Steve Jobs is a tweaker, according to his flawed biography

I’m hating the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. It’s like an art novice trying to explain Monet’s brushstrokes.

I’m not convinced that Mr. Isaacson understands the topic all that well. It almost seems that he rushed the book out after Steve’s passing.

Finally, somebody respectable agrees with me, John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who calls the biography flawed:

Exhibit A in the case against Walter Isaacson’s flawed Jobs biography: Malcolm Gladwell in last week’s New Yorker, arguing that Jobs was “a tweaker”.

Gladwell, alas, takes Isaacson’s portrait of Jobs at face value:

“In the eulogies that followed Jobs’s death, last month, he was repeatedly referred to as a large-scale visionary and inventor. But Isaacson’s biography suggests that he was much more of a tweaker. He borrowed the characteristic features of the Macintosh — the mouse and the icons on the screen — from the engineers at Xerox PARC, after his famous visit there, in 1979.”

I suggest reading John’s full piece: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

For me, it’s just a sign that my own feelings are justified. Anyone else out there feeling the same way?

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