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Hitting the Books: How Mildred Dresselhaus' research proved we had graphite all wrong
In Carbon Queen, author Maia Weinstock illuminates the life and foundational scientific achievements of MIT's first female institute professor, National Medal of Science winner Mildred Dresselhaus.
CBS All Access lands Muhammad Ali biography '8 Fights'
CBS continues to ramp up its All Access content to compete with the likes of Netflix, with six to seven new shows set to hit the streaming service, like the Will Ferrell-produced No Activity. Now Deadline reports that CBS' service has just landed 8 Fights - The Life of Muhammad Ali for development. It will be produced by Morgan Freeman, Revelations Entertainment and CBS TV Studios.
The Daily Grind: Are character bios due for revival?
One of my favorite things about classic MMOs is that they refused to give up on the "RPG" part of MMORPG. As in a tabletop game, in classic MMOs you were often given an opportunity to write a biography for your character, then import it into the game and attach it to your profile in some way so that other players could read it. In some games, having a superb character bio could snag the attention of a gamemaster and land you even more recognition in the form of a badge or achievement. It bothers me that these little touches are missing from so many modern MMOs. They don't take much effort on the part of the designers, and they sell the impression that creativity still matters, that your character is more than just a chat handle and a suit of armor. Are character bios due for a revival? Did you ever or would you use the option in your game of choice if you could? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Daily Update for June 17, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Steve Jobs bio appearing in paperback September 10
Walter Isaacson's bestselling biography of the late Apple founder and CEO, Steve Jobs, will be hitting bookstores again late this summer. On September 10, the book will be released as a paperback featuring a much younger portrait of Jobs on the cover. As you can see in the images at the top of this post, the two portraits are similar. The top portrait, from the Macintosh launch year of 1984, was taken by photographer Norman Steef, the same man who shot the iconic image of Jobs posing with a Mac that was used on the cover of Time magazine's commemorative issue in 2011. The newer image used on the hardback edition was taken by photographer Albert Watson. Amazon is apparently taking pre-orders for the paperback edition at US$17.99, although the pre-order page shows a book title of "Untitled" by "Cathy Unknown" as placeholders. The hardcover is currently available for $17.74 and those desiring an electronic version can pick up the Kindle edition for just $13.60. The iBooks edition is available for $13.99. When it was released shortly after Jobs' death in 2011, the book took just 45 days to become the year's top seller in the Amazon bookstore.
Aaron Sorkin discusses making the Jobs biopic
Filmmaker and writer Aaron Sorkin (probably best known for his work on The West Wing, though I really liked his dramacom Sports Night a lot) recently sat down with Walt Mossberg at All Things Digital to have a chat about his work on one of the new Steve Jobs biographical movies coming out. He talked frankly about his current attempts to try and give justice to the life and times of Apple's famous co-founder. Sorkin says, not surprisingly, that trying to live up to expectations on a movie like this will be hard: "This was a little like writing about The Beatles," he says. "There are so many people out there who know so much about him and who revere him, that I just saw a minefield of disappointment." Sorkin says the movie probably won't be a complete account of everything Steve Jobs, just because that's probably not the best way to really tell his story. Rather, "I'll probably identify the point of friction that appeals to me and then approach that." And of course, Sorkin has a little bit of experience writing about innovative tech figures already, having written the very well-done Social Network movie about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. It's still very early in the process, but Sorkin says that like Zuckerberg, he'll have to see Jobs in a certain light to try and make his story resonate: "I can't judge the character. He has to, for me, be a hero. I have to find the parts of him that are like me. I have to be able to defend this character. With someone like Steve Jobs, to put it as simply as possible, you want to write the character as if they are making the case to God why they should be allowed into heaven." [via Fortune]
Woz hired as technical advisor on Jobs biopic
Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter for the Facebook-inspired The Social Network, is working on an adaptation of the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. To help him in this quest, Sorkin has hired Steve Wozniak as a technical advisor, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune. Woz will help Sorkin accurately represent Jobs personality and show the technology that drove Steve Jobs's life. Sorkin said he wants to focus on a controversial or difficult time in Jobs's life and won't do a full-life story. He's been busy working on another project and hasn't decided what part of Jobs's life he will cover. Work on the screenplay will begin in earnest over the summer.
Aaron Sorkin to pen Jobs' biopic, Variety reports
Aaron Sorkin, fresh from winning an Oscar for writing "The Social Network," will move from covering Facebook to Apple. Sony has hired Sorkin to turn Walter Isaacson's "Steve Jobs" biography into a feature film, Variety reports. Sony acquired the movie rights to Isaacson's biography a couple weeks before it was released in October. Another Jobs biopic is scheduled to begin filming this month. This film, with the working title "Jobs," stars Ashton Kutcher and covers the years 1971-2000. "Jobs" is slated to be released in the fourth quarter of this year. [Via Mashable]
Steve Jobs biopic to begin filming in May
The producer behind the independent film about Steve Jobs told Neowin that filming on the biopic will start in May in preparation for release in the fourth quarter of this year. The film will be shot in Los Angeles. Producer Mark Hulme said the film would focus on Steve Jobs' life between 1971 and 2000. Ashton Kutcher will play Jobs. The film, which The Daily said was called "Jobs" also has the working title "Jobs: Get Inspired." Hulme said there was a wealth of source material to use for the film, and he also would be relying on people who knew Jobs personally. [Via AppleInsider]
Walter Isaacson reportedly to expand Jobs biography
Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson spoke recently at a meeting hosted by the Commonwealth Club of California, and said that he very likely will add an addendum to the already 630-page biography of Apple's co-founder. "This is the first or second draft" of the book, he reportedly said. "It's not the final draft." One obvious place the book could expand, according to Isaacson, is on the period after Jobs' death earlier this year, and the response around the country and the world from nearly everyone associated with Apple. Isaacson also says he's thinking about doing a more annotated version, including more details on the life Jobs shared with Isaacson over the last few years. Isaacson also talked a little bit about Jobs' input on the book -- he specifically asked to help design the cover, and Isaacson was happy to oblige. And Isaacson says that during all of his research and their talks, the one thing Jobs really wanted him never to speak about was philanthropy; Jobs obviously wanted that part of his life to remain out of the public eye. But that didn't stop him, Isaacson remembers, from poking a little fun at Bill Gates' famous giving: "Bill Gates was better at philanthropy because he didn't care about making great products," Isaacson quotes Jobs as saying to him.
The All-ER lineup: Clooney and Wyle look to (re)-tackle Steve Jobs film role
No cited sources for this tidbit -- not even the usual "a person close to the production" -- but the UK's Now magazine sparked a rumor wildfire this week when it suggested that two veterans of NBC's ER are both interested in playing Steve Jobs for the upcoming film version of Walter Isaacson's biography. George Clooney and Noah Wyle (50 and 40 years old, respectively) are the two leading men in question; if you guessed Anthony Edwards and Goran Visnjic, sorry. The younger Wyle has two advantages in this horse race; for one, he's played Jobs before in the TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. For another, he's younger -- if the producers hope to have a single actor portray the Apple co-founder from his Reed College & Cupertino garage days all the way forward through his life, they'll either need an actor in the middle of that range or some serious help from the CGI wizards at Pixar. If I were the one casting this film, I'd forgo the high-wattage but aging Clooney and the been-there-done-that Wyle for something different. Maybe a performer with a legitimate claim to Jobs's Middle Eastern heritage (Alexander Siddig?) or a credible indie favorite with an edge (Sam Rockwell). Of course, if we want the perfect combination of Steve-esque looks and fan favorite, there's always Justin Long. Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog has a poll running which shows a dramatic (5 to 1) preference for Wyle over Clooney. [hat tip to CNET]
The New York Times goes one-on-one with Walter Isaacson
It's turn-the-table time, and the man who spent the last several years interviewing people for his Steve Jobs biography is now being interviewed by the New York Times. As expected, the interview focuses on Isaacson's book and the time he spent with Steve Jobs. In his conversation with New York Times reporter Nick Bilton, Isaacson said that in his latter years Jobs was interested in transforming television, textbooks and photography. Isaacson said he didn't include these details in the book because it wasn't fair to Apple. Besides information about Apple and book writing, Isaacson talks about how Jobs was both a hippie misfit and a shrewd businessman. Contrary to popular belief, Isaacson also explains that Steve Jobs was not a jerk. The interview gives us some additional insight into Isaacson's biography and is a worthwhile read, so grab a cup of coffee and head over to the New York Times website.
Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs bio among Amazon's best books of 2011
It's only been out less than a month and Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs has already made its way onto Amazon's Best Books of 2011 list. The biography is number eight in the Top 10 Editor's picks for 2011 and is number one in the best Biographies & Memoirs of 2011 category, both for print and Kindle versions. These lists are not based on sales numbers only, but are derived from titles chosen by Amazon's book editors. Isaacson's biography has attracted a lot of attention since it launched. It paints a stark portrait of Jobs and suggests his characteristic gruff demeanor is more fact than fiction. The book also contains some juicy tidbits about Apple's product plans, including the confirmation that Jobs had, at one point, considered the idea of an Apple-branded TV. If you haven't grabbed a copy of the biography, check out the excellent review written by our own Chris Rawson. It'll give you an inside look at the book and help you decide if Isaccson's work is worth US$18 of your hard-earned cash. (Hint: it is.)
Jobs biography draws huge crowds in China
China's fascination with all things Apple continues to grow, as evidenced by the recent release of the Steve Jobs biography in the country. According to an article by Chris Chang of M.I.C. Gadget, all 250,000 Chinese edition copies of the book were sold within a day of its release. Somewhere, Steve is smiling at this amazing reception of the story of his life. M.I.C. Gadget found many photos and videos posted online showing crowds waiting outside of bookstores -- if one didn't know better, you'd think they were waiting in line for the release of the latest iPhone or iPad. As the Chinese website notes, "Steve Jobs is widely respected and admired in China for his innovations, while his products are considered fashion symbols by the locals." The displays that were created for the books were just this side of fanatical. As you can see in the photos above as well as in the many other photos in a gallery with the M.I.C. Gadget post, bookstore owners took pride in creating many shrine-like displays featuring posters of Jobs, the Apple logo, and words spelled out with the books. Retailers even gave away t-shirts and cards emblazoned with Jobs's image to people who had waited patiently in line. For an idea of the crowds at Chinese bookstores for the Walter Isaacson biography of Jobs, be sure to watch the Chinese-language video below.
Jon Stewart interviews Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote his biography of Steve Jobs. In the seven-minute interview (embedded below), Stewart and Isaacson discuss the the process of writing the biography while trying to stay objective about its subject -- a task Isaacson admits was difficult, especially in the face of Jobs's long illness. The two men discuss something I also found fascinating about Jobs when I read the book: his extremely emotional nature. Stewart: The really interesting thing in the book is how often Steve Jobs cries. Isaacson: He's a very emotional person. That was the biggest surprise to me. Stewart: He is a weeper. They go on a bit of a tangent after that, but eventually Isaacson gets to the core of both Jobs himself and public opinion of him. "He connected emotion to technology. This is why the outpouring of grief at his death was beyond what most may have expected," Isaacson says. "I think that emotionalism came from a deep passion for artistic things." The real gem of the interview comes at the end, when Isaacson describes the difference between Jobs and Bill Gates. "In the end, [Bill Gates] makes the Zune and Steve makes the iPod." Stewart busts out laughing, along with the audience, and responds, "That is the best eulogy I have ever heard in my life." The full video's embedded below (sorry iOS users, Comedy Central doesn't offer a non-Flash version and there's nothing we can do about it), and it's definitely worth watching. If you're looking for a more comprehensive review of the biography itself, we just happen to have one right here at TUAW. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook
Aaron Sorkin reportedly considered to write Jobs biopic
You had to see this one coming a mile away after hearing that Sony Pictures obtained the rights to a film version of Steve Jobs's biography. The LA Times reports that Aaron Sorkin, the writer behind the Mark Zuckerberg biopic The Social Network, is reportedly in consideration to write a screenplay based on Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. Sorkin's screenplay for The Social Network won an Academy Award, so he seems an ideal candidate for a film version of Steve Jobs. He has a well-deserved reputation for writing smart dialogue coming from smart characters -- if you've ever bellowed "You can't HANDLE the truth" at one of your friends in a faux-Jack Nicholson drawl, thank Sorkin for his screenplay for A Few Good Men. Condensing Steve Jobs's entire life into a 2.5-hour film is going to be a monumental task no matter who tries to tackle it. Isaacson's biography is richly detailed, and much of that detail is going to wind up on the cutting room floor when translated to film. After having read through Steve Jobs myself, I'll be very interested to see which parts of it end up onscreen.
Review: Walter Isaacson's 'Steve Jobs'
I've just finished a marathon session of reading all the way through Steve Jobs on my iPad -- and I'm sure Jobs would have appreciated the odd harmony of people reading his life story on a device he helped create. After reading his biography, I'm no longer convinced that Steve Jobs would have liked me if we'd ever met in person. At least not at first. More likely, he'd have torn me a new one in our first meeting and told me that I sucked and everything I did was worthless. Then, in our second meeting, he'd have parroted my ideas back at me as though they were his own. It was apparently one of his signature moves, and it probably would have made me want to throw a chair at him. But even if I had been provoked that far, he most likely would have just bellowed that I should have thrown a better chair. Reading biographies is perhaps a different experience for me than it is for most people, since I spent most of my Master's thesis examining the concept of truth in biographical works. Most of the memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies I've read have fallen into one of two categories. Either the text was something designed to lionize its subject and make him or her seem larger than life, or else the writer had taken pains to focus on only the parts of the subject's life that fit into a clean narrative arc while leaving everything else on the cutting room floor, an approach that leads to easy and almost cinematic storytelling but leaves out much of the facts. Neither approach to biographical writing strikes me as particularly true; in fact, almost every biography I've read seems to contain about as much actual truth as an episode of Star Trek. The tendency to over-praise or over-dramatize is both pernicious and pervasive throughout the various forms of biographical texts. Walter Isaacson's 656-page profile of Steve Jobs falls in neither category. It is quite possibly the truest biography I've ever read. In the process of telling the unvarnished truth about Steve Jobs, it dispels much of the myth and magic surrounding the man and his legacy. It does not depict Steve Jobs as the information age's equivalent of Moses descending from Mount Sinai with an iPad in each hand. It would have been easy for some misinformed hack to portray Jobs that way in a quick cash-in "unauthorized" biography soon after Jobs's death, but it also would have been closer to fiction than biography. What Isaacson gives us instead is a portrait of a man with keen insight, brilliant powers of observation, and a stubborn determination to "put a dent in the universe." However, the biography also depicts a man with deep flaws, some of which arguably contributed to his early death. It humanizes a man who's spent much of the past decade as a living legend in multiple arenas, and it gives valuable insight into the person Steve Jobs was, not just the icon he became. After reading his biography, I get the sense that no matter how brilliant Steve Jobs was or how many fundamental shifts in our landscape he spearheaded, in the end, he was as human as the rest of us. It's a testament to Isaacson's skill as a biographer that readers can at last obtain the picture of Steve Jobs as a human being rather than a legend. Jobs's reputation as a control freak was legendary, yet he relinquished all control over the contents of his biography. It's a surprising move from a man who insisted on so much control over all of his life's projects -- the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad were all born and thrived partially because Jobs refused to cede control over them. Jobs explained his motivations to Isaacson for his atypically hands-off approach to the biography. Partially it was because he wanted his children to know him better, flaws and all. It was also because he wanted to make sure that only someone possessed of all the facts about his life would write his story. "When I got sick, I realized other people would write about me if I died, and they wouldn't know anything. They'd get it all wrong. So I wanted to make sure someone heard what I had to say." Jobs's biography manages to allow him to get the last word in many debates. Many of the people who have toasted both him and his achievements will find themselves bearing the brunt of his last barbs against them. Some, like Jobs threatening to go "thermonuclear" on Android, have already been outed. Others are a bit more deeply buried within the text, but once found they're both candid and a bit stunning. "IBM was essentially Microsoft at its worst," Jobs said, reminiscing about the early days of the personal computer revolution. "They were not a force for innovation; they were a force for evil. They were like AT&T or Microsoft or Google is." My jaw dropped at this quote, but another later on in the book was more alarming. Immediately after heaping praise on his successor, Tim Cook, Steve said, "Tim's not a product person, per se." Considering that at many other points in the book Jobs heaped scorn on people like Bill Gates or John Sculley whom he also considered more concerned with profits than product quality, his unfiltered opinion of Cook's product sensibilities definitely raised an eyebrow. Much of the biography will be familiar to hardcore Apple enthusiasts. Chapters on the birth of the Macintosh will be familiar to anyone who's read Andy Hertzfeld's recollections at folklore.org, and if you're a regular TUAW reader there won't be too much in the chapters about the iPod, iPhone, or iPad that you haven't already read. Older Apple fans will likely find the earliest chapters about the founding days of Apple not much more than a refresher course. But I suspect that few people will be able to read the entire book and not discover some surprising fact about Steve Jobs that they didn't already know. If you come into Steve Jobs already hating him, the biography gives you plenty of reasons to hold onto that opinion. If instead you view Jobs as a personal hero, there are plenty of episodes within his life story that might make you reconsider that opinion. Isaacson doesn't shy away from describing Steve Jobs's darker moments or personality deficiencies, some of which border on the downright despicable. To put it lightly, Steve Jobs was not a "people person." One of his ex-girlfriends read about Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the DSM and said, "It fits so well and explained so much of what we had struggled with, that I realized expecting him to be nicer or less self-centered was like expecting a blind man to see." Even his closest friends, like Apple design guru Jonathan Ive, noted that Jobs often exhibited a vicious and unnecessary lack of empathy for those around him. The fact that so many people all over the world have been lauding him since his death, both friends and dogged competitors, speaks to the complex and paradoxical nature of Steve Jobs, a man whose greatest goal was to establish empathy between people and technology but who often displayed precious little empathy of his own. Isaacson's biography of Jobs isn't a character assassination by any means (though I do wonder why the first third of the book dwells so often on Jobs's body odor during the 1970s). That said, I still feel terrifically sorry for any employees who find themselves at the mercy of a supervisor who uses Steve Jobs as a managerial handbook, just like the legions of young would-be entrepreneurs trying to emulate the callous Mark Zuckerberg they saw in The Social Network. If anyone comes away from reading Steve Jobs thinking that being a leader makes it okay to be an asshole, they'll have missed about 99 percent of the point. Anyone can cut an employee to shreds or throw epic temper tantrums at the slightest provocation, but replicating Jobs's intuition, perfectionism, dedication, and vision is arguably something that only one person in seven billion can manage to pull off. Steve Jobs is at its core the study of the man himself, but along the way it's also a fascinating history of the genesis, near-death, and resurgence of Apple. It also describes the birth, near-death, and ascendancy of Pixar, with fascinating details I've never read before. As the book follows Jobs through the personal computer revolution, the birth of the Macintosh, his "wilderness years" at NeXT and Pixar, and his return to Apple and subsequent paving over of the landscape for the music industry, cell phones, and tablet computing, Steve Jobs's biography also offers incredibly detailed insights into how our world shifted from the hobbyist computing era of the mid-'70s to the ubiquitous techscape we live in today. Steve Jobs didn't enact any of these revolutionary changes singlehandedly -- his biography takes pains to make that clear -- but he was most assuredly at or near the center of all of them. Though the book makes his flaws obvious to readers, it also makes clear that we would be living in a very different world if Steve Jobs hadn't set out to put a dent in the universe. Anyone with even a passing interest in Apple's history, and anyone who's ever wondered how so very much about the technology landscape has changed so fundamentally in just 35 years, owes it to themselves to read this book.
Steve Jobs bio debuts atop Amazon, Barnes & Nobles best-seller list
Steve Jobs's biography debuted ahead of schedule this week and skyrocketed to the top of the charts at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Exact sales numbers are not available, but the biography is the top seller on Amazon's Kindle, hardcover and audiobook bestseller lists. It also tops the charts on Barnes and Noble's hardcover, Nook and audiobook lists. The biography, written by former Times editor Walter Isaacson, was originally scheduled for a March 2012 launch. That date was pushed up to November 21, 2011 over the summer. The biography unexpectedly became available on Sunday via the Amazon Kindle Store and Apple's iBookstore, while the hardcover version went on sale in stores and online starting yesterday. Now that it is officially in the hands of Apple fans worldwide, details of the book are now being publicly released. The juiciest tidbit to come from the biography is the suggestion that Jobs and Apple were possibly working on an Apple-branded television set. The book also details Jobs's dislike of Android and his vow to go nuclear in his fight against the competing platform.
Steve Jobs biography released early for Kindle, iBookstore (updated)
Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs has been released a couple hours early on the Kindle Store, and its release in the US iBookstore is expected at midnight. The US iBookstore is still showing the book as available for pre-order as of this writing, but it should be available for download within the next couple of hours. Multiple details of the biography have leaked out over the past week via multiple media outlets, and a 60 Minutes interview with Walter Isaacson provided some fascinating insights into both the biography itself and the man who was its subject. Along with many other members of the Apple-loving world, I am very much looking forward to reading it, and I will have a review of the work up on TUAW as soon as I've finished reading it. Look for that review later on in the week -- with a print length of 656 pages, it might take me a day or two to read through the whole book. Thanks to the readers who tipped us! Update: The biography went live on the iBookstore an hour earlier than expected, so it's now available.
Steve "finally cracked" the TV puzzle, says bio
We're seeing an unending stream of tidbits from the new biography of Steve Jobs to be released tomorrow. Author Walter Isaacson, who interviewed Jobs extensively has this interesting passage as quoted by Razorianfly: "He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant." "'I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,' he told me. 'It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.' No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. 'It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.'" This will add to rampant speculation about Apple pursuing something beyond the Apple TV, which Jobs always referred to as a 'hobby'. I hope Apple moves ahead with it. I can't think of another consumer electronics device that would benefit more from an Apple upgrade. As it is today, handling a DVR, searching for shows and dealing with a TV program guide in any way is a method that could have been designed by the architects of the Spanish Inquisition. I've had both Comcast and DirecTV, and it's no fun interacting with either. There have been some iPad and iPhone apps that ease the pain a little, largely because you get a keyboard instead of 'cursor hell' when trying to enter text, but so much more could be done. Think about what Apple brought to the whole experience of using a cellphone. Come on Apple, we've suffered enough.
