New Book to Portray Steve Jobs as a Skeptic

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SAN FRANCISCO—A new biography portrays Steve Jobs as a skeptic all his life — giving up religion because he was troubled by starving children, calling executives who took over Apple "corrupt" and delaying cancer surgery in favor of cleansings and herbal medicine.

"Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, to be published Monday, also says Jobs came up with the company's name while he was on a diet of fruits and vegetables, and as a teenager perfected staring at people without blinking.

The Associated Press purchased a copy of the book Thursday.

The book delves into Jobs' decision to delay surgery for nine months after learning in October 2003 that he had a neuroendocrine tumor — a relatively rare type of pancreatic cancer that normally grows more slowly and is therefore more treatable.

[Rick Newman: Where Steve Jobs Ranks Among the Greats]

Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, the book says, before finally having surgery in July 2004.

Isaacson, quoting Jobs, writes in the book: "'I really didn't want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work,' he told me years later with a hint of regret."

Jobs died Oct. 5, at age 56, after a battle with cancer.

The book also provides insight into the unraveling of Jobs' relationship with Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and an Apple board member from 2006 to 2009. Schmidt had quit Apple's board as Google and Apple went head-to-head in smartphones, Apple with its iPhone and Google with its Android software.

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."

[Susan Milligan: Steve Jobs's Passing Shows the Best and Worst of America]

"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."

Jobs used an expletive to describe Android and Google Docs, Google's Internet-based word processing program. In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, Calif., cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn't interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says.

"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." The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing.

The book is clearly designed to evoke the Apple style. Its cover features the title and author's name starkly printed in black and gray type against a white background, along with a black-and-white photo of Jobs, thumb and forefinger to his chin.

The biography, for which Jobs granted more than three dozen interviews, is also a look into the thoughts of a man who was famously secret, guarding details of his life as he did Apple's products, and generating plenty of psychoanalysis from a distance.

Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO on Aug. 24, six weeks before he died.

[Sott Galupo: What Steve Jobs's Legacy Says about Innovation]

Doctors said Thursday that it was not clear whether the delayed treatment made a difference in Jobs' chances for survival.

"People live with these cancers for far longer than nine months before they're even diagnosed," so it's not known how quickly one can prove fatal, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

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Brand Behind Steve Jobs' Iconic Turtleneck Sees Sales Boost

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Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Did Steve Jobs' passing inspire fans to nab his famed wardrobe?

The Apple founder was infamous for wearing a black mock turtleneck, jeans and sneakers to every keynote presentation. And one company claims sales have skyrocketed because of it.

A representative for St. Croix, which makes Jobs' turtlenecks, told TMZ that the shirts have flown off shelves since the news of Jobs' death. On Thursday, the brand saw an "almost 100% increase in sales," the rep said. TMZ also reported that St. Croix is working on a plan to pay tribute to their most famous customer.

Overall, Jobs' uniform is quite easy to replicate, if you've got Steve Jobs-type money. The St. Croix mock turtleneck in black retails for $175 at stcroixshop.com. Not all is pricey, though; a pair of Levi's 501 jeans in Medium Stonewash is currently marked down to $44 on levi.com, and a pair of gray New Balance 991 sneakers are on sale for $89 on Amazon. But you'll have to fork over major cash for the glasses — Jobs' specs, Lunor's Classic Round style, go for $495.

NewsFeed suspects the sales spike is from those seeking Halloween inspiration. But we suggest you stay away from this particular costume; don't blame us if everyone you encounter yells "too soon" as you walk by.

LIST: The World Reacts to Steve Jobs' Death

LIST: Steve Jobs, from TIME's Archives

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Where Steve Jobs Ranks Among the Greats

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He was indisputably a titan of the digital era. But how does Steve Jobs stack up against the greatest business leaders in American history?

We won’t really know for years, of course, since nobody’s sure where technology will lead or what his company, Apple, may still achieve. But Steve Jobs was clearly a visionary who changed much about the way people use technology. His death from pancreatic cancer at just 56 feels like a national loss. And he’s one of the few people in any field who can plausibly be compared with America’s greatest innovators. So it doesn’t seem too early to try.

[See what we can all learn from Steve Jobs.]

Here’s my methodology: Instead of measuring the amount of wealth created, I’m more interested in the impact that innovators have had on life in America, on how they improved living standards, advanced the nation’s competitiveness and created opportunity for others. By that measure, Steve Jobs, for all his accomplishments, is up against a pantheon of epic overachievers.

Back in the 1700s, Benjamin Franklin, the quintessential American, helped form the ethos of the middle class--which he called “the middling people, the farmers, shopkeepers and tradesmen”—while serving as the conscience of the upstart nation through his publications, crafty diplomacy and deft political touch. Alexander Hamilton—who like Jobs, died young, at the age of 49—helped create the financial system that turned the United States from a banana republic into a stable nation global investors would be comfortable doing business with.

During the Industrial Revolution, pioneers like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie helped the United States become one of the world’s mightiest economies—one that overtook Europe in the production of vital new materials like oil and steel. By the late 1800s, Thomas Edison developed an electric-lighting system that literally turned darkness to light and ushered in sweeping second- and third-order changes, from the improvement of working conditions in factories everywhere to safer homes no longer lit by candles. Edison also found time to invent the phonograph, the movie projector, and many other things, including a key modification to Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone that remained part of the basic design until the 1980s.

[See why the era of free stuff is ending.]

In the 20th century, Henry Ford brought the gilded luxury of personal transportation to virtually everybody with his mass-produced cars, an innovation that shifted whole population centers from city to suburb. The Wright Brothers invented airplanes that would eventually move people from city to city—then from continent to continent--in hours, an order-of-magnitude change in the timeliness with which business could be conducted. Walt Disney invented new forms of entertainment for increasingly prosperous people with the newfound luxury of leisure time. Sam Walton, who founded Wal-Mart, brought everyday low prices to millions of shoppers. Ted Turner, who started CNN, broadcast his splashy cable news all day long, breaking the networks’ monopoly on news and spawning an on-air information revolution.

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976, they set to work building a line of computers--culminating in the Macintosh--that would be the most intuitive machines of their kind. In a way, they introduced the middling people to the magic of digital processors the way Henry Ford introduced them to cars. The brash young Jobs left Apple in 1985, after a spat with the board over the company’s direction. By his own later admission, he needed a strong dose of perspective.

[See why Netflix is smarter than its customers.]

Jobs did other things for 12 years, until returning to Apple as CEO in 1997. The company was floundering, after a string of misfires. Jobs straightened things out, then brought Apple to new heights with wonders like the iPod, iPhone and iPad, along with services like iTunes and Apple TV meant to complement the elegant devices. By the time Jobs retired as CEO earlier this year, Apple was more valuable than virtually any other technology company in the world, including Google, IBM and Microsoft.

Jobs’s death has touched Apple customers, and many others, in a heartfelt way that’s unusual for a business leader—especially today. Encomiums have flowed from practically everybody with a blog or Twitter account. “He was our Thomas Edison and our Henry Ford, all in one brief life,” wrote political commentator David Frum in his Twitter feed, summarizing the thoughts of many.

But was he? Edison and Ford devised innovations so profound they transformed whole societies and materially improved the lives of people who never even purchased a Ford or Edison product. Edison lit public places, while also providing electricity that helped heat them and power other machines. The automobiles that rolled off Ford’s assembly lines swept putrid piles of horse manure off of urban streets and made cities more liveable. Edison and Ford, like other historical giants, created progress that could be measured every day in the humblest of homes, while also laying the foundation for entirely new industries.

[See 4 lessons from the demise of Border’s.]

If you’re an Apple customer, chances are you feel that Steve Jobs has done something similar for you. Apple products are famous for their user-friendliness and their ability to enhance productivity, whether through third-party apps or ingenious features like the iMovie software that lets amateurs create videos with a professional look and feel. Perhaps more than anything, Apple customers simply enjoy using their products, which takes the drudgery out of scanning spreadsheets or speed-reading emails. Nobody really says that about a Blackberry or a Hewlett-Packard PC.

But many Apple products remain high-end indulgences for people with the money to spend on an enhanced digital experience. Yes, Steve Jobs has done the masses a service by showing his utilitarian competitors how to devise an artful user interface, which usually trickles down to cheaper generic devices once Apple has moved on to version 4 or 5. But Macs and iPhones and iPads remain too pricey for many mainstream consumers, who might read about the wonders of Apple gizmos the way they read about luxury cars or fancy dinners: Sounds nice, and I hope I can afford one some day. Meanwhile, you’d have to stretch to define a way in which Steve Jobs has materially improved society, enhanced public life or broadly shared his gifts with people who can’t afford to be his customers. (Cue the outrage of Apple Nation.)

Jobs was truly a brilliant designer, marketer and technologist—all in one. But it’s worth keeping in mind that the digital revolution would have carried on without him. Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, the founders of Intel, invented much of the circuitry that powered Jobs’s devices over the years, along with many other computing machines. Bill Gates developed software that has powered far more computers than Apple ever built. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, have provided an Internet search service that’s arguably more useful to more people—for free—than anything Apple has rolled out. Jobs helped make the first 30 years of the mass-computing era colorful and even fun. But it didn’t take him to make it possible.

He did accomplish something, however, that’s rare in the annals of business history: He made consumers fall in love with his ideas and his products, and even with him. Jobs wasn’t a particularly likeable guy, by most accounts. He had a prickly demeanor and an I-know-better arrogance that would have been the downfall of a lesser visionary. Yet he leaves behind a vast army of Apple acolytes who may propel his ideas to heights beyond Jobs’s own reach. In the firmament of business giants, Steve Jobs shines medium-hot, like the sun. But like a few other geniuses who die too young, his star may get brighter the longer he is gone.

Twitter: @rickjnewman

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Tributes flood in for Steve Jobs

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6 October 2011 Last updated at 18:28 GMT 1984-2011: How Steve Jobs transformed Apple over the years

World and business leaders have paid tribute to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who has died at 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

US President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev said Mr Jobs had changed the world.

Microsoft's Bill Gates said it had been "an insanely great honour" to work with him. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg remembered his "mentor and friend".

The Twitter microblog site struggled to cope with the traffic of tributes.

Apple itself said Mr Jobs had been "the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives" and had made the world "immeasurably better".

Thousands of celebrities and ordinary people went on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to record their tributes and memories of the man behind products such as the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.

The death of Mr Jobs could create a record for Twitter traffic.

Thousands of people all over the world have also been attending Apple stores to leave flowers, notes, and apples with a bite taken from them to mimic the company's logo.

Apple's leading rivals such as Microsoft, Google, Sony and Samsung all chipped in with glowing tributes.

GS Choi, chief executive of Samsung, which is embroiled in a major court battle with Apple on patents, said Mr Jobs was an "innovative spirit" who "introduced numerous revolutionary changes to the information technology industry".

In his statement, Bill Gates said: "The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honour."

Continue reading the main story Peter Jackson BBC News, London

A single bunch of flowers - still in their plastic wrapper - were the only outward sign of the passing of Steve Jobs outside Apple's flagship London store in Covent Garden.

Ginnie Leatham, a brand director in the media industry, from West Sussex, hand delivered a single red Gerbera to staff inside the store.

She said: "I was really sad when I woke up this morning. I had a real lump in my throat and felt quite tearful.

"I was thinking about it on my commute into work. I always walk past the Apple store and I just thought 'I'm going to stop'.

Mr Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook: "Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you."

His comments were "liked" by more than 200,000 people within hours.

In his own tweet, Barack Obama wrote: "There may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented."

Web users in China have reportedly posted almost 35 million online tributes.

Tim Cook, who was made Apple's CEO after Mr Jobs stood down in August, said his predecessor had left behind "a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple".

UK Prime Minister David Cameron said: "Steve Jobs transformed the way we work and play; a creative genius who will be sorely missed."

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the US had "lost a genius who will be remembered with Edison and Einstein".

News Corp's Rupert Murdoch said: "Steve Jobs was simply the greatest CEO of his generation."

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak will remember Mr Jobs for "knowing what made sense in a product"

People also gathered outside Mr Jobs's home in California's Silicon Valley to lay floral wreaths, while flags were flown at half mast outside the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California.

A statement from Mr Jobs's family said they were with him when he died peacefully on Wednesday.

"In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family," they said, requesting privacy and thanking those who had "shared their wishes and prayers" during his final year.

Face of Apple

Mr Jobs built a reputation as a forthright and demanding leader who could take niche technologies - such as the mouse and graphical user interface, using onscreen icons rather than text - and make them popular with the general public.

Continue reading the main story Born in San Francisco in Feb 1955 to students Joanne Schieble and Syrian-born Abdulfattah Jandali - adopted by a Californian working class coupleHad a summer job at Hewlett-Packard while at school - later worked at AtariDropped out of college after six months and went travelling in India, where he became a Buddhist Launched Apple with school friend Steve Wozniak in 1976 - first Apple computer sold the same yearLeft Apple amid disputes in 1985 but returned in 1996 and became CEO in 1997Bought Pixar animation company in 1986 for $10mMarried in a Buddhist ceremony in 1991 - has three children with his wife and a daughter from a previous relationshipHad a personal wealth estimated at $8.3bn (£5.4bn) in 2010Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, and after three periods of sickness leave, resigns as Apple CEO in August 2011He introduced the colourful iMac computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad to the world. His death came just a day after Apple unveiled its latest iPhone 4S model.

With a market value estimated at $351bn (£227bn), Apple became the world's most valuable technology company.

More than almost any other business leader, Mr Jobs was indistinguishable from his company, which he co-founded in the 1970s.

As the face of Apple, he represented its dedication to high-end technology and fashionable design.

And inside the company he exerted a level of influence unheard of in most businesses.

Mr Jobs also provided major funding to set up Pixar Animation Studios.

In 2004, Mr Jobs announced that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer. He had a liver transplant five years later.

In January, he took medical leave, before resigning as CEO in August and handing over his duties to Mr Cook.

In his resignation letter, Mr Jobs said: "I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role."

However, Mr Jobs stayed on as Apple's chairman.

Despite his high profile, he remained fiercely protective of his private life.

He married his wife Laurene in 1991, and the couple had three children.

Mr Jobs also leaves a daughter from a previous relationship, and as an adult he discovered that he had a biological sister, US novelist Mona Simpson.

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Steve Jobs Resigns From Apple

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Home > Politics & Policy > Steve Jobs Resigns From Apple

August 25, 2011 Print

SAN FRANCISCO—Apple Inc. says Steve Jobs resigning as CEO, effective immediately.

The company said Wednesday that Jobs will be replaced by Tim Cook, who was the company's chief operating officer.

It said Jobs has been elected as Apple's chairman.

Tags:Steve Jobs, Apple Inc., Associated Press

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What We Can All Learn From Steve Jobs

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Now that Steve Jobs is finally stepping down as CEO of Apple, the encomiums are flowing faster than 4G: Creative genius. Business titan. Marketing maestro. Visionary. He surely is those things.

But Jobs transformed consumer electronics and the whole business of technology thanks to another vital trait that is often overlooked: resilience. Bouncing back from defeat transformed Jobs from a one-hit wonder into a world-class innovator and helped him gain the insights that made the iPod, iPhone, and iPad iconic and ubiquitous. In challenging times such as these, that quality of resilience is often the thing that distinguishes the winners from the also-rans.

[See 4 lessons from the demise of Borders.]

Jobs began his illustrious career, of course, by co-founding Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak. While brilliant, the young Jobs was also cantankerous and arrogant, and as Apple grew from a garage startup into a billion-dollar public company, Jobs's ego grew along with it. By 1985, Jobs lost an internal battle over the company's direction and left in what was half a firing and half a resignation. The Apple board elevated the less mercurial and more experienced John Sculley to CEO, figuring he'd be able to transform Apple from a quirky young firm into a powerhouse able to compete with IBM.

After 12 years in exile, Jobs made a triumphant return to Apple, which had gone from wunderkind to endangered species. Apple lost its way in the 1990s thanks to product flubs, botched orders, muddied vision, and dysfunctional management. Sculley left in 1993, to be followed by a succession of unsuccessful CEOs. The company's stock fell from $17 in 1991 to less than $4 by mid-1997--the year it lost $1 billion. For Apple, bringing back Jobs was a daring bet that its future would be as bright as its past.

But Jobs didn't return as an I-told-you-so braggart. That 12-year span between Apple paychecks was as rough on Jobs as it was on Apple, and he returned somewhat humbled. In a famous speech at Stanford University in 2005, Jobs indulged in a rare bit of public introspection as he recounted the comedown—and then the unexpected uplift—that came from departing Apple in 1985. "What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone," he said. "It was devastating. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

[See how to recover from a career flameout.]

The conventional wisdom is that Apple erred badly and never should have let Jobs leave in the first place. But journalist and business professor Randall Stross has argued that Jobs never would have become the leader he grew into if not for the trials he endured after leaving Apple. Jobs used some of the millions he earned from Apple's 1980 public offering to start another computer company, called NeXT, with a mission to provide powerful mainframe-like PCs to students and academics. Jobs ran the company like an obsessive dictator, making virtually every decision himself, and a lot went wrong. The computers were vastly overpriced and sales were weak. Jobs's autocratic style caused rapid turnover among the executive ranks. When NeXT failed to succeed by selling hardware it turned to software, but that didn't fly either. Apple bough NeXT in 1996 to gain access to elements of the company's software that ultimately became an operating system for Macintosh computers--but it was also a pretext for bringing the prodigal son back to Apple.

The company desperately needed help by then, but it didn't need the Steve Jobs of 1985. It needed a seasoned professional able to look around the bend, leap ahead of the competition and manage the confusion and complexity that came with trying to innovate amidst a technology gold rush. Luckily for Apple, that's just who Jobs had become. "The Steve Jobs who returned to Apple was a much more capable leader," Stross wrote in the New York Times in 2010. "It took 12 dispiriting years, much bruising, and perspective gained from exile." Jobs had learned, for instance, to cultivate talented engineers and salespeople, instead of flinging them to the curb when they disagreed with his vision or he simply grew impatient. He also learned, grudgingly, to delegate work instead of doing everything himself.

[See how Pandora became an unlikely hit.]

Perhaps most important, Jobs learned to change his own fixed mindset about computing. At NeXT, Jobs was basically trying to recreate the Macintosh, albeit a souped-up and more expensive version. But when that didn't work, Jobs began to realize that the future of computing wouldn't necessarily look like the past. It might not be focused on square boxes sitting on a desk. Instead, it might migrate to other devices, perhaps ones small enough to carry around in a briefcase or suit pocket.

Failing at NeXT helped Jobs succeed during his second bite at Apple. Stross says that Jobs gained insights from what didn't work at NeXT that allowed Apple, under his command, to reinvent the digital music player, the cell phone, the tablet computer, and the many lucrative services, like iTunes, that come with selling so much hardware. Apple wasn't the first to invent any of those devices. But it revolutionized the way people use them and found new ways to delight consumers in the process. And while selling millions of iPods, iPhones, and iPads, Apple continued to make some pretty nifty computers, too. All of that helped Apple survive the recent recession almost completely unscathed, and become the world's most valuable technology company.

Business leaders often tout their comebacks or second acts. But these are often scripted corporate narratives meant to gloss over some embarrassing mistake or make incompetence seem ennobling. In a book I'm writing that will be published next spring, called Rebounders: How Winners Pivot From Setback To Success, I've identified many of the attributes that distinguish real comebacks from phony ones. One of those attributes is the ability to discard old thinking when it no longer works, which is much harder than it might seem—especially if that thinking helped make you fabulously successful in the past. Another is the equipoise it takes to accept failure so you can learn from it, instead of blaming other people or making excuses for what went wrong. Characteristics such as those are the building blocks of resilience, which allows people to overcome setbacks, get smarter and reach new levels of success.

[See one woman's fight to rejoin the middle class.]

There are a lot of successful business leaders, and also many Icaruses who fly high for awhile but then screw up, go bust, get fired, or skulk into obscurity. The list of those who soar after failure, however, is much smaller. Steve Jobs is a billionaire inventor, a technology legend, and a business pioneer on a par with greats like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford. He's also a guy who succeeded at a young age, got cocky about it, paid a price for his arrogance and then came back a lot smarter and more capable than before. His genius is enviable. But his resilience is something the rest of us can replicate.

Twitter: @rickjnewman

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