Judging a Book by Its Cover
Joseph Horn John Gruber has finally posted his thoughts on Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs on Daring Fireball:
You could learn more about Steve Jobs’s work by reading Rob Walker’s 2003 New York Times Magazine piece than by reading Isaacson’s book, but even then we’re left wanting for the stories behind any of Apple’s products after the iPod. Isaacson’s book may well be the defining resource for Jobs’s personal life — his childhood, his youth, his eccentricities, cruelty, temper, and emotional outbursts. But as regards Jobs’s work, Isaacson leaves the reader profoundly and tragically misinformed.
I don't know what's more disturbing: that Isaacson so fundamentally misunderstood Jobs and how he viewed the design process, or that he was willing to have such a casual relationship with the truth. What I do know is that our one shot at an understanding of how Steve Jobs saw the world was wasted on pop-psychology and gossip.
Thinking about this reminds me of my original reaction to the title of Isaacson's biography. Steve Jobs. I thought, "Wow. How lazy, lame and unimaginative." Turns out, it was an excellent description of the pages contained therein: lazy, lame and unimaginative.