Steve Jobs Biography: Some Shocking Revelations
As the dust settles on the death of one of the greatest minds of our generation, Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs reveals some shocking details about the man. The physical copy of the book which was released on Monday is expected to be the top selling book of Amazon for the year 2011. In his book, Jobs exclusively reveals to Isaacson how he hated Google and how he tried to help Obama. Below are some of the shocking revelations that came out from the book:
1) He regretted delaying cancer surgery: In October 2003, after being diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer, Jobs pushed back having surgery for 9 months, instead he decided to try alternative forms of therapy. Years later he admits to Isaacson that he felt “a hint of regret” on not having the surgery. “He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it… I think [at the time] that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking.” Isaacson was quoted as saying of Jobs in an interview with 60 minutes.
2) He did not think much of Bill Gates: “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.” Jobs thought that Bill Gates was a rip off who took credit of other people’s ideas. Jobs once declared about Mr. Gates: “He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.” Only if the two of them could get along.
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All smiles here
3) At the age of 13, Steve Jobs rejected the religion of Christianity. After seeing starving children on the cover of Life Magazine, he asked his pastor if God knew about these children. He never went back to church after that, he later went to study Zen Buddhism later in life.
4) He did not shower enough for someone that important: When Jobs founded Apple in 1976, he and co-founder Steve Wozniak hired Micheal Scott to work as the CEO of the team. One of the first things Scott did was order Jobs to shower more frequently; a task he did not really succeed at.
5) On Google’s Android: “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 told his biographer, Isaacson. Jobs claimed that many of the innovations in the Android, made by Google, are taken from the iPhone features. Apple later sued Google in what has become an ongoing mobile patent war between the two brands. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this”. Eric Schmidt, who served as an Apple board member from 2006 to 2009, and also a former Google CEO, tried to settle the lawsuit by offering Apple money. Jobs responded by saying “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.”
Undoubtedly a great man, Steve Jobs was a man who was already to pick up a fight whenever he felt he was right. RIP Steve Jobs. What do you think about all these revelations, are you shocked that Jobs and Gates did not get along? Let us know in the comment section below. The biography can be purchased here.
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