Review round-up: Is Steve Jobs' biography accurate?
that the biography doesn't hold back at showing Steve Jobs' "incorrigible bullying, belittling and lying". However, he says it doesn't question Jobs' notion that this conduct was a way of getting the best out of people. That may be, he says, because Walter Isaacson was too close to his subject:
"Part of the problem, I think, is that the bond that developed between subject and writer made it nearly impossible for Isaacson to get the kind of critical distance he needed to take his subject's true measure. He didn't just interview Jobs; he watched him die. There is a moving scene near the end of the book, with an emaciated Jobs, lying in bed, leafing through photographs with Isaacson, reminiscing. How can one possibly get critical distance about your subject when such moments are part of your experience of him?"
On the contrary, the book reflects Steve Jobs' complexity:
"The author pulled no punches in this book, describing Jobs as a charismatic and inspiring leader but also as a man who could be very tough, even mean. Jobs told Isaacson that he and his team at Apple could 'have a rip roaring fight and that brutal honesty' in meetings, telling Isaacson that he didn't know how to have a 'velvet glove' touch."
that the biography showing a messy private life, abrasive leadership and an innovative mind, can be read in several ways:
"It is on the one hand a history of the most exciting time in the age of computers, when the machines first became personal and later, fashionable accessories. It is also a textbook study of the rise and fall and rise of Apple and the brutal clashes that destroyed friendships and careers. And it is a gadget lover's dream, with fabulous, inside accounts of how the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad came into being.
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"But more than anything, Isaacson has crafted a biography of a complicated, peculiar personality - Jobs was charming, loathsome, lovable, obsessive, maddening - and the author shows how Jobs's character was instrumental in shaping some of the greatest technological innovations of our time."
The that Steve Jobs deserved a biography from the man who had previously written about Albert Einstein:
"It's the sense of relentlessness about Steve Jobs' ambition, expressed through iPods, iPads and iPhones, that comes through Isaacson's book. He dropped prototype iPods in fish tanks to prove that there was air inside, and consequently space to make the device even smaller, for instance. It may be difficult to hold Jobs the man up as the person everyone should aspire to be - but he made Apple into the company every businessperson aspires to run. For that alone, he is worthy of Isaacson's treatment."
Finally, the book by its cover (and its paper quality):
"My only quibble is a small one: Though the jacket is gorgeous (perhaps because Jobs himself had a hand in it), the book's interior feels cheaply done, with thin paper and an unremarkable font. As I hefted it, I thought, If only it measured up to Jobs' exacting design standards."
