[Titan]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

On one hand, there is the challenge of connecting with the person vs the industry persona and tycoon, and I respect that - you probably can't satisfy both the non-geek and geek crowds in the same book, and I can deal with that.

This quote from Gruber does a good job of encapsulating what I think was wrong with the bio though, which isn't focused on the geeky details:


Maybe Jobs wasn't forthcoming or wouldn't go to that level, but so many major events, decisions, and turning points in the Jobs narrative get glossed over that it's impossible to get anything other than a superficial feel for who the person really was. There's tons of who/what/when, but very little why or how.

Case in point, we hear over and over about him crying, but never once is the question posed to him about why he was crying. We are reminded over and over again about the LSD, but we never find out how that contributed to his life, if indeed it did.

The quality of the book itself is brutal too. That it was rushed to accommodate his passing is, I think, without doubt. Technical inaccuracies aside, it feels disjointed and you can distinctly tell where certain paragraphs were cut and pasted more than once into the narrative. You don't have to look any further than the fact that they already want to do a second edition to realize it was poorly edited and that many sections of the book need a re-write.

Is is still worth reading with its flaws?

Wait for the 2nd edition maybe?