Steve Jobs’ biography was recently leaked to the press—or purchased off the back of a truck, however you’d like it—and with the leak came a flurry of revelations about the recently-deceased technological revolutionary whose death was mourned worldwide. Many of these sneak peeks concerned his not-so-friendly side; in other words, the juiciest tidbits about him.
One piece currently gaining a lot of attention was Steve Jobs’ attention to the competition. For example, take HTC’s Android phone, which Jobs wanted to declare “thermonuclear war” on. Via GigaOm, emphasis ours:
Isaacson wrote that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the popular features of the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google’s actions amounted to “grand theft.” “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.”
He used to host lovely dinner guests:
Mr. Jobs sometimes entertained business guests at his home. Rupert Murdoch, the conservative head of News Corporation, came twice for dinner. Mr. Jobs joked to Mr. Isaacson that he had to hide the kitchen knives from his wife, Laurene Powell, because of her liberal views.
He wasn’t big on unions:
Jobs also criticized America’s education system, saying it was “crippled by union work rules,” noted Isaacson. “Until the teachers’ unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform.” Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.
He was gossipy about his competition:
Jobs once declared about [Bill] Gates, “He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”
With any other executive, these revelations wouldn’t make much of a difference, but Apple (AAPL)’s well-established as the personal computing choice of generally left-leaning, “creative thinking” people. As it turns out, their technology’s maker was only about as fundamentally liberal as Apple’s commercials could convince you. Jobs is looking more and more like a Reason reader these days, but surely, the whole biography will have so much more in store for a world curious about the man recently mourned as a technological revolutionary. It comes out on Monday.
[Related: ‘Steve Jobs Sold Out,’ Says Performer Behind Powerful Drama of Apple’s History]
fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek
