The first review of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs is in, and it’s a good one.
Writing in the New York Times, critic Janet Maslin says the 630-page tome is “clear, elegant and concise.”
“Steve Jobs” greatly admires its subject. But its most adulatory passages are not about people. Offering a combination of tech criticism and promotional hype, Mr. Isaacson describes the arrival of each new product right down to Mr. Jobs’s theatrical introductions and the advertising campaigns. But if the individual bits of hoopla seem excessive, their cumulative effect is staggering. Here is an encyclopedic survey of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it deserves.
New York Times: Making the iBio for Apple’s Genius
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
16 responses to “New York Times Raves About Walter Isaacson’s Bio of Steve Jobs”
This book I am seriously looking forward to. It’s just amazing how Steve Jobs evidently managed his time that he thought he had left meticulously and genuinely wanted to do a lot more.
I’ll never forget when he pitched that enormous spaceship of a second campus for Apple to the Cupertino, Calif., city council to its members on June 6, the same day that WWDC was held. He was so passionate about how wonderful he thought the new building would look knowing that he would never get a chance to step inside. Amazing.
I’m finding the obvious inclusion of the term ‘Steve Jobs’ in a majority of your recent headlines in an attempt to gain SEO traction a little tiresome.
It’s contrived and you guys are better than that. I know hits are what keeps you guys alive, but can you try and write stuff as journalists rather than SEO managers please?
Relax. If you find posts about Steve tiresome, read somewhere else. It’s a big internet out there. Nobody is forcing you to click here.
I must disagree with your assessment. This is newsworthy. Steve Jobs’ death and the well placed leaks of the upcoming book have made the NBC Nightly News almost every evening. Once the book will have been out for a week or so, the story will inevitably subside, so we can go back to your regularly scheduled coverage about wars, chaos, beheadings and whatever other kinds of games the kids like to play these days.
You misunderstand, it’s not the posts about Steve I find tiresome, it’s the contrived titles to aggregate SEO scores. Perhaps you should have read my comments properly before your knee-jerked and cliched response.
If you want a fan-boy contest with me about Steve Jobs then I’m afraid you would lose; hence my concern of degrading his name to gain web traction.
The headline wouldn’t make sense without Steve Jobs in it somewhere.
FFS! Read the original post; I’m not talking about this post, but the many posts which there are.
Have you considered that you’re being “misinterpreted” because you were unclear?