Regarding the "tweaker" concept, I think there's an important distinction: Apple (and Pixar) didn't take existing tech or design and iterate on them; rather, they created whole new tech from scratch, which they then iterated on. The Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, CG animation: they all aimed at a pre-existing concept, re-engineered a whole new thing to address that concept, and THEN iterated ruthlessly internally.
Because your and my (and humanity's) articulation capabilities might be less but perception capabilities could be more.
Also because, each of us may actually have some "reality distorting" capabilities, which we may or may not use.
Malcom fails to realize by his definition everyone would be a tweaker. Henry Ford - tweaker, Einstein - tweaker, Jobs - tweaker...
I think its clear who the tweaker is and it isn't Einstein, Ford, or Jobs.
Its easy to take shots at someone after the fact, the reality is that maybe he wasn't everything people thought he was. He might not have been a sweetheart to work with, in fact he may have been a jerk. But, lets not kid ourselves into believing he didn't do that much and was just some tweaker at Apple, I call BS. Apple was basically dead when he returned, dead. It must have been a little more than tweaking to make it the most successful company in the world.
I will agree that the biography is far from perfect, and of course we can all find a bunch of things that we would have liked to see improved, especially knowing technology as intimately as most of us. But looking at the backlash against this biography I can't help but also feel that some of the criticism is a case of sour grapes, or maybe dashed expectations.
Leading into the release of the biography there were considerable excitement that finally someone would be able to tell the authorized story of Steve Jobs. This person had been granted unprecedented access to the man and people close to him, and had been working over a period of several years to put the book together. Finally, after the "smears" that were books like iCon, unauthorized and frankly pretty critical of Mr. Jobs we would finally get some real insight into his greatness.
And of course, a few weeks before the book is released the person is about passes away tragically at far too young of an age. I mean it sincerely when I say it was a pretty big loss. But look at everything written about the man in the days and weeks after, and the reaction to people who didn't toe the party line of deification. I mean even articles discussing Jobs' "dark side" then went to say how this was actually a positive and was integral to his success.
So now, finally, we can get our hand on the book we were all waiting for, the one where the biographer who actually got to talk to Jobs and people close to him reveals to us that, yes, he truly is as great as you believe. Actually he's even better, honestly he's the man of the century.
Instead, we get a portrait of a man with some very, very sharp edges, a mean ruthless streak that I think would startle most people on the other end of it, and of course a man who revolutionized several industries and did some pretty remarkable things.
It is definitely not the hagiography that I think some people secretly wanted, and I can't help but feel that this disappointment is behind a lot of the backlash. No biography is ever going to perfectly encompass anyone's life, especially so someone who has accomplished so much. But I also think that it is entirely fair to paint a portrait of the man that acknowledges his numerous flaws, the fantastic luck that accompanied some of his decisions, and the many failures he had. Because without this would his many successes, his vision, and his inspiring drive for perfection seem as impressive?
So in the end, I am actually enjoying the book and I am sure that someone else will come along and work from the notes and publish something even better. But to say that it is an utter mess, or a hack job, or any of the other brutal criticisms I have read is, in my opinion, pretty unfair.
Granted that Gladwell's article reveals how little he understands the nature of invention. As punishment, he should be forced to read every patent for paper clips. Nearly all invention is a change to an existing thing because the inventor thinks some (could be very small) aspect of it should be better. That's a pretty good description of Steve Jobs.
I'm only midway through the book, but frankly I don't see so far where the criticism is coming from.
Had Issacson done the task justice, we would all have insight into Jobs' work, which in Gruber's opinion, rises far above the level of a tweaker.
Gladwell is quite capable of spinning some idiotic theory on his own. You can't blame Isaacson for his shortcomings.