But it's not about the quotes at all, except insofar as the quotes that Isaacson chose leave the reader with an impression that is simply wrong. The Bill Gates quote about the NeXT acquisition stuck out for me, too.

Are you disagreeing with Gruber's thesis that Isaacson really didn't understand the complementary contributions of software to "design"? Why?

I'm typically not a defender of John's, but he seems to me to be on target here.