The list of technical and historical inaccuracies is long. The book claims that when Jobs first returned to Apple in 1997 he was immediately referred to as “iCEO,” despite the fact that both the iMac and all subsequent “i” branding were still a year away. Isaacson also states very matter-of-factly that Apple didn’t really use the NeXT OS as a radical break from the classic operating system, but instead used parts of it to “evolve” Mac OS 9 into what we use today. Nothing could be further from the truth. The transition from 9 to X was more like a brain transplant, with a Classic compatibility layer on top to run some of the older software. These examples may seem like small nitpicks, but there are plenty of others just like it throughout and they point to a big-picture issue in the telling of this story.
At times, Isaacson’s style reads more like an outline with details filled in as opposed to a well-conceived story.
There are definitely more than a few of us who had a problem with Mr. Isaacson’s biography of Jobs.