Steve Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson is trying his hand at Elon Musk next

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By Oliver Haslam
published

Elon Musk
Elon Musk (Image credit: Recode)

What you need to know

  • Walter Isaacson, the man who wrote the Steve Jobs biography, is now working on one about Tesla's Elon Musk.
  • The Jobs biography was controversial at the time of its release.

Walter Isaacson, the man behind the controversial Steve Jobs biography, is now trying his hand at an Elon Musk book according to the Tesla CEO.

While the Jobs biography was controversial at launch and caused Apple much consternation, it's still regarded as one of the best books about Steve Jobs and Apple. At least, it is if you're looking for something official. Isaacson has admitted to making changes to the Jobs book, apparently to make him come across as more likable.

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An Elon Musk biography does have the potential to be an interesting read, that's for sure. The Tesla and SpaceX founder has had a complicated and often troublesome life — and he's never far from controversy of his own.

There's no timeline on when we should expect to be able to read the new Musk biography, but I can't imagine writing a book like that is a quick job. Personally, I'm just interested to see what Musk has to say about Apple after his recent comments regarding the App Store and its business model. Musk recently accused App Store fees of being a "de facto global tax on the internet," for example.

Musk was also recently said to have demanded to be made CEO of Apple, a move that would have been part of a potential Tesla buyout by the iPhone maker. That's something Musk has since denied, but we will hopefully hear more about that in this book.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.