Steve Jobs was ruthless, would often berate employees verbally and in front of others, wanted to “destroy” Android and may have wanted to have Apple start building television sets, a new biography on the Apple founder has revealed.
The book by American journalist Walter Isaacson titled Steve Jobs , is one of the most anticipated of the year, and is based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs himself, along with colleagues, family and friends.
While the release of the book is still a few hours away, a number of publications including the New York Times, the Huffington Post, AP and The Washington Post have been given advance copies, and reveal a number of fascinating anecdotes about the Apple founder.
Here are just five of the most interesting anecdotes to come out of this latest book, some of which should help us learn a bit more about the culture and direction Jobs has left behind.
This is the quote that has pundits the most excited.
For a few years now, some analysts have been tipping that Apple would move into the television market, having dominated computers, music players and smartphones. Until now it’s been seen as a dream, but quotes in this book to seem to confirm this is exactly where Apple is heading.
According to The Washington Post, the book contains specific references to a future television set.
“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” Isaacson wrote.”
“Isaacson continued: “‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’””
This market has a number of challenges, but it finally appears as though Apple is set to transform yet another market.
The battle between iOS and Android has been well documented, but never before have we seen how serious Jobs took the rivalry.
In the book, Jobs is described as saying he would “destroy” the platform, becoming enraged after an HTC handset was released powered by the Android platform – a device that Jobs believed took many hints from the iPhone.
Isaacson wrote that he had never before seen Jobs so angry.
“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 reportedly said. “I’m going to destroy Android because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death because they know they are guilty.”
Apple has been attempting to stop its competitors in court, most name Samsung over the latest Galaxy Tab injunction. These quotes appear to show it has no intention of slowing down.
The rivalry between Jobs and Gates is well documented, but in this new book Jobs takes it to a whole new level, saying the Microsoft founder is simply “unimaginative”.
“Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything … He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas,” he says.
They’re painful words, but Gates has a right of reply in the book, saying he found Jobs “fundamentally odd”, adding that he was either “in the mode of saying you were shit or trying to seduce you”.
There have been plenty of stories around about the unconventional hiring methods of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but Steve Jobs has a particularly original view. The book notes that in one interview, Jobs thought the candidate wasn’t exciting enough and started battering him” mercilessly”.
“How old were you when you lost your virginity?” Jobs asked. When the candidate gave a boring answer, Jobs simply replied, “gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble”.
The tech industry has been collectively wondering how Apple will perform in the years after Jobs death. In a quick remark about the decline of PC market Hewlett-Packard, Jobs seems to give some indication of where he wants the company to go.
“Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left it in good hands,” Jobs said. “But now it’s being dismembered and destroyed.”
“I hope I’ve left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple.”
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Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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