John Gruber finally got around to writing a bit about Walter Isaacon’s ‘Steve Jobs’, and I just got around to reading his article last night. This is, I think, John Gruber at his best. His observations are very astute. John starts off by asking whether you would want Apple hardware with someone else’s software, or Apple’s software with someone else’s hardware.
But, as a thought experiment, which is more important to you? What phone would you rather carry? An iPhone 4S modified to run Android or Windows Phone 7? Or a top-of-the-line HTC, Samsung, or Nokia handset running iOS 5?
What computer would you rather use? A MacBook running Windows 7, or, say, a Lenovo ThinkPad running Mac OS X 10.7?
This may not seem like it’s related to the subject at hand, but by the time you get to the end of the article, everything is tied together so tightly that you’ll wonder how you didn’t see it.
I do not think there is a single thing I disagree with in Gruber’s piece. I was so very disappointed in Mr. Isaacson’s bio of Steve Jobs, but this really strikes at the heart of that disappointment and I’m not sure I could have put it in words quite like this. I did complain about some of the same things, but this really captures the essence and fundamental problem with Isaacson’s work.
Perhaps some will be unsurprised that those of us sometimes labeled as “Apple fanatics” had serious issues with Isaacson’s works, and will even attribute it to the notion that we cannot stand anything critical of Steve Jobs. To say that, I think, completely misses the point. We know — I certainly know — that Jobs had many flaws. And I even think most of those flaws were represented accurately in the book. But Isaacson missed the point in a major way.
As Gruber points out, design is how it works, and Isaacson missed that.
Isaacson clearly believes that design is merely how a product looks and feels, and that “engineering” is how it actually works.
And yes, Gruber does tie in the complete and utter falsehood left to stand in the book about NextStep OS never being used… which is so very false as to be almost comical.