Steve Jobs biography: what we have learned

THE official biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died earlier this month, has been released. The book has been written by journalist Walter Isaacson, whose previous subjects include Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger.

It contains anecdotes about Jobs, both positive and negative, from his friends and family, but the real interest comes from the 40 or so interviews that Isaacson conducted with the tech guru.

Here are some of the best stories about Jobs that emerged from those interviews:

• Jobs believed that he first developed cancer in 1997, but the tumour in his pancreas was not discovered until 2003, when it was picked up during a Cat scan. Jobs refused surgery and told Isaacson: "I really didn’t want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work." Isaacson recalls that he said it with "a hint of regret". Instead of surgery he opted for other treatments including a vegan diet, involving large amounts of carrot and fruit juices, acupuncture, herbal remedies and even visited a psychic. Nine months later, in 2004, he did go under the knife and it was found that the cancer had spread.

• Jobs was a huge fan of Bob Dylan and was "tongue-tied" when he met his idol. However, he was less impressed by Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and told Isaacson that he thought the rocker must have been "on drugs" or "brain-damaged".

• The opinionated Apple founder also had a huge row with U2 singer Bono over the red iPod that was manufactured for the Irish pop star's Aids campaign. Bono wanted to call the MP3 player (Apple) Red, but Jobs refused to allow is brand name to be put in brackets. "The conversation got heated - to the F-you stage - before they agreed to sleep on it," writes Isaacson. The iPod was eventually called (Product) Red.

1. Jobs, who was adopted, found out who his father was and realised that he had already met him when he ate at a restaurant he ran in Silicon Valley. "It turns out he managed or owned a restaurant, and I was in the restaurant once or twice, and I remember meeting the owner, who was from Syria," said Jobs. "I shook his hand, and he shook mine." Job's father, John Jandali, also remembered the meeting and claimed that the Apple co-founder was a "great tipper".

• US President Bill Clinton asked Jobs for his help during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in a late-night phonecall. Jobs told him: "I don't know if you did it, but if so, you've got to tell the country." The two men became friends even though Clinton refused to ask Tom Hanks to do a voiceover for an Apple advert. The technology guru offered Clinton the use of his country retreat in Silicon Valley so that he could visit his daughter Chelsea when she was studying in California.

• Something of a rebel, Jobs said he admired Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for not "selling out". He told Isaacson: "We talk about social networks in the plural, but I don't see anybody other than Facebook out there. Just Facebook. They are dominating this." However, he described microsoft founder Bill Gates as "unimgainative" and vowed to "destroy" the Android operating system, Google's rival to the Apple iPhone. He said it was a "stolen product".

1. "Taking LSD was one of the most important things in my life," Jobs told Isaacson. He said Bill Gates would "be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."

1. When Jobs first met Apple co-founder Stephen Wozniak there was an "instant connection". Among their early inventions was a box that made it possible to make free phonecalls. They gave themselves nicknames, Jobs was "Oaf Torbak".

1. The iPad was dreamt up before the iPhone. The device came about as Jobs wanted to combine the iPod and the phone, and decided to use the tablet technology he was already working on.

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