No doubt destined to be a best seller the official Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Isaacson is due release on the 24th of this month, however some extracts of the iPhone guru’s bio have already hit the net, and reveal that perhaps Apple’s strategy of going after Android devices is down to Jobs believing Android to be a stolen product, and basically declaring war on Android with a threat of destruction.
According to an article over on Apple Insider, the Associated Press managed to purchase a copy of the Steve Jobs Biography, and have revealed parts of the book that relate to the way Jobs felt about Android.
According to the report, author Walter Isaacson writes on an “expletive-laced rant” that the late Apple chief had with him on the matter of Android after HTC introduced an Android smartphone in the January of 2010, which reads that Jobs said…
“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. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
Well as we already know, Apple is deep in legal disputes with HTC and Samsung, both over Android devices, with Apple gaining some ground in the patent fights in the past with an injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia and Germany, while the US ITC has delivered an initial ruling that HTC infringes on 2 Apple patents.
The biography extracts also hit upon a meeting between Jobs and Eric Schmidt at a café in Palo Alto, and reveals that apparently Jobs wasn’t interested in settling with Google or their partners, with Jobs reportedly telling the former Google CEO…
“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.”
No doubt the Steve Job biography will make interesting reading once it hits the public space, but will Apple’s continuing battle with Android be the real legacy of Steve Jobs?
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