The official Walter Isaacson-penned biography of Apple [AAPL] co-founder, Steve Jobs, hits the shops next week, and judging from the following gem-like excerpts seems set to be a must-have read this season.
[ABOVE: The now so familiar yet still deeply resonant Steve Jobs Stanford University speech.]
"I'm going to destroy Android"
A slew of extracts have emerged in recent days, which show Jobs promising to "destroy Android", his critical opinion of both Bill Gates and President Obama and that he questioned authority throughout his life.
"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of a meeting together, arguing that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. He did offer to help Obama's re-election campaign all the same.
All those reports claiming Eric Schmidt and Jobs were buddies after the latter left the Apple board can't be true, as the book reveals that Jobs was incandescent with fury when HTC introduced its Android phone in 2010 -- imitating many iPhone features when it did.
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs said. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
Schmidt and Jobs met up to try to find a solution, but all Schmidt would offer was cash. Jobs rejected this, saying, "I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want."
[ABOVE: Apple's latest US TV ad for its Siri assistant.]
The power of design
Jobs also describes UK-born Jony Ive, Apple's head of design, his "spiritual partner", revealing he'd been given more operational power at Apple than anyone other than Jobs. No one at Apple can tell Ive what to do "that's the way I set it up," Jobs said.
That marries well with years of rumor from inside Apple which have claimed that when Apple's designers enter a meeting, the room goes quiet.
As has been widely reported, Jobs delayed surgery for nine months while he tried alternative therapies. "I tried to see if a few other things would work," he told his biographer.
Take a trip, Bill
On Bill Gates he said, "He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."
He also laid the smack down a little against his long-term frenemy: "Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."
There's so much more in the book which I hope to be talking more about next week. It's an essential read for anyone interested in the lives of remarkable people.
Will you get this book? What are your thoughts? Speak up, I'm interested.
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