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David Fincher in talks to direct upcoming Steve Jobs biopic and other news from Feb. 27, 2014
The Ashton Kutcher 2013 film on Steve Jobs didn't set the world on fire, and fans are eagerly awaiting a new film based on Walter Isaacson's best selling biography of the Apple founder and icon. The Hollywood Reporter and other media say that director David Fincher (The Social Network) is in talks with Sony to do the film, which would re-unite the director with writer Aaron Sorkin. The film has had a long gestation. Sony took on the project in 2011, and the script was started in 2012. Fincher is a director who takes his time on projects, so don't look for a quick appearance of this film. No actor has been selected for the role of Jobs, but Steve Wozniak is along as a consultant. Wozniak was very critical of the Kutcher film because of the way many people were portrayed. Other news from Thursday includes: The Apple store went down late Thursday evening Pacific time. Why it's down, we don't know, but we'll let you know the changes when it comes back up. Google Hangouts has been updated for iOS 7, including picture-in-picture video calling for the iPad. AppleInsider is reporting that users are complaining that OS X 10.9.2 has broken AirPlay Mirroring in Mavericks. A number of failures are being reported to Apple's support forums. ABC is live streaming the Oscars to its iOS app, however it's only available in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Fresno, Calif. if you subscribe to one of the cable providers there. Kendrick Lamar is the latest to be added to the iTunes Festival lineup. 9to5Mac noticed that Apple has released a new page on its developer site to help them get the most out of design for iOS 7 and OS X.
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.
Daily Update for March 6, 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
CNN talks with Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson
If Walter Isaacson's 600-plus page tome covering the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs left you wanting more, CNN recently sat down with the writer as well as John Huey, author of the Sam Walton tell-all, to shed some additional light on two of the most influential businessmen ever. The chat covers everything from Jobs' showmanship regarding product reveals to both men's refusal to play by anyone else's rules. When the topic of whether either man could be considered a "genius" pops up, both biographers put the label firmly on Jobs, with Huey comparing Steve Jobs to Thomas Edison and Sam Walton to Henry Ford. You can read the full article on Fortune's website, or catch it in the December issue of Fortune magazine.
Judge: Walter Isaacson doesn't have to hand over biography notes
It's beginning to look like we'll need to change our name to "The Unofficial Apple Legal Weblog," since we have a story of one more case involving Apple. This story is in reference to a class action suit regarding alleged price fixing on ebooks by Apple. Lawyers for the plaintiffs have requested access to Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson's private notes from his interviews with Jobs, but the judge in the case has ruled that Isaacson doesn't need to comply. Isaacson invoked reporter's privilege and refused to hand over source material and a list of documents and recordings involving his time with Jobs. U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote agreed on July 20 that Isaacson didn't need to comply with the request, but gave the class-action lawyers an out -- they can try again to force Isaacson to comply provided that they pass a legal test that sometimes allows disclosure of journalists' non-confidential material. One lawyer for the plaintiff, Steven Berman, argues that the reporter's privilege is moot, since Jobs never asked Isaacson for confidentiality. Berman also says that he has another source for Jobs' comments about ebooks. The Department of Justice is trying hard to knock down the time-honored reporter's privilege in a case where they're attempting to get a Wall Street Journal reporter to testify in a case against a former CIA officer. Fortunately, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals is friendly towards a free press, commenting in another case that "wholesale exposure of press files ... would burden the press with heavy costs of subpoena compliance, and could otherwise impair its ability to perform its duties ... [it] would risk "the symbolic harm of making journalists appear to be an investigative arm of the judicial system, the government, or private parties." [via paidContent]
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]
Daily Update for April 5, 2012
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
Walter Isaacson: "Apple will settle Google Android dispute"
Walter Isaacson, the author of the blockbuster bestselling biography of Steve Jobs, believes that the "less emotional" Apple CEO Tim Cook will settle the company's dispute with Google over the Android operating system for smartphones. In his book, Isaacson quoted Steve Jobs as telling Google executives, "You can't pay me off. I'm here to destroy you," referring to the way that the widely-licensed Android OS parroted iOS, in much the way that Windows followed the Mac's look and feel. How and when Cook will settle the dispute with Google wasn't part of Isaacson's statement to the Royal Institution in London. Isaacson also hinted that Apple will revolutionize the digital photography and television markets in the next two years. While the rumors of an Internet-connected Apple HDTV have been flying since Isaacson's book was published last fall, this is the first time that digital photography has been mentioned as another potential big market for Apple. The company's iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch products contain digital cameras, and the company makes the popular iPhoto and Aperture software products as well, but those products are hardly revolutionary. In his talk, Isaacson also professed his belief that, in a hundred years, Jobs will be seen as one of the great all-time inventors alongside Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. Isaacson was quoted as saying that "Steve Jobs is a greater genius than Microsoft's Bill Gates because he has transformed multiple industries." [via Digital Spy]
Walter Isaacson on the leadership of Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson, the author who wrote the Steve Jobs biography, penned a recent column for the Harvard Business Review focusing on the traits that made Jobs an excellent business leader. Isaacson spent many hours with the Apple CEO while writing this book and uses the insights he obtained to draw out those traits that helped Jobs re-build Apple into the one of the most powerful companies in the world. Among other traits, Isaacson talks about Jobs's intense focus and his emphasis on simplicity. The entire article is seven pages long and includes 14 different qualities that sets Jobs apart from his peers. It's well worth a read if you have the time to digest all the information packed into this column.
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.
Daily Update for December 6, 2011
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.
Steve Jobs bio Amazon's best selling hardback book of 2011
When Steve Jobs selected Walter Isaacson to write his biography, he probably knew that the book about his life would be a bestseller. Sure enough, the hardcover edition of "Steve Jobs" topped the bestseller list for 2011, edging out "Heaven is for Real," "Unbroken" and other titles. This is an amazing feat considering that the Jobs biography wasn't actually in bookstores until October 24. Many of the other titles have been on bookshelves for well over a year. While the hardcover of the book is at the top of the stack for 2011, the ebook version is (with about three weeks left in the year) only in the #21 spot in the list. If you're one of the few Apple fans out there who hasn't had a chance to read the book cover-to-cover by this point, take a look at TUAW blogger Chris Rawson's excellent review of "Steve Jobs". Chris wrote his Master's thesis on the concept of truth in biographical works, and notes that "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."
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
Journalist Brent Schlender shares memories of Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs interacted with many people over the course of his career at Apple, NeXT and Pixar. Employees and journalists covering his companies became part of his inner circle and got a rare glimpse of the real man behind the public persona. One such journalist was famed Fortune writer Brent Schlender. Schlender followed the career of Steve Jobs starting in 1987, covering him when he was at NeXT and then again as head of Apple. In a recent Fortune article, Schlender recounts his time with Jobs over the past two decades. He tells the story of how Jobs laughed when Schlender called him the "graying prince of a shrinking kingdom" in an article that appeared before Jobs introduced the iPod and turned Apple around. Schlender also recounts a time when Jobs invited him and his children over on a Saturday to show them an early version of Toy Story. Jobs wasn't interested in Schlender's opinion, he was watching the kid's reactions. Even though most of it was an animated storyboard and not fully fleshed out, the children were captivated by what they saw. You can read more about Jobs's interaction with Schlender and the media in his piece at Fortune. It may not be as comprehensive as Isaacson's biography, but it's still worth a read for those interested in a personal look at the man who co-founded Apple.
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.
