For instance, Stross spends an entire chapter devoted to a glowing review of Sun Microsystems. This is arguably in order to have some sort of contrast with NeXT. No small part of the chapter is devoted to a description of the new low-cost SparcStation, which he describes in order to provide a counterexample to Job's overpriced machines. He re-iterates this point on several other occasions thoughout the book.
Missing fact #1: the SparcStation cost MORE than the NeXTcube. This vitally important point is not mentioned even once.
Want another example? He continually talks about how NeXT was non-standard and thus doomed, whereas Sun's standards-based machines were much better off that NeXT, or even other non-standard machines like the Apollo. It's so OBVIOUS that you have to be standards based, it's not even worth talking about! I mean duh, who would question that?!
Missing fact #2: all three were originally based on the same hardware (680x0 CPUs) and similar software (Unix versions). If anything it was Sun that went "non-standard" when they switched their CPU and OS.
The whole book is like this. I don't mean in a small way, I mean it in the largest possible way. I disagreed with almost every point he made, whether it be the "realities" of the computer market as he saw it, or practically any technical detail he attempted to describe. Stross seemed to be incapable of understanding any issue, no matter how large, small, technical or non-technical. It left me gasping.
Ignore the technical innaccuracies though, because they appear to be a side-story to the book's "real point". The "real point" seems to be that Jobs is incompetant at everything, egotistical, and mean. The book is filled with little anecdotes and Steve doing this (something stupid) or that (something mean), painting a very nasty picture of a man Stross implies has only a single quality: being in the right place at the right time.
Hey, he might be right, but I'll never know. I was so turned off by the continual negative vibe of this book that after a few chapters in I basically didn't trust a word he said. This isn't a history, or even a "cautionary tale". It's character assasination.
1. Don't invest in someone just because they're cool, or at least cooler than you. Alpha-Nerd Perot sees a TV special on Steve Jobs, and exclaims how Jobs is "Mr. Excitement" or some such superlative. He promptly plunks down huge money to invest in the "Next" computer, which is portrayed as revolutionary hardware. But no one really knows up front what they're investing in. So what, it makes Ross feel like he can transform some of that hard-scrabble, uptight crew-cutness of his into hip, long hair, do-drugs California investing.
2. Watch the press releases. The big bomb that's hidden in a press release discloses that Next has dropped it's hardware business, and will now be developing innovative software. Which bombed. So Ross went in investing in one thing, and came out investing in something else.
3. Cool people scream a lot when things get uncool. The rest of the book is the typical tantrum about Jobs acting hard-to-manage.