A couple of weeks after stating that “the greatest innovation in the world today is coming from Google,” the scribe of the insipid Steve Jobs biography – and, for some inexplicable reason, technology pundit – Walter Isaacson is attempting to walk back his comments as he and Bloomberg TV’s Cory Johnson discuss the leadership and execution at Apple with Erik Schatzker and Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart.”
One thing about the comment, the comment I made about Google being the most innovative: Innovation is great, but it ain’t everything. It’s not the Holy Grail. Execution is what really matters. Apple is the best at execution…. It really makes insanely great products, to use the phrase Steve used 30 years ago when he launched the Mac. –
Direct link to video here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nice try, Mr. Soporific, but you failed yet again.
What we wrote on January 15, 2014 stands today:
Anyone who can take a raging ball of fire like Steve Jobs and reduce his life to a bland cardboard cutout harbors some, er… special skills. As with passionate, interesting writing, judging companies’ levels of innovation isn’t one of Isaacson’s talents, either.
Go back to your day job, Walter. You know, churning out mind-numbing, by-the-numbers pablum that nobody* can finish without massive amounts of willpower and Red Bull.
Stop posing on TV as an Apple expert, or any sort of tech business expert, because totally blowing it by squatting out an interminable doorstop after being handed the biography subject of the century only makes you an expert in one thing: Failure.
After 630-pages that we never thought would end, we know you love facts, so here are a couple: You’re as much of an Apple/technology expert as any random fscktard off the street, you insipid milker, and your book was only a bestseller because it had Steve Jobs name and face on the cover, not because of you, Mr. Soporific.
And, CNBC, what’s next, analysis of the pharmaceutical industry by Patrick Dempsey?
*Having a bit more than a passing interest in Steve Jobs, even we could barely make it though Walter’s God-awful “Steve Jobs” textbook! No wonder Sorkin promptly threw it in the trash and started over from scratch.
As with John Sculley and Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs picked the wrong guy.
[Attribution: 9to5Mac. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Scribe of flavorless Steve Jobs biography thinks Google is ‘more innovative’ than Apple because Google bought a thermostat company – January 15, 2014
Another foot in mouth. “You’re out!”
Isaacson’s biography on Jobs was a snore fest. I have never read a more turgid biography on a more interesting person. Isaacson gets Jobs as a monkey gets Shakespeare.
I could have written a better biography on Ballmer’s gonads.
“As with John Sculley and Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs picked the wrong guy.”
Ouch!
Have a nice day, Walter, you boring sonuvabitch.
I think what this highlights is that the word innovation has wrongly become synonymous with new. Anyone can churn out endless ideas and services which end up being discontinued or never reaching production. To an extent he has a point, but it’s poorly made and he’s not at all qualified to be making it – at least not being quoted on it.
After the reaming MacDailyNews gave him two weeks ago, Walter must really enjoy it to invite it all over again.
Take MDN’s advice, Walter: STFU, stop posing as a tech pundit on TV, and go back to writing bland tomes that nobody can force themselves to finish.
(Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.)
Like reading War and Peace. Way to turn a Torpedo into a Turd Walter.
…to paraphrase Mark Twain regarding “Crime And Punishment”:
“The crime is writing it, reading it is the punishment.”
Another one joining the “Hall of Fame” for World Class Idiots !!!
Walter Isaacson must be angling to get the Eric Schmidt biography. Or perhaps, along with Larry and Sergey, he can make it a trilogy. “The Three Horsemen of Google: How we stole everyone else’s stuff and sold it to make a fortune!”
The best thing this guy could do for humanity is to allow us to hear the recorded interviews with Steve Jobs so we can hear for ourselves how he described his viewpoints.
Because methinks there was a whole lot of emotion and insight lost on the pages of that book, which I would have to agree was bland, boring and often nothing more than a monotone rehash of what most of us interested in Jobs already knew from a wide array of sources over many years.
Somehow, I felt like knew less of the man after reading it — and that should have been impossible!
The funny thing is Walter Isaacson actually met Steve Jobs and talked with him about a number of things.
You may not like his book MDN but at least he had a real relationship with the man himself on which to base his observations.
Attaboy! MDN ! Spot on take on Mr Isaac ! Luv it !
Love the MDN comments—it needs to be said. What a Dickhead this Issacson guy is. In the Jobs bio he also has a high opinon of Microsoft and Bill Gates and their contribution to the advancement of technology. He said “he didn’t like the guy” when questioned about what he thought of Jobs as a person in one interview. He commented how Steve lost his initial enthusiasm for the bio project. Said he sometimes recorded interviews and sometimes didn’t—which means things were filter through his PC-Bill Gates bias and through his thirst for sensationalism—like the bitter revenge “exterminate you” comment about Android credited to Steve which is not in Steve’s character to think or say. Issacson created a superficial caricature of Jobs early days (like Time magazine is so good at doing) by repeating over and over how be stunk of BO—what a shallow detail of ones life to give prominence to! I’m hoping the movie will be Steve friendly and real—its encouraging that Sorkin threw Issacsons version of Steve’s life in the trash and started from stretch. I’m waiting for an unauthorized bio for a Steve-friendly and accurate version of Steve’s life/contribution to the advancement of technology. Come on Daniel eran Dilger—I’m suspecting and hoping you’re writing one.
“he also has a high opinon of Microsoft and Bill Gates and their contribution to the advancement of technology”
Now we know what book Isaacson is going for next.
Check out “Insanely Simple.”
http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/walter_isaacson_steve_jobs
This is just one of many critiques. What about his lack of inquisitiveness about Steve during the NEXT years? Isaacson is a doofus.
Thank you for this link. It was very informative!!!
Thanks for the link to that fantastic daring fireball article which really shows up Issacson’s lack of credibility.
Isaacson doesn’t like Jobs or tech, he wrote a bio like a general ‘hype’ celebrity bio. If you wanted to find out about Jobs secret to tech innovation you wouldn’t get it there.
When the bio first came out I said if Isaacson was to write a bio about Erwin Rommel the Desert Fox he would spend all his time writing about Rommel’s relations with family, friends and fellow officers and mention only in passing ‘The War’. And he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to write about the difference between a Tiger and a Sherman tank….
“Real artists ship.” -Steve Jobs
I learned more about what motivated Steve jobs in the first 40 pages of ken segall’s excellent “insanely simple” than I did in all of issacson’s biography.