“So this is the book that Steve Jobs wanted to ban. Heaven only knows why. Jobs was supposedly so outraged by its contents that he ordered Apple’s retail stores to stop selling all titles issued by John Wiley & Sons Inc., the publisher,” Hiawatha Bray writes for The Boston Globe. “So what’s up with this childish snit? A backhanded way of stirring up book sales, or a genuine reflection of Jobs’s notorious arrogance? Either way, ”iCon” seems scarcely worth the bother. It’s your typical corporate bigwig biography — admiring but not fawning, critical but not merciless, informative but not especially revealing.”
“The book skips lightly over crucial aspects of Jobs’s career that would have repaid closer inspection. For instance, we get very little detail on his campaign to resurrect Apple’s fortunes,” Bray writes. “On the other hand, more recent events get more thorough treatment. There’s good stuff here about the rise of Pixar, with full credit given to the real creative geniuses at the studio, directors John Lasseter and Brad Bird. Along the way, we get an entertaining look at the savage infighting at Walt Disney. Young and Simon also do well in relating the rise of the iTunes music software and iPod music player. Still, ‘iCon’ fails as biography. Maybe that’s the real reason that Jobs, perfectionist that he is, won’t let it be sold in his company’s stores. It’s not good enough.”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Author of ‘The Second Coming of Steve Jobs’ Alan Deutschman reviews Steve Jobs ‘iCon’ bio – May 23, 2005
Banned in Apple Retail Stores, ‘iCon’ unauthorized Steve Jobs bio doubles initial printing run – May 01, 2005
Publisher says Apple removed all its books from Apple stores due to upcoming Steve Jobs bio – April 26, 2005
I hope after Steve comes out the with PowerBooks with a G5 or cell processor, an Airport Express Remote and some sort of Video on Demand service, he writes his own bigrography – complete with lots of juicy details on his personal life!!!!!
Apple won’t allow me to be sold in their retail stores either. I guess I’m just not good enough as well.
I agree. It had a lot of positive things to say about Steve, as well as some negatives. I liked the book a lot, much more than The Second Coming of Steve Jobs.
The parts about Disney and the iPod were probably the best.
ould have repaid closer inspection. For instance, we get very little detail on his campaign to resurrect Apple’s fortunes,” Bray writes. “On the other hand, more recent events get more thorough treatment. There’s good stuff here about the rise of Pixar, with full credit given to the real creative geniuses at the studio, directors John Lasseter and Brad Bird.”
Steve’s always given credit to the creative geniuses at Pixar. That’s nothing new, he’s always given them the space they needed to let the creative juices flow.
Is this hard news? So Steve Jobs spits the dummy over a biography that he didn’t like. Come on MDN report on this once or twice, but this seems to be the fourth or fifth time. Enough!!
Perhaps we could be informed about Microsoft having until June 1 to comply with the European Commission on having the Windows OS sans Windows Media Player. If they don’t comply with this and other matters they could face fines of $US 5 million per day. Now that’s news.
MDN, if you’re having trouble finding the source try Yahoo’s share price section for Apple.
I also just finished the book, I thought it was quite good, I couldn’t put it down. I don’t know what esle to expect from a biography but a smart man once said this about critics, “a critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car”. So hence i take their reviews with a huge bucket of salt, lol.
Just sounds like “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs” plus some stuff about the iPod
Pretty old news but I still think Steve should have just pulled the one book and not ALL of them by this publisher. Oh well, it’s ying and yang guys. Steve is a genius and does what he does really really well and I am pretty happy with the result – don’t expect him to be perfect too.
has anyone noticed that steve crys a lot in the book
I found more disturbing that the reviewer does not mentiont the lack of documenting sources for this book. No footnotes? Please. Lots of quotes with no name attached. Botched quotes from Jobs.
And it paints the picture of a monster (I’m up to him getting kicked out of Apple today).
And the prose stinks. The author obviously did not spend enough time on the manuscript. The editors should be slapped for letting such bad writing in places get through.
I heard a quote yesterday the author should have taken to heart:
Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
— Gene Fowler
Steve Jobs is the Howard Hughes of the computor business & almost as crazy!!