One of the points that occurred to me as I was writing this piece was that Jobs’s life was so fascinating that it’s pretty much impossible to completely screw up writing about it. Just stick to the facts and you can’t help but end up with an engaging story. A lot of people reading this book doubtlessly have never read about the early days with Woz, the creation of the Macintosh, Jobs’s power struggles with Sculley, etc. Among Apple die-hards this is very well-tilled ground, and so it’s easy to forget how amazing it all is.

You’re right that people are reacting as much to their own expectations of the book as to its actual content. People (me among them) expected Isaacson to get something for all the access he had to Jobs — to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and deliver something that was qualitatively above and beyond what everyone before him had done. That he did not succeed is not entirely his fault: as I said in the piece, there is no hidden side of Steve Jobs that proved to be the key to his genius. What we saw was, in the end, what we got. But what is Isaacson’s responsibility is how he approached the material, and that’s where I feel he came up short.

One of the best pieces I’ve ever read on Jobs was this profile in Esquire magazine. The author didn’t have any first-person access. But it really grapples with the contradictions of Jobs’s personality and tries to shed light on how his work reflected his inner nature. You actually feel you understand Jobs better after reading it. Reading Isaacson’s book, I certainly knew more facts about Jobs, but I’m not sure how much better I understood him.

Here’s the big thing for me: I thought from my perspective, as someone interested in the man who had read none of the other books that touch upon his life or his companies, it was a great volume. I realize there are probably errors (I assume this was rushed through editing based on how the release date kept moving up) and that it’s hard to write a book about such an iconic figure that will please both casual readers and the diehards who have collected chestnuts about his life for years.

I feel as though many complaints (not necessarily yours, Dan) are about what people thought the book should be, rather than dealing with what it is. This was never meant to be the definitive revelatory statement about Jobs for people who can take you to the table at the Starbucks where Jobs and Eric Schmidt met that one time. It’s missing detail because it’s covering an immense amount of ground in a short time. It’s also not a book about Jobs and the technology industry, or Jobs and the creations he managed into being–it’s about Jobs, the man. Of course it will focus on the more personal over the abstract, technical.

I do take your point on the writing front–again, I will be generous and assume this had something to do with the rush on publication as well. I didn’t find it boring, however. I felt it was just pretty clean and unadorned. For better or worse, it did get out of Jobs’ way and let him speak to his life.

Isaacson has already made noise about returning to the book and doing an expanded edition. With those sales, he’d be crazy not to. What I’d rather see is a follow-up volume that is perhaps co-written with a tech writer and that goes product by product through his career with a deeper focus on the many decisions and discussions that brought each one into being. I have no confidence such a thing will happen but man it’d be great.

My gist is that interviews are not enough.

I guess I can manipulate the tags on the music files to arbitrarily say what I want them to say. I could treat music as information and separate it somehow or reorganize it to do something else with it. I suppose if I set out with a thousand songs and maybe forty playlists and I can shuffle those out once a month or every sixty days, I’m content. I have no need to have more than that at my whim. I’m willing to bet I could fit that on a 16GB SD card model that I already selected without a fancy screen and it weighs some miniscule amount. I could probably scale it under 1GB if I mixed the sound down because I can still run with an FM radio and be content. Part of my reasoning comes from my social location and understanding that I have love in my life, a roof over my head and I could make music if I had to in my own mind because property is impermanent as I have given away thousands of dollars of it already. I have challenged others to do the same.

Keynes vs. Kayek Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc

I do own a lot of music and it is because I go through phrases and my vocational aspirations require me to have music for ritual and ceremony whereas there is music that I listen for purely entertainment reasons. Some merges in a spot between the two which is where truth meets enlightenment (Dan) or spirituality (Me) or some transcendent place (Cece) which is what usually gets loaded for running, ruck marches, or other functions. Once again, I digress.

My previous vocation, current aspiration and ongoing ethic usually means that things must be small and my social location makes me understand that I am a white guy with a bit of privilege and in a position of wealth and some power. I should be spending my money on debt reduction rather than lifestyle accessories. I become a little more aware each passing month and do my best to be accountable which is why this hit me the way it did today.

I find I like to have access to everything sometimes, but if I’m doing something where I am okay with just playlists or whatever’s on hand, then I use my phone or my shuffle. I’ll miss the Classic because it’s the only player that can hold almost every song I own.

My next replacement for the Shuffle if it falls in the wash would be something else from Archos. Probably their and an SDHC memory card which is pretty cheap by now. I get my music in mp3 format from iTunes and I can copy and paste onto the mp3. It automatically gets copies onto an WDTVLive Hub downstairs so I can listen while studying or painting or while in meditation.

I’m tempted to want one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Archos-501598-500-Internet-Tablet/dp/B004LLQ47M/ref=sr_1_2?s=mp3&ie=UTF8&qid=1317311141&sr=1-2

It’s another gadget but it’s big as hell and it would play my music direct. It might also replace the little portable external 320 GB drive I use to carry around my iTunes library. And being a supernerd, I’d probably maintain that iTunes library as well, for the sake of my iPad and my anal-retentive tendencies.

I do not keep music on my smartphone and having my current Galaxy-S is a position of privilege. I am attempting to eliminate it and work backwards. I simply do not have the financial wherewithal to spend money on something that will support a web, messaging and phone plan all at once. This is also why I do not keep a lot of music on it. Maybe this is also why I am a Luddite to a certain extent as you remark in your post. I would rather use a music device for music and strictly use my phone for calls and not all of the additional apps. To this extent, I let my subscription to last.fm expire simply because I don’t listen to the radio, streaming, or music on a separate device. My XM subscription is in my car or at home but that is even slightly off-point.

I suppose I remember the days of austerity when I had to change out my playlists on a 128MB music player while deployed in Bosnia and had to convert my music down from CD-quality down to FM radio in order to hold enough music for a 10-kilometer run. It ran on a AAA battery that a recharged on a European two-pronged charger that fit into a wall socket and the USB transfer cable pinned out on the same port as the headphones. That mimics the current headphone jack on the Shuffle, come to think of it. There was no room for m3u files or playlists, I had to manually label songs with numbers in front of them to make them play properly in the order of my run and that was fine by me. I often go through my local Microcenter (similar to Frye’s which I prefer) to look at the USB thumbdrives with the headphone jacks because they’re usually around $20 and easily replaceable and simple to work with. What more do you need than that?

Many people have talked on various talks on about entitlement, worth and privilege when it comes to owning Apple products or cell phones in general. I may not be able to sell you on an mp3 player directly but I might be able to point you in the direction of some very spartan models that I might end up using because gadgetry for a Buddhist no practices non-attachment and impermanence is of great importance.

Kind Regards
Jane

I think what may happen is that the Mac OS/iOS distinction will cease to matter to anyone but developers. As I said in my article, there is little reason for the average user to know or care what operating system they’re running, unless you’re interested in selling it to them as a product, and Apple seems to be moving away from that.