Theories on Jobs' character aside, the Jobs biography is an utter mess. Some sentences feel like they were pulled from a 6th grade book report. It's riddled with obvious statements and reads like it should have been published in People magazine. I realize I'm probably being too harsh, but I wish that I felt like Isaacson had invested into this biography, this once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity, the way Jobs likely invested in developing any of his products.
I 100% agree. I'm basically finished the book (2 more chapters to go, but I skipped ahead to the last 2 chapters out of boredom). It reads like 2 different books: before coming back to Apple the second time, and after.
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.
I think you're missing the point. He was an intense, emotional visionary. He believed in what he felt, not what others told him. That's why he smelled, why he was rude, why he cried all the time, and why he made people hate him. It's also why he was successful, and why he was able to unite teams.
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.
I know the book is poorly (like, very poorly) edited, so maybe it's not that clear, but I think the actual idea is that Jobs became less of an asshole over time — at least partially thanks to realizing he's not invulnerable. Also, for me the first half doesn't feel like luck at all. Sociopathic con man, yes, but not luck.
I don't think Isaacson could yell at Jobs to come back with four different answers to a question so Isaacson could choose the one he liked, and keep requesting new answers until he was satisfied.
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.
Well, it was a rapidly published cash-in effort. The book industry puts out tons of titles that have no enduring value but are keyed into a very specific marketing opportunity. You don't get paid when someone finishes a book, after all -- all they have to do is buy it.
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.
The biography is a complete disaster. After I finished reading it, I found that there was nothing to take away. Actually, I highly recommend John Siracusa's point-by-point dissection of the biography at 5by5, the show is called Hypercritical and listen to episodes 42 and 43. Link: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical
Siracusa pulls no punches and each and every one of his criticisms is well thought through.
It might come across as simplistic because it wasn't really written for people like you and me - it was written for non-technical consumers of apple products and the general public.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one to feel that way about the book being poorly written. I got the book the week it came out and read maybe 4-5 chapters, I haven't touched it since then. There was one paragraph that I must have read 5 times before I could understand it completely with the poor choice of words.
I've been criticizing Gruber more often than not, but I found this one to be a to the point, fairly balanced piece - especially around the visionary vs. tweaker vs. inventor part.
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've been criticizing Gruber more often than not, but I found this one to be a to the point, fairly balanced piece - especially around the visionary vs. tweaker vs. inventor part.
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.
Don't get me wrong, I like Gladwell and his writing but the usual criticism is that he cherrypicks useful facts and disregards conflicting ones so that he can build up his case. If you try to refute him point by point, you can't because every fact in his essays is correct. Every specific point is going to be correct and irrefutable but conclusion drawn from them would be just so wrong.
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.
> 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.
> Even the iPad was because of the dinner he had at some MSFT employee's house.
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.
Not quite. Steve liked DynaBook, but he thought it was a laptop computer. If he'd taken the job as head of Apple Research, that's what he would have produced. Apple had a tablet - the Newton - and Steve killed it when he came back. It turned out what he hated about tablets was the need for a stylus, which was the Microsoft approach (like the Newton), and that's what he wanted to prove wrong.
Another great take on the extent to which Walter Isaacson biography misses the mark is John Siracusa's criticisms on the "Hypercritical" podcast. Skip to about 17 minutes and 45 seconds in, which is when they start discussing it. It looks to be part 1 of an epic two-fer.
I think Siracusa's critique goes off the rails when he's complaining about things like the book missing the details in the PA Semi acquisition -- yes, that would have been interesting and ironic, I would have enjoyed reading it, but I bet my wife wouldn't. That's more appropriate for a book about Apple in general, not a personal bio of Jobs.
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.
I noticed that too, but I stuck with him and didn't consider it "going off the rails" so much as just being the typical Siracusa obsessively-detailed critique. Have you ever read one of his reviews of new MacOS X releases? They're agonizingly nitpicky, and the presence of any particular criticism doesn't really imply that this particular detail has as much weight as any other criticism he has. He was clearly reading off of long, detailed notes that he had organized into sections. Still, he does also obsess about how he writes and edits his work, and had he written a review of the biography rather than stepping up to a microphone for a podcast, the thing about PA Semi may not have made the cut. Who knows.
I disagree. Siracusa didn't take the time to sell it but there could have been personal drama in the acquisition. His main point was why mention it without getting into the interesting parts.
I guess I don't fully understand the idea that the biography is a "mess" or "flawed." Keep in mind, Jobs wanted Walter Isaacson to write his biography. Don't blame the author. Blame Jobs. You all so easily give him credit when he stands on the shoulders of giants. This seems like a logical leap. Give him credit for this too because it was actually genius.
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).
tl;dr versions - Gruber thinks the title 'Tweaker' has less social value than 'Inventor' so he takes offense at Gladwell's argument which identifies Steve Jobs a 'tweaker'.
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.
>tl;dr versions - Gruber thinks the title 'Tweaker' has less social value than 'Inventor' so he takes offense at Gladwell's argument which identifies Steve Jobs a 'tweaker'.
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).
"Iteration — steady incremental improvements, prototype after prototype, design after design, year after year, release after release — that process is ingrained in Apple’s (and I think Pixar’s) culture."
This process is ingrained in every software company. There's nothing special or new about Apple (or Jobs) here.
Since every software company has this process, why does Apple stand out?
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.
Apple is known for making 10 prototypes of an idea then culling it to 3, then 1.
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.
That photograph where Jobs displays the pre-iPhone phones really doesn't prove anything. The Palm Pilot didn't have a keyboard, and it was an obvious idea to eventually give it calling capabilities (incidentally, my "omg this can't be true, I have been waiting for this all my life" was when I saw the first ad for a Palm Pilot, not for an iPhone). Trust in the big vendors to screw it up anyway, but still. It's not as if nobody besides Job had the capability of envisioning a phone without a keyboard.
I asked an interesting question here, why the Palm Pilot (and Newton) didn't originally ship with a hardware keyboard. It's fascinating to me that devices originally used handwriting recognition, then moved to physical keyboards, then to on-screen keyboards.
One reason is because keyboards that small are hard to type on and take up valuable screen real estate. Another reason is that there's something about writing on a pad that seems less intrusive, more casual, than typing. If you take a few notes at a meeting on a pad of paper you're more obviously still mentally present at the meeting - less involved with your note-taking process - than if you type at a keyboard.
I still miss the Newton Notepad app and want something like it - including the stylus and handwriting recognition - on an iPhone and iPad.
Although I really liked Graffiti on the Palm, I think I may be faster on the iPhone keyboard (especially with the basic autocorrect stuff turned on). I wish there was a way to try graffiti on the iPhone and do some basic typing tests to see for myself.
On the other hand, I get really frustrated with the autocorrect on the iPhone. It correct proper nouns FAR too often.
You will find that Steve Jobs (aka Apple's) path to success aligns itself very well to Gladwell's 10,000hour rule. Gladwell proposed that it takes almost 10year to become an expert as you go through the do, learn, tweak cycle. Steve Jobs took something which was existing but questioned a lot of assumptions to come up with new inventions (an approach which Elon Musk mentions in his "Reasoning from First Principles" interview). On the other end of the spectrum are people like Einstein who clearly wrote the first principle because there was none before that. I am personally encouraged that Steve Jobs was able to bring about massive change in the world with this approach....the valuable lesson for budding entrepreneurs like me is that given time, identification of good ideas and persistence, we could also do something similar though on a smaller scale without being born with an IQ > 140.
He is not any of those people, his closest historical analog is Henry Ford. They were brilliant businessmen who had a critical insight early in their careers (people want usable electronics vs production line economics).
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.
It may seem more amazing to you, but I would argue that is only because you are not likely in a position to be amazed by the magnitude of the importance people like Edison and Turing had on this world.
This is forgivable, but please note that he was talking about contribution to society, not "wow factor".
By 'usable', do you mean that your one year old child can browse the app store, find something they like, install it, and use it?
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.
The iPad isn't a computer, it's a toy. A kid quickly learning how to use a toy is neither new nor outstanding, and least of all a contribution to society.
Cost 600 bucks. How does that help civilization. Oh maybe a few well pampered hipster's children get access to it, but how does that work for the rest of the world that averages 2 bucks a day income levels?
While I'm hardly an Apple apologist, I just wanted to remind that technology that is initially only available to the top-of-the-line models ends up on cheap models a few years from now, but only because its development was paid for by the relatively rich early adopters.
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.
If we're comparing it to things as ubiquitous as computer technology itself and electric lighting, then I don't think it is unreasonable to point out that the relatively exclusive nature of the ipad puts it at a disadvantage in such a contest.
IMO You can't compare 'contribution to society' like that, as if you could make a 1-dimensional scale that rates people like the ones you mentioned. It's useless. In some ways Jobs contributions to society have definitely been bigger than Turing or Edison, in some other ways, they haven't. You can't average these things objectively.
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.
This is one of the most gratuitous and condescending replies I've seen on HN. You don't know anything about me, so why would you insult my intelligence?
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.
"Would it be different with any other large touch screen interface?"
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.
The parent comment was about the man himself. In the case of the iPad he may have the guided the process but the real work wasn't by done by him. It was done by the very skilled people he hired.
It is far harder to choose the right people and guide the process than people seem to believe. There are so many talented people, yet we get very few good products.
I must disagree. While Jobs' contributions are not quite on the same level as what Edison, Einstein, Hopper, Ritchie or Turing did, Bill Gates did nothing at of that magnitude.
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.
Actually, he's funding the work, not curing Malaria himself. And he's doing that in order to redeem his legacy, something that wouldn't be necessary (redeeming his legacy, not curing Malaria) had he not made Microsoft in the first place.
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.
The sentiment in this post reflects a larger frustration with Malcolm Gladwell's oversimplified, reductionist writing in which complex systems are dumbed down into highly marketable archetypes.
Based on the biography I would say Steve's magic sauce was
the ability and willingness to build a winning team and get everything out of it. He was a "generalist" who knew enough about various things (design, marketing, electronics, software, etc) to be able to judge people and to challenge the experts opinions.
This is really a silly article. I would really recommend that you guys read Gladwell's piece as it is at least well written. Gruber's Fireball is mostly thrown at straw-men.
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 Gladwell article was a travesty. It was hastily written piece, basically copied and pasted from the Isaacson biography with a thin layer of crappy pop psychology on top.
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.
Jeremy, as far as I could notice, Gladwell's article had no pop psychology. It's interpretation of "tweakers" was based on a paper by two economists, "The Rate and Direction of Invention in the British Industrial Revolution: Incentives and Institutions." Gladwell then argues that Jobs' contribution fall more in the "tweaking" category, which is not meant as a criticism or denigration. Remember that in this interpretation it is the tweakers who brought us the Industrial Revolution, not the visionary inventors.
This article was a bit annoying to read, as it was full of a lot of the deification of Jobs that's been around since his death.
"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.
> Why this insistence that Jobs had some magical special sauce that all of us are lacking?
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.
I think that what differentiates Jobs from those other engineers mentioned in the article is that the skills that a Steve Jobs brings to the table would more llikely have been an asset to any type of product in any era. I am not an iPhone guy, however as an engineer, I am a huge Steve Jobs fan and am in constant awe on each example I read of the depth of his work ethic (perhaps his greatest skill). I think a better choice as an author would have been James Gleick.
"The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. The tweaker inherits things as they are, and has to push and pull them toward some more nearly perfect solution."
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.
Everyone in any field has had help or inspiration from others. I'm just not a fan fo Malcom calling this tweaking, its is demeaning to everyone who's ever done anything. If Steve Jobs just "tweaked" things and wasn't and inventor than what does that say about everyone else in the world?
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.
Not completely left field. Relativity, Lorentz and Michelson knew there were problems with the standard formulation. FitzGerald had a go at resolving the issues, and the Maxwell group suspected there could not be an absolute reference frame. Quanta: Planck, the dialogue of Mach/Helmholz. There was a context and a problem situation that Einstein was able to resolve to some extent in a brilliant way.
I'm currently reading the Steve Jobs biography but I have not finished it, so this comment is based on incomplete knowledge and you should take what I say with a grain of salt.
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.
The problem is that a work about Jobs's private life is not terribly compelling and the author of the work did not understand any of the important parts of Jobs's life enough to provide insight into them. Some of us were not looking for a long-form People Magazine article nor a hagiography.
Oh my god. John Gruber is really showing his true fanboy colors here again and again. He is going to cry about these "misrepresentations" of the great visionary Steve Jobs until people stop listening to him (and posting this garbage on HN). I understand why people are so drawn to studying a successful individual's life, but we must accept that every story must make some educated assumptions. Ultimately, who cares?!
Jobs was a visionary and a tweaker, an artistic/design idealist, and a businessman. he strove for subjective perfection, but ultimately shipped product and charged for it. there is no conflict here. because he was all of these things is a big reason why he accomplished so much and became a billionaire.
Ugh. Short of, perhaps, Tesla, I don't think I've ever read about any inventor or innovator whose contributions weren't the results of countless iterations to both their own and others' work.
Here's the problem with Gruber's argument. He's using something Malcolm Gladwell wrote to criticize a book that Walter Isaacson wrote. Isaacson didn't say Steve Jobs was a tweaker.
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.
I think he's criticizing Issacson's book for being light on the details of Jobs' actual work, thus allowing Gladwell to write an article that is uninformed in calling Jobs a tweaker.
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.
I wonder if critics have actually read the book. There's quite a bit about Jobs' actual work and you get quite a bit of insight into what he did and how he went about it.
Gladwell is quite capable of spinning some idiotic theory on his own. You can't blame Isaacson for his shortcomings.
