Karm City

Isaacson is just like Gladwell

What a disappointing book. Walter Isaacson, the author of Steve Jobs’ biography, reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell. He introduces a very simple point, then spends hundreds of pages reiterating the same point with different examples. In this case, Steve’s hot/cold attitude.

There are also some other embarrassing paragraphs that made me squirm, like this one, about design being prioritized over engineering:
“On occasion this could backfire, such as when Jobs and Ive [Apple’s head designer] insisted on using a solid piece of brushed aluminum for the edge of the iPhone 4 even when the engineers worried that it would compromise the antenna.”

…what? So a flaw that all phones inherently have was a design ‘backfire’? Sounds like someone’s using sensationalist media as their fact checker. He had access to the men behind the iPhone, and that’s his backfire example?

To summarize the entire book: reality distortion field, cold, distant, technology, art, a player, b player, bozo, hero.

Very little content came from Steve Jobs himself. Isaacson had all the time in the world to interview early Apple employees, investors, board members and competitors. He dedicated the majority of his book to their opinions of Jobs. Almost nothing is attributable to Steve himself, who had a finite time to share his thoughts.

What’s sad is Jobs isn’t around to offer the same access to an author who could do it right.