Excerpts of the book, "Steve Jobs", went viral -- especially his reported vow to annihilate Google-backed Android software for smartphones and tablets that he felt had ripped off iPhone and iPad ideas.[break]
"I´m going to destroy Android, because it´s a stolen product," Jobs´s biographer quoted him as saying early last year.
"I´m willing to go thermonuclear war on this," he said. "I don´t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won´t want it. I´ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that´s all I want."
Biographer Walter Isaacson´s work also contains an unflattering assessment of Bill Gates, co-founder of US computer software colossus Microsoft that for decades served as the Goliath to Apple´s David.
"He´d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger," said Jobs, who went to India on a spiritual journey after dropping out of college in the 1970s.
"Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he´s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology," he added. "He just shamelessly ripped off other people´s ideas."
Reactions to the excerpts in online chat forums included comment that while Jobs changed the world with iPods, iPhones, and iPads, they were improvements on MP3 players, smartphones and tablets that had come before them.
This book cover image released by Simon & Schuster shows "Steve Jobs," by Walter Isaacson. (AP)
Jobs also had blunt words for Michael Dell, chief of the eponymous computer maker based in Texas.
The biography tells of Dell saying in 1997 that if he were Jobs, he would shut down then-struggling Apple and "give the money back to shareholders."
Jobs told of responding to Dell with an email message that read: "CEOs are supposed to have class...I can see that isn´t an opinion you hold."
Jobs returned to the Apple helm in 1996 and steered it to new heights -- it is now among the world´s most valuable companies.
A new generation "iPhone 5" is believed to be the last Apple innovation that Jobs worked on at the Cupertino, California-based company.
In the biography, Jobs praised Apple senior vice president of industrial design Jonathan "Jony" Ive as being his partner in dreaming up devices.
"If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it´s Jony," Jobs is quoted as saying. "Jony and I think up most of the products together and then pull others in and say, ´Hey, what do you think about this?´"
Jobs also spoke of his faith in Tim Cook, who took over the Apple helm shortly before Jobs´s death on October 5 at the age of 56.
Jobs refused early surgery for the pancreatic cancer that eventually took his life, experimenting instead with alternative treatments, according to his biographer.
Isaacson, in an interview with the CBS show "60 Minutes" to be broadcast Sunday, said Jobs told him he regretted the decision to put off the operation.
The book also includes details of the private and romantic life of the notoriously secretive Jobs, as well as his business dealings.
Jobs reportedly joked to Isaacson that he had to hide the kitchen knives from his liberal wife when they had Rupert Murdoch, the conservative chief executive of News Corp., over for dinner at their home.
Jobs liked Murdoch but not his Fox News organization known for promoting conservative political agendas, according to the biography.
Jobs reportedly told Murdoch that the US was divided and that the News Corp. king was siding with the "destructive" side.
In Jobs´s own words, Microsoft was "mostly irrelevant" and unlikely to change as long as Steve Ballmer was chief executive.
According to the book, Jobs began meeting in the spring with people he wanted to see before he died. They included Gates, who visited Jobs´s home in May for more than three hours.
Book snippets included Jobs warning US President Barack Obama last year that he was "headed for a one-term presidency" and offering to help create political ads for the 2012 campaign.
A chapter of the biography devoted to Jobs´s love of music includes him being a fan of the guitar talents of John Mayer but expressing concern that the singer was "out of control" in a potentially self-destructive way.
Isaacson´s 656-page book is being published by Simon & Schuster.
Isaacson, chief executive of the Aspen Institute think-tank, has also penned biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Henry Kissinger.
Biography sheds new light on Steve Jobs´ life
(THE ASSOCIATED PRESSE)
SAN FRANCISCO: Steve Jobs had a disdain for people who put profits first. In an upcoming authorized biography of the late Apple CEO, he calls the crop of executives brought in to run Apple after his ouster in 1985 "corrupt people" with "corrupt values" who cared only about making money.
Jobs was often bullied in school and stopped going to church at age 13, according to "Steve Jobs," by Walter Isaacson, which will be published Monday by Simon & Schuster. The Associated Press purchased a copy Thursday. Advance sales of the biography have topped best-seller lists since Jobs died Oct. 5 after a long battle with cancer at age 56.
As a teenager, Jobs exhibited some odd behaviors — he began to try various diets, eating just fruits and vegetables for a time, and perfected staring at others without blinking. Later, on the naming of Apple, Jobs told Isaacson he was "on one of my fruitarian diets."
He´d just come back from an apple farm, and he thought the name sounded "fun, spirited and not intimidating."
Much of the book adds detail to what´s already known, or at least speculated, about Jobs. While Isaacson is not the first to tell Jobs´ story, he had unprecedented access to the man who fiercely guarded his own, as well as his company´s, privacy. Isaacson interviewed Jobs more than 40 times, including just a few weeks before his death. As a result, the book does for Steve Jobs´ legacy what Apple did for portable music players, personal computers and tablets — puts it in the hands of regular folks, not just the tech geeks who already live and breathe all-things-Apple.
Jobs reveals in the book that he didn´t want to go to college, and the only school he applied to was costly private college Reed in Portland, Ore. Once accepted, his parents tried to talk him out of attending Reed, but he told them he wouldn´t go to college at all if they didn´t let him go there. Though he ended up attending, Jobs dropped out of the school after less than a year and never went back.
His pre-Apple job as a technician at Atari paid $5 per hour. He saw a classified ad in the San Jose Mercury News, went to visit the company and informed them he wouldn´t leave unless they hired him.
Jobs, who spent years studying Zen Buddhism never went back to church after he saw a photo of starving children on the cover of Life Magazine and asked his Sunday school pastor if God knew what would happen to them. He was 13 at the time.
Jobs´ eye for simple, clean design was evident from early on. The case of the Apple II computer had originally included a Plexiglas cover, metal straps and a roll-top door. Jobs, though, wanted something elegant that would make Apple stand out.
He told Isaacson he was struck by Cuisinart food processors while browsing at a department store and decided he wanted a case made of molded plastic.
He called Jonathan Ive, Apple´s design chief, his "spiritual partner" at Apple. He told Isaacson Ive had "more operation power" at Apple than anyone besides Jobs himself — that there´s no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do. That, says Jobs, is "the way I set it up."
Jobs was never a typical CEO. Apple´s first president, Mike Scott, was hired mainly to manage Jobs, then 22. One of his first projects: getting Jobs to bathe more often. It didn´t really work.
Jobs´ dabbling in LSD and other aspects of 1960s counterculture has been well documented. In the book, Jobs says LSD "reinforced my sense of what was important — creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could."
In the early 1990s, after Jobs was ousted from Apple, he watched the company´s gradual decline from afar. He was angered by the new crop of people brought in the run Apple, and he called them "corrupt."
He told Issacson they cared only about making money "for themselves mainly, and also for Apple— rather than making great products."
He also revealed that the Beatles is one of his favorite bands, and one of his wishes was to get the band on iTunes before he died. He got them available for sale on iTunes in late 2010. Until then, the biggest-selling, most influential group in rock history has been glaringly absent from iTunes and other legal online music services.
The book was originally called "iSteve" and scheduled to come out in March 2012.
The release date was moved up to November, then, after Jobs´ death, to this coming Monday.
The book says Jobs put no subject off limits and had no control over its contents.
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