SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- 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.
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.''
``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, California, 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 secretive, 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.
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.
Dr. Michael Pishvaian, a pancreatic cancer expert at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, said people often are in denial after a cancer diagnosis, and some take a long time to accept recommended treatments.
``We've had many patients who have had bad outcomes when they have delayed treatment. Nine months is certainly a significant period of time to delay,'' he said.
Fortune magazine reported in 2008 that Jobs tried alternative treatments because he was suspicious of mainstream medicine.
The book says Jobs gave up Christianity at age 13 when he saw starving children on the cover of Life magazine. He asked his Sunday school pastor whether God knew what would happen to them.
Jobs never went back to church, though he did study Zen Buddhism later.
Jobs calls the crop of executives brought in to run Apple after his ouster in 1985 ``corrupt people'' with ``corrupt values'' who cared only about making money. Jobs himself is described as caring far more about product than profit.
He told Isaacson they cared only about making money ``for themselves mainly, and also for Apple _ rather than making great products.''
Jobs returned to the company in 1997. After that, he introduced the candy-colored iMac computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and turned Apple into the most valuable company in America by market value for a time.
The book says that, while some Apple board members were happy that Hewlett-Packard gave up trying to compete with Apple's iPad, Jobs did not think it was cause for celebration.
``Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left it in good hands,'' Jobs told Isaacson. ``But now it's being dismembered and destroyed.''
``I hope I've left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple,'' he added.
Advance sales of the book have topped best-seller lists. Much of the biography adds to what was already known, or speculated, about Jobs. While Isaacson is not the first to tell Jobs' story, he had unprecedented access. Their last interview was weeks before Jobs died.
Jobs reveals in the book that he didn't want to go to college, and the only school he applied to was Reed, a costly private college in Portland, Oregon. Once accepted, his parents tried to talk him out of attending Reed, but he told them he wouldn't go to college if they didn't let him go there. Jobs wound up attending but dropped out after less than a year and never went back.
Jobs told Isaacson that he tried various diets, including one of fruits and vegetables. On the naming of Apple, he said he was ``on one of my fruitarian diets.'' He said he had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded ``fun, spirited and not intimidating.''
Jobs' eye for simple, clean design was evident early. The case of the Apple II computer had originally included a Plexiglas cover, metal straps and a roll-top door. Jobs, though, wanted something elegant that would make Apple stand out.
He told Isaacson he was struck by Cuisinart food processors while browsing at a department store and decided he wanted a case made of molded plastic.
He called Jonathan Ive, Apple's design chief, his ``spiritual partner'' at Apple. He told Isaacson that Ive had ``more operation power'' at Apple than anyone besides Jobs himself _ that there's no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do. That, says Jobs, is ``the way I set it up.''
Jobs was never a typical CEO. Apple's first president, Mike Scott, was hired mainly to manage Jobs, then 22. One of his first projects, according to the book, was getting Jobs to bathe more often. It didn't work.
Jobs' dabbling in LSD and other aspects of 1960s counterculture has been well documented. In the book, Jobs says LSD ``reinforced my sense of what was important _ creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.''
He also revealed that the Beatles were one of his favorite bands, and one of his wishes was to get the band on iTunes, Apple's revolutionary online music store, before he died. The Beatles' music went on sale on iTunes in late 2010.
The book was originally called ``iSteve'' and scheduled to come out in March. The release date was moved up to November, then, after Jobs' death, to Monday. It is published by Simon & Schuster and will sell for $35.
Isaacson will appear Sunday on ``60 Minutes.'' CBS News, which airs the program, released excerpts of the book Thursday.
<한글기사>
스티브 잡스 전기 내용 전격 공개
지난 5일 작고한 애플의 공동창업주 스티브 잡스가 생전에 공인한 전기 월터 아이작슨 저 "스티브 잡스"가 24일 발간된다.
전기에는 권위에 의문을 던지고 자유로움 을 추구한 잡스와 관련된 다양한 일화들이 소개돼 있다.
어린 시절 학교에서 괴롭힘을 당했던 잡스는 눈을 깜빡이지 않고 다른 사람을 계속 응시하는 등 기이한 행동을 했다. 13살 때 라이프 메거진 표지에 실린 굶주린 아이들의 사진을 본 후 일생 교회에 발을 끊고 몇 년간 선불교를 공부했다.
10대부터 일정 기간 동안 과일과 채소만을 먹곤 하던 잡스는 뒷날 과일만 먹던 기간에 사과 농장을 다녀오던 중에 애플이란 이름을 얻었다. 애플이라 이름이 "재미있고, 정신적이지만 겁을 주지 않은 것처럼" 생각됐다고 한다.
1980년대 실리콘 밸리에서 식당을 운영하고 있던 생부 압둘파타 존 잔달리를 수 차례 만난 적이 있지만 당시에는 그가 자신의 아버지인지 몰랐고, 생부라는 사실을 알고 난 후에는 일절 연락을 하지 않았다.
또 1985년 애플에서 쫓겨난 이후 애플의 이사회를 돈 버는 데만 관심 있는 "썩 어빠진 인간들"이라고 비판하는가 하면 2010년 HTC가 아이폰의 특징을 베낀 안드로 이드폰을 선 보였을 때는 에릭 슈미트 전 구글 CEO를 향한 분노를 숨기지 않았다.
아이작슨은 잡스가 구글이 도둑질했다며 욕설을 퍼부었고 "안드로이드는 훔친 물 건이기 때문에 파괴할 것"이라고 소리치기도 했다고 밝혔다.
반면 디자인에 관해서는 무한한 열정을 보이며 애플 디자이너 조너선 아이브를 자신의 영적 파트너라고 불렀다.
한편 잡스는 수술이 아닌 대안치료에 의존함으로써 생명을 구할 가능성 이 있는 췌장암 치료를 9개월간 지연시켰다고 아이작슨이 밝혔다.
20일 포브스 인터넷판에 따르면 아이작슨은 오는 23일 방영될 예정인 CBS의 '60분(60 Minutes)'과의 인터뷰에서 잡스가 주변 사람들에게 자신의 심각한 상태를 숨겼다며 이렇게 밝혔다.
아이작슨은 잡스가 "배에 칼을 대고 싶지 않다"면서 식이 요법으로 치료하려 했 지만 효과가 없었고, 이후 수술을 미룬 사실을 후회하는 듯 보였다고 전했다.
이와 관련, 하버드의대의 연구원인 램지 앰리는 최근 Q&A 사이트인 '쿼라'에서 "잡스가 전통적인 의학에 의존하기에 앞서 여러 대안치료에 몰두한 것으로 안다"고 주장한 바 있다.
앰리는 "자신의 치료법을 선택하는 것은 자유지만 그 같은 상황에서는 잡스의 대안치료 선택이 조기사망의 요인이 됐을 수도 있다고 본다"고 지적했다.
잡스의 췌장암이 통계를 통해 볼 때 치료가 가능한 질병이었고 수술이 제시간에 만 이뤄졌다면 종양을 제거될 수 있었다는 것이다.
그는 "그것은 단순한 적출수술로 화학요법이나 방사선치료 등에 비해 부작용도 거의 없고 위험이 상대적으로 아주 낮은 치료법"이라며 "하지만 대안치료에 몰두하 는 동안 안타깝게도 종양이 계속 자라나 간으로 전이된 것"이라고 설명했다.
앰리는 "잡스가 자유로운 영혼을 가지고 있고 채식주의자인데다 전통적인 치료 법에 대해 회의적이었던 것으로 보이며, 그와 비슷한 생각을 하는 사람들이 많다"고 지적했다.
