“The normally unforthcoming executives at Apple have been praising a new book about Steve Jobs in recent days, using the opportunity to also diss Walter Isaacson’s three-and-a-half-year-old biography of their former boss as an unfair portrayal,” Peter Burrows writes for Bloomberg. “As if Steve Jobs needed defending.”
“So why the sudden push by Apple and its executives to criticize the Isaacson book while praising the latest biography, Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli? CEO Tim Cook is quoted in the book as saying that Isaacson ‘failed to capture the person,'” Burrows writes. “Senior Vice President Eddy Cue expressed the same sentiment via Twitter, as did design chief Jony Ive in a speech last year.”
“The PR offensive is ‘purely an emotional issue, not a business issue,’ says marketing consultant Regis McKenna, a longtime friend of Jobs who worked closely with him in the 1970s and early ’80s,” Burrows writes. “While Isaacson’s book was almost universally considered far more positive than negative, he understands why Cook, Cue, and Ive felt so strongly about it having fallen short of their expectations. Call it an artifact of the perfectionism Jobs demanded for Apple’s products, he says. The executives ‘all take it personally, because they are all a reflection of Steve,’ he says.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If Isaacson hadn’t tried to pass himself off an an expert on CNBC, bloviating about what Apple should do or, even worse, proclaiming what Steve Jobs would or would not have done, we’d have been less vociferous regarding his boring, tedious, bland doorstop of a textbook.
Related articles:
Tim Bajarin: ‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ the most accurate portrayal written to date – March 27, 2015
Apple execs, including Tim Cook, praise new Steve Jobs biography, and criticize an old one – March 23, 2015
Disney CEO Bob Iger kept Steve Jobs’s cancer a secret for three years – March 20, 2015
The evolution of Steve Jobs: It’s time to revisit — and correct — the myth – March 20, 2015
Apple CEO Cook blasts Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’ bio as a ‘just a rehash; a tremendous disservice’ – March 17, 2015
Steve Jobs: ‘I just don’t like television. Apple will never make a TV again’ – March 13, 2015
Tim Cook reportedly offered Steve Jobs his liver, but Jobs refused – March 12, 2015
Gruber: ‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ is a remarkable new book – March 3, 2015
Just look at how many idiots still believe Apple stole from XEROX. Look at all the idiots that still believe Windows was not a blatant ripoff of the Mac. I’m glad Apple execs are working hard to correct that incompetent biographers work. It will take years if ever to get that mess straightened out, if ever. Just like the Macintosh Story.
Paid Trolls are voting a lot today I see….
Oh yeah they are in a world of BUTT HURT, running around the internet with preparation H butt relief cream by the bucket load. LOL 😛
Becouse if they dont.. The competition will use his negative image to mar apples image !
Slowly nipping away from the credibilty and the iconic, legendary image Job’s association with Apple brings !
re MDN take… exactly, MDN, exactly. Well said.
Picking Isaacson as his official biographer was one of the worst choices Jobs ever made. Maybe even up there with picking Sculley as CEO back in the 80’s.
Dunno why your statement got 21 votes so far, for only a “poor” rating. Do Apple fans really dislike these comments? Would any commentators who gave a “very poor” vote willing to explain why?
Do people not know Apple paid Xerox for their GUI, and Steve Jobs actually told the Xerox folks to their face: ” If you don’t do anything with this, I will”? Incidentally, Xerox made good money on the deal; and Xerox did not do anything with their GUI.
Do people not know Microsoft ripped off the Mac? Novelist Douglas Coupland’s book, “Microserfs” describes how it was done. Microsoft was supposed to have a firewall between its two groups developing apps for the Mac and developing its new OS, Windows. Apparently the firewall was not very secure. And Bill Gates’ mantra to his operating team was: “make it more like the Mac!!!”.
Also, do people not know Microsoft totally ripped off a valley software engineer’s QDOS — quick & dirty operating system — in its early days, when MS “reverse engineered” QDOS for its own DOS ? It turns out the only difference between Microsoft’s DOS and the engineer’s QDOS was: Microsoft changed the drive letter after the caret prompt.
As a general rule, I think it always makes sense to set the record straight when possible. And I am pleased that folks who really knew Steve are wiling to speak up accordingly.
Peace.
Brilliantly put, and succinct to. Nice to know that the experts are still out there.
So many business drones that cut their computing teeth on IBM PCs with MS-DOS and then were wowed by Windows, thinking what a miracle Microsoft had developed. So immersed in the Microserf culture that they never took notice of the underhanded, backstabbing ways of Bill Gates and his MS henchmen that routinely stole from, and later financially crushed more innovative competitors. Few even know that the vaunted Excel was developed for Macintosh first (which is when they got ahold of Macintosh source code from where they changed it up a bit to sell as Windows).