New Jobs biography reveals hidden side of Apple leader

By Andy Goldberg Oct 21, 2011, 20:18 GMT

Los Angeles - Barely two weeks after the death of Steve Jobs, early copies of his authorized biography leaked into circulation Friday revealing new details about the highly secretive technology magnate.

The 630-page book, titled Steve Jobs, was written over a period of two years by former Time editor Walter Isaaccon and officially goes on sale Monday.

It reveals that Jobs delayed for nine months an operation for the pancreatic cancer that eventually killed him while he undertook alternative treatments which ultimately proved unsuccessful. The book quotes Jobs' wife Laurene Powell as saying that the Apple leader 'really was not ready to open his body' but that once he finally decided to have surgery, the cancer had spread.

The book also lifts the lid on Jobs' intense animosity for Google, after he felt that the company's Android operating system had copied many elements from Apple's iPhone.

In a reported meeting with then Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Jobs said he would use all Apple's 40 billion dollars in cash to destroy 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,' he said.

'I'm going to destroy Android because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this,' Jobs said, adding that even if Google offered a 5-billion-dollar settlement he would reject it.

Jobs also apparently warned US president Barack Obama that he was in danger of becoming a one-term president if he failed to make his administration more business-friendly. The master of marketing also offered to help Obama create TV ads for both the 2008 and 2012 election campaigns.

The book said that Jobs had an ambivalent relationship with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who was both a competitor and an ally at different stages of their careers, often both at once.

'Bill [Gates] 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 said.

However, he displayed his close relationship with Gates by inviting him to be one of the people he spent time with before he died. The tech magnates spent three hours together at Jobs' home reminiscing, the book said.

According to the book, Jobs regarded Apple design chief Jonathan Ive as his 'spiritual ally' at Apple and protected Ive's autonomous position at the company after his death.

'There's no-one at the company that can tell Ive what to do,' Jobs is quoted as saying. 'That's the way I set it up.'