From the Bookshelf: Becoming Steve Jobs
Apr. 15th, 2015 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I went and bought Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs (produced with the cooperation of Jobs himself, as the promotional talk said) right when it was published; the national bookstore chain did seem to be pushing it, and it was that much easier to get it with the small bookstore in the shopping mall on my corner still open then. As I read through it, though, I did seem to wind up somehow dispirited that the Jobs presented in it, for all of his increased success as a businessman, never seemed to get past petty tantrums and casual, unfeeling cruelty to those in the wrong place at the wrong time: the closest he might have come in the biography to personal growth was a broken-down admission near the end of his life that he was who he was and couldn't change.
Not that long after I'd finished that book, in any case, some notable weblog writers focusing on Apple issues began to criticise it, arguing that Isaacson hadn't really "got" issues of technology and going so far as to accuse Jobs of, as he had once memorably said about John Scully, "hiring the wrong guy." That some of their comments were phrased in one precise way that aggravates me might not have helped them, but I suppose I did come to wonder just how much of the biography was a result of answers given by Jobs (there were direct quotes from him, but not as many as might be imagined) and how much of it had just been researched from previous books, and in starting to think its writing just might not have been that engaging found myself not really going back to it. I wound up more likely to return to the copy of Michael Moritz's "Return to the Little Kingdom," really just a history of the company up to the introduction of the Macintosh with a prologue and epilogue mentioning developments since, that I'd bought at the remaindered book store (which still had some copies of it the last time I checked); a book I bought at an airport waiting to return from a vacation in Europe, Luke Dormehl's "The Apple Revolution," had also seemed interesting for going into a little more detail than some books about "Apple in between Jobs," although it didn't offer as much detail once he'd returned.
Not that long ago, though, I happened to hear, from some of the people who'd been swift to criticise the Isaacson biography, about a new biography of Steve Jobs they were already more positive towards. It seemed that Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli's "Becoming Steve Jobs" would even manage to be a bit more than "winnowing through, or recycling, what everyone else had written" through Schlender having interviewed Jobs several times. (This let certain portions of the book be narrated in the first person, as if "staking a claim" to the subject.) As its release date approached, the publicity also began to mention how cooperation had been offered by some of the current Apple executives, who were themselves offering some criticism of Isaacson's work. This, though, combined with some intimations the book might even present a "kindler, gentler Jobs," did seem to let some turn around and start making dark allusions about "deliberately tilted viewpoints." I just waited for a chance to buy it; once again, the national bookstore chain seemed to be making a reasonable deal of it.
As Schlender didn't first meet Jobs until NeXT was being started up, this book may not cover Jobs's first years at Apple in as much length as some, but as that tale is now oft-told (with the book mentioning those years had established Jobs at his worst anyway) that may have helped it feel more as if it was indeed offering some new insights and showing that, as is often just "told," the "years of exile" had at least made Jobs a defter businessman. By the end of the book I was getting the feeling I could be more likely to return to it than to Isaacson's biography, which does have more detail and anecdotes at most points (although there's a few new ones in this new book) but leaves me wondering if they add up to as much. However, I can suppose there were still things about the new biography that left me wondering a bit. Some small technical errors in Isaacson's book had let its critics springboard into larger criticisms (on checking the paperback version in a bookstore, I did manage to notice that one had been corrected to have Andy Warhol be agog over having "drawn a circle" with the application "MacPaint," not the lower-level "QuickDraw" routines; I didn't buy the paperback to look further into it, though). This new book, though, mentioned the Apple 1 as using a "Motorola 6800" CPU (I've heard the MOS 6502 was an unauthorized development from that chip just as the Zilog Z80 was an unauthorized development from the Intel 8080, but that's stretching a point a considerable distance) and said there were "five stripes" in the Apple logo (whereas "six colours" is instantly recognizable to those who've been around for a while).
In providing greater emphasis to the later years of the narrative, the book might have left itself open to certain familiar accusations of over-simplifying the first years of Apple and, as partisans of other early microcomputers have complained, exaggerating the first success of the company. Too, while it was interesting to see the point made that "the two Mikes," Mike Markkula and Mike Scott, weren't quite able to shape or control the character of the young Steve Jobs, I might yet suggest that they did lift the company past small-time predecessors and competitors such as MITS, IMSAI, Processor Technology, and Ohio Scientific to name just a few, into the more rarefied air of already established consumer electronics companies like Commodore and Tandy Radio Shack, and to the point where Apple was at least the biggest, most noticeable impending target when IBM made its major push into the personal computer market to unwittingly set Microsoft on a path to eclipsing, at least for a while or in certain large markets, any specific hardware manufacturer. Too, as much as the narrative of "Jobs and Apple both went in wrong directions without each other" can be compelling, I can also think it would be interesting to have more detail about just what happened in the "John Scully years" to reduce a "now-competent corporation" to "the last unfocused and overwhelmed bump in the road before total Microsoft hegemony"; it's been long enough since then that that story might not have to come across as a smug homily or bitter screed any more. In particular, as the return of Steve Jobs began when Apple couldn't seem to produce an operating system as "buzzword-compliant" as Windows 95 fast enough to still seem relevant, I got to wondering just what had changed when he had returned and whether it was being concealed as a "trade secret"; then, though, I happened to think it had still taken years to turn NeXTSTEP into Mac OS X, during which time the company had relied on "early iMac design" and incremental improvements to its existing operating system so that it at least looked updated and didn't feel quite as fragile.
The penultimate chapter of the book did turn out to be devoted to suggesting the character problems Jobs still had in his later years, but it did make the simple yet somehow significant comment that in real life (as opposed to, say, a Pixar movie) there aren't complete, triumphant transformations. More than that, too, the prickly parts were connected to business issues rather than just unflattering anecdotes, but this did feel at times like dredging up old scandals-of-the-day. In bringing back how the iPhone didn't support Flash, it was first heavily implied Jobs was taking revenge for Adobe having taken steps to cut itself loose from Macintosh software; that was followed by some suggestions of the more technical reasons for the choice, including Jobs's own thoughts on the matter, before heading straight back to the implied suggestions again.
Some notable figures and authors connected with Apple have rallied to defend the Isaacson biography, so perhaps it might be too much to discard one take on a complex and controversial man to hold up another. It might be one thing for a book to "add up to something," another to wonder if it was made to do that. In the end, though, I did appreciate the new perspective.
Not that long after I'd finished that book, in any case, some notable weblog writers focusing on Apple issues began to criticise it, arguing that Isaacson hadn't really "got" issues of technology and going so far as to accuse Jobs of, as he had once memorably said about John Scully, "hiring the wrong guy." That some of their comments were phrased in one precise way that aggravates me might not have helped them, but I suppose I did come to wonder just how much of the biography was a result of answers given by Jobs (there were direct quotes from him, but not as many as might be imagined) and how much of it had just been researched from previous books, and in starting to think its writing just might not have been that engaging found myself not really going back to it. I wound up more likely to return to the copy of Michael Moritz's "Return to the Little Kingdom," really just a history of the company up to the introduction of the Macintosh with a prologue and epilogue mentioning developments since, that I'd bought at the remaindered book store (which still had some copies of it the last time I checked); a book I bought at an airport waiting to return from a vacation in Europe, Luke Dormehl's "The Apple Revolution," had also seemed interesting for going into a little more detail than some books about "Apple in between Jobs," although it didn't offer as much detail once he'd returned.
Not that long ago, though, I happened to hear, from some of the people who'd been swift to criticise the Isaacson biography, about a new biography of Steve Jobs they were already more positive towards. It seemed that Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli's "Becoming Steve Jobs" would even manage to be a bit more than "winnowing through, or recycling, what everyone else had written" through Schlender having interviewed Jobs several times. (This let certain portions of the book be narrated in the first person, as if "staking a claim" to the subject.) As its release date approached, the publicity also began to mention how cooperation had been offered by some of the current Apple executives, who were themselves offering some criticism of Isaacson's work. This, though, combined with some intimations the book might even present a "kindler, gentler Jobs," did seem to let some turn around and start making dark allusions about "deliberately tilted viewpoints." I just waited for a chance to buy it; once again, the national bookstore chain seemed to be making a reasonable deal of it.
As Schlender didn't first meet Jobs until NeXT was being started up, this book may not cover Jobs's first years at Apple in as much length as some, but as that tale is now oft-told (with the book mentioning those years had established Jobs at his worst anyway) that may have helped it feel more as if it was indeed offering some new insights and showing that, as is often just "told," the "years of exile" had at least made Jobs a defter businessman. By the end of the book I was getting the feeling I could be more likely to return to it than to Isaacson's biography, which does have more detail and anecdotes at most points (although there's a few new ones in this new book) but leaves me wondering if they add up to as much. However, I can suppose there were still things about the new biography that left me wondering a bit. Some small technical errors in Isaacson's book had let its critics springboard into larger criticisms (on checking the paperback version in a bookstore, I did manage to notice that one had been corrected to have Andy Warhol be agog over having "drawn a circle" with the application "MacPaint," not the lower-level "QuickDraw" routines; I didn't buy the paperback to look further into it, though). This new book, though, mentioned the Apple 1 as using a "Motorola 6800" CPU (I've heard the MOS 6502 was an unauthorized development from that chip just as the Zilog Z80 was an unauthorized development from the Intel 8080, but that's stretching a point a considerable distance) and said there were "five stripes" in the Apple logo (whereas "six colours" is instantly recognizable to those who've been around for a while).
In providing greater emphasis to the later years of the narrative, the book might have left itself open to certain familiar accusations of over-simplifying the first years of Apple and, as partisans of other early microcomputers have complained, exaggerating the first success of the company. Too, while it was interesting to see the point made that "the two Mikes," Mike Markkula and Mike Scott, weren't quite able to shape or control the character of the young Steve Jobs, I might yet suggest that they did lift the company past small-time predecessors and competitors such as MITS, IMSAI, Processor Technology, and Ohio Scientific to name just a few, into the more rarefied air of already established consumer electronics companies like Commodore and Tandy Radio Shack, and to the point where Apple was at least the biggest, most noticeable impending target when IBM made its major push into the personal computer market to unwittingly set Microsoft on a path to eclipsing, at least for a while or in certain large markets, any specific hardware manufacturer. Too, as much as the narrative of "Jobs and Apple both went in wrong directions without each other" can be compelling, I can also think it would be interesting to have more detail about just what happened in the "John Scully years" to reduce a "now-competent corporation" to "the last unfocused and overwhelmed bump in the road before total Microsoft hegemony"; it's been long enough since then that that story might not have to come across as a smug homily or bitter screed any more. In particular, as the return of Steve Jobs began when Apple couldn't seem to produce an operating system as "buzzword-compliant" as Windows 95 fast enough to still seem relevant, I got to wondering just what had changed when he had returned and whether it was being concealed as a "trade secret"; then, though, I happened to think it had still taken years to turn NeXTSTEP into Mac OS X, during which time the company had relied on "early iMac design" and incremental improvements to its existing operating system so that it at least looked updated and didn't feel quite as fragile.
The penultimate chapter of the book did turn out to be devoted to suggesting the character problems Jobs still had in his later years, but it did make the simple yet somehow significant comment that in real life (as opposed to, say, a Pixar movie) there aren't complete, triumphant transformations. More than that, too, the prickly parts were connected to business issues rather than just unflattering anecdotes, but this did feel at times like dredging up old scandals-of-the-day. In bringing back how the iPhone didn't support Flash, it was first heavily implied Jobs was taking revenge for Adobe having taken steps to cut itself loose from Macintosh software; that was followed by some suggestions of the more technical reasons for the choice, including Jobs's own thoughts on the matter, before heading straight back to the implied suggestions again.
Some notable figures and authors connected with Apple have rallied to defend the Isaacson biography, so perhaps it might be too much to discard one take on a complex and controversial man to hold up another. It might be one thing for a book to "add up to something," another to wonder if it was made to do that. In the end, though, I did appreciate the new perspective.