Isaacson? No way.
Walter Isaacson wrote an interesting book, but he's no great historian or even a careful writer. Besides his obsession with repeating the already-tired "reality distortion field" business, he ignores what apparently bores him: the operating system. Many of Jobs' presentations focused on the amazing evolution of what the Mac could do, and how user-friendly it remained, thanks to its OS and applications. But if you read the book, you get the idea that Apple was only about a series of gadgets. Basically a hardware company.
Also, he throws in terms like "skunkworks" a couple of times with no apparent thought that the general readership might not be familiar with them. There's just a lot of sloppy work there.
The impression left is that Jobs made an amazing impact on a number of communications and entertainment fields, that he was sometimes personally strange or mean -- both true -- but Isaacson leaves out the delight that Jobs gave to the millions using his software and machines to do great and small things more easily than they could have imagined.
Walter Isaacson wrote an interesting book, but he's no great historian or even a careful writer. Besides his obsession with repeating the already-tired "reality distortion field" business, he ignores what apparently bores him: the operating system. Many of Jobs' presentations focused on the amazing evolution of what the Mac could do, and how user-friendly it remained, thanks to its OS and applications. But if you read the book, you get the idea that Apple was only about a series of gadgets. Basically a hardware company.
Also, he throws in terms like "skunkworks" a couple of times with no apparent thought that the general readership might not be familiar with them. There's just a lot of sloppy work there.
The impression left is that Jobs made an amazing impact on a number of communications and entertainment fields, that he was sometimes personally strange or mean -- both true -- but Isaacson leaves out the delight that Jobs gave to the millions using his software and machines to do great and small things more easily than they could have imagined.