Steve Jobs was the co-founder and CEO of Apple. He also founded NeXT and was the majority shareholder of Pixar, both of which he was also CEO. Jobs is known as an icon of creativity and entrepreneurship. The prolific author Walter Isaacson released Jobs’ biography in October of 2011. Isaacson describes his major accomplishment as being a “creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.”
Jobs attended Reed College for a short period of time before dropping out in 1972. However, he continued to dabble with classes unofficially and came across a calligraphy course instructed by Robert Palladino. This course ended up being highly influential for Jobs as he attributed it to bringing multiple typefaces to the Mac.
Steve Jobs founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. After a drawn out power struggle Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985. He then founded NeXT in 1985 and also funded the move of Lucasfilm’s Graphics Group to become its own corporation, which became Pixar in 1986. Just over a decade later in 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as they acquired NeXT. His return marked the beginning of a new era of success. He took over as CEO in July of 1997 and continued on until handing the position to Tim Cook on August 24, 2011 after increasing health problems. Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011.
Isaacson describes his major accomplishment as being a “creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.”
If you want to buy an iPod shuffle or iPod classic from Apple, you should do it sooner rather than later. We’ve heard those two iPods are getting the axe this year.
The idea is that Apple wants to focus on touch screen devices that have some innovation left in them. Saving some serious time and effort, here is what we wrote two weeks ago:
Fortune just released a new Kindle eBook entitledAll about Steve: The Story of Steve Jobs and Apple from the Pages of Fortune…
Steve Jobs’ legacy is clear: The most innovative business leader of our time, the man FORTUNE named CEO of the Decade in 2009. Now from the pages of FORTUNE comes an anthology of 17 classic stories spanning the years 1983 to 2011 about the cultural icon who revolutionized computing, telephones, movies, music, retailing, and product design. The stories lay out in unparalleled detail the career of a man with relentless drive and a single underlying passion—to carry out his vision of how all of us would use technology. Writes managing editor Andy Serwer in the book’s foreward: “In the end he was proved right a billion times over, and his company Apple became one of the most successful enterprises on the planet.” All these stories are the product of deep reporting. In many cases FORTUNE’s writers spent hours interviewing Jobs and delving into his mind. The result is a singular journalistic collection, which will leave you with a comprehensive picture of Steve Jobs and Apple, a picture that is complex in the making yet simple in its triumph.
The report includes Adam Lashinsky’s recent investigative piece, Inside Apple, which gives a behind-the scenes look at how the company really works. Lashinsky is also writing a standalone book on Apple due later.
Full Press Release and blown up ‘book cover’ follows:
AllThingsD, which seems to have a bead on Apple’s Fall Event, says the event will be held on Apple’s campus.
Sources close to the company say the demonstration — currently scheduled for Tuesday October 4 — will be held at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California. Why? That’s not entirely clear. Perhaps the release date was too much of a moving target to risk booking a large space like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), which has hosted a number of big product unveils in the past.
OracleWorld is happening in the Moscone/Yerba Buena area during the October 4th announcement so that could be a reason for the move. Though Yerba Buena, the usual venue for such announcements, isn’t marked as booked.
Also, Apple has much more control over the wireless access at its campus auditorium, something that had caused some issues during the iPhone 4 announcement. With all of the wireless devices in the audience, Steve Jobs had trouble demonstrating things like FaceTime and the improved speed of the iPhone 4.
Fortunedoes a nice look back on how long Apple has waited from announcement (which seems to be October 4th at this point) and actual launch of the iPhones and iPads. Initial launch windows are huge because there weren’t really competitors in the space quite yet.
Importantly, the general trend is towards a smaller window.
Ten days out, October 14th, seems like a reasonable projection, doesn’t it?
We’re not sure exactly what caused today’s spike, but Apple stock had a huge day ending up 2.8% at $411.65 a share for a Market Cap of $381.62B against a down market. It had reached as high as $413.23 from a morning low of $395.20. Notably, Apple is now worth over $23B more than Exxon and is approaching the combined value of Microsoft and Google.
As noted by SetteB.it, the Steve Jobs bio “Enhanced eBook” is now set by Simon and Shuster at 656 pages. That’s over 200 additional pages more than the previous page count which may have been a very low estimate. Recently, Walter Isaacson said that Jobs’ resignation would be added to the book, but it seems like a stretch that that chapter would add 50% more content.
Also, the publication date has move from November 21st, to “on or around November 21st”, signaling that there may be some movement in the release date.
The City of Cupertino will be the lead agency and will prepare an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Apple Campus 2 Project
While most Cupertino residents seem pretty excited about the idea, some are voicing concerns that traffic and other environmental impacts of the huge building could adversely affect their town. Notable from the video above:
Contrary to previous reports, Mayor Gilbert Wong said the project wasn’t a “done deal”
Apple Campus 2 Project Manager Terry Reagan (1.21) is no Steve Jobs when it comes to presenting Apple’s case.
Overall, the backlash seems minimal at best and easily surmountable. Apple doesn’t appear to have overlooked anything. Expand Expanding Close
Just a quick note on the earlier charity giving email from Tim Cook. It was a lovely gesture and will generate millions of dollars in giving to worthy causes, no doubt.
First of all, Jobs is a charity giver but only privately, never on a personal-corporate level, and he certainly never publicly encouraged Apple employees to do so. Of course there is Product(RED) and numerous disaster relief projects. But today’s public email/idea would never have been prioritized by Jobs.
Second, Apple PR would never have acknowledged an internal email, regardless of its contents to the media. This move was clearly meant to be broadcast to the media. If, for some reason, Jobs had encouraged Apple employees to give to charity it would have been a personal Apple internal-only move.
Finally, ApplePR doesn’t usually give information, let alone acknowledge rumors blogs. ApplePR told Macrumors that the internal email was legitimate. Jobs would have mowed down those PR reps.
The move takes a cue from Microsoft, which has had an employee-matching program in place for many years. Microsoft matches up to $12,000 in non-profit donations annually.
This might be a generous move and one that Apple and its employees can feel good about. But it isn’t one that would happen at Steve Jobs’ Apple.
If you haven’t heard by now, plans for construction of Apple’s 175-acre “Spaceship” campus are well under way. A meeting hosted by Cupertino mayor Gilbert Wong to address any community member’s concerns is scheduled for tonight.
However, it now looks like Apple may have plans to build another campus, as Wong toldMercury News that Apple execs have already approached him with plans for a third campus:
Wong said Apple executives have told him the company is expanding so fast that it expects to start working on Apple Campus 3 at an unknown location after they finish the second headquarters in 2015.
An Apple spokesperson declined to comment. We’re not sure if this is just really early planning for a potential third campus in the future, or if the company has more specific plans. We already know that Apple’s proposed Spaceship campus will be home to 12-13,000 employees.
Perhaps Apple will start moving employees out of Infinite Loop once the spaceship is complete and rebuild a ‘satellite’ campus at that location?
The report from Mercury News also notes that city officials have suggested a sculpture of Steve Jobs be placed on the campus to “honor his contributions as the iconic leader of Cupertino’s biggest taxpayer and cache-maker.” Expand Expanding Close
U2 frontman Bono responded to the story “The Mystery of Jobs’s Public Giving,” in the NYTimes Opinion pages today telling readers that Jobs was indeed a generous giver through the product (Red) campaign. Bono further hinted that Jobs is a private person and his donations may not all be on the books.
I’m proud to know him; he’s a poetic fellow, an artist and a businessman. Just because he’s been extremely busy, that doesn’t mean that he and his wife, Laurene, have not been thinking about these things. You don’t have to be a friend of his to know what a private person he is or that he doesn’t do things by halves.
Apple and U2 of course collaborated on a U2 iPod and later Apple built red iPods with a portion of the proceeds going to Bono’s private fund to fight AIDS in Africa. Steve Jobs reportedly said when Bono first approached him about (RED), “There is nothing better than the chance to save lives.” Apple’s involvement encouraged other companies to get involved.
TechCrunchpoints us to this amusing Microsoft blog post articulating the decision to put just about every possible item in the future Windows Explorer 8 bar.
This is clearly an example of trying to put everything somewhere with no regard for clutter or usability or design. It is hard to imagine a better example of why Apple’s ability to say no to extraneous features is better for usage.
Abdulfattah John Jandali – Steve Jobs’ Biological Father
In the tumult following Steve Jobs’ resignation, the New York Postand others (here’s a good one translated from Arabic) have been digging up interviews with Steve Jobs’ biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, who is a Syrian-born Vice President of a casino in Reno, Nevada. He’s an 80-year old workaholic who is trying to avoid retirement at all costs (sounds familiar).
The Syrian immigrant says he is overcome with guilt for his treatment of Jobs and only learned recently that the child he gave up for adoption was the famous CEO.
“This might sound strange, though, but I am not prepared, even if either of us was on our deathbeds, to pick up the phone to call him,” Jandali said.
“Steve will have to do that, as the Syrian pride in me does not want him ever to think I am after his fortune,” he said.
“Now I just live in hope that, before it is too late, he will reach out to me, because even to have just one coffee with him just once would make me a very happy man,” he said.
Jandali says although he was in love with his now ex-wife Joanne, her father was a tyrant and would not allow her to marry him since he was from Syria. Joanne then upped and moved to San Francisco to give birth to Jobs without her family or Jandali knowing.
“She did not want to bring shame onto the family and thought this was the best for everyone.”
It is a pretty emotional story overall. The short of it is that they’ve never talked and, although he has sent Jobs a few emails (haven’t we all?), he’s afraid to call Jobs. Because of this, he fears they never will communicate.
It was our natural inclination to see what this guy looked like but Google images didn’t return anything. Therefore, we decided to dig a little deeper.
Without trying to offend anyone, below are some more public pictures of Jobs’ biological father we found on the net. There is definitely a resemblance! Expand Expanding Close
Perhaps you can add “succession planning” to the list of areas where Steve Jobs has revolutionized the industry.
My theory is that Jobs’ resignation has been baked into the AAPL stock price all of this time (how couldn’t it be?) and the smooth transition and long term planning being revealed is being applauded by investors.
At the time of this writing, AAPL is at 352.63B while XOM is at 351.04B. Expand Expanding Close
In an operational sense, today won’t be any different than yesterday at Apple. The people who help curate the sjobs@apple.com email address will probably be putting in some extra hours, the work changing around the placards is probably almost done, and it appears Apple isn’t going to be doing any sort of media tours to ‘help allay investor fears’.
And they don’t need to. Nothing has really changed. I imagine bigger changes were slowly happening behind the scenes a few months ago when Operations VP (incidentally, Tim Cook’s original title) Jeff Williams was promoted to the Executive Bios page. He probably began doing the work of a traditional COO at around that point and, of course, Tim Cook has been acting as a traditional CEO on and off for years.
As Cook’s email to the troops this morning explained, Apple is not going to change – drastically, that is. As any company, Apple is always changing. But Jobs has set up an internal ‘University’ program run by a former Yale dean to make sure that his and other leaders’ values continue to be passed down to Apple’s new VPs and employees.
Steve Jobs hired dean of Yale School of Management Joel Podolny to run the Apple University, an internal group also featuring business professors and Harvard veterans that are writing a series of case studies to prepare employees for the life at Apple after Jobs. These case studies focus on Apples recent business decisions and internal culture, they are exclusive to employees and taught by top executives like Tim Cook and Ron Johnson.
As John Gruber made note, Apple the company is as meticulously designed as any Apple product:
Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.
Apple is the most valuable tech company in the world, an accomplishment that took fourteen years of fantastic long-term decision making. That same intelligence and foresight has gone into the planning of life after Jobs roaming the hallways. Compare today’s long-prepared news on Apple’s share price (none) with that of HP’s bungled earnings news last week on their share price (–20%).
Renaissance Man
Jobs isn’t just a technologist. He built and directed Pixar into the greatest animation studio in the world ahead of anything Hollywood could produce. He changed the music industry forever.
“For a guy who never recorded a song, or signed a band, or founded a label or a music festival, Steve Jobs has probably had more of an impact on the music world than any other person in the last quarter century – and possibly since Thomas Edison.”
He might have been the best, but for all of his greatness, Steve Jobs was not a perfect leader. There have been a few flops and mistakes. Perhaps Jobs was too trusting of Google early on? Options back-dating happened under his watch. AT&T?
Obviously, the triumphs far, far outweigh the mis-steps. As you look at a 55-year-old man in the body of someone decades older, it’s hard not to imagine what a healthy Steve Jobs with twenty years left at the helm might accomplish. I wouldn’t compare the loss of Jobs’ ability to “move the world forward” to the burning of the Library of Alexandria, but it’s hard to find another such comparison that makes sense. This is the man that ushered in personal computers, then did it again with the Mac GUI, then put iOS on portable devices and ushered in the smartphone revolution that we are in the midst of right now and finally re-invented the Post-PC personal computing device. He might have even done things we don’t even recognize yet. Perhaps he’s killed office park campuses with the Mothership HQ? Maybe Apple releases a wearable device in a few months that changes watches like the iPhone changed phones?
What huge innovations will we miss decades from now?
Perhaps the knowledge of his own mortality pushed Jobs even harder. You don’t need to listen to his famous Stanford speech to understand his appreciation for the opportunity he got as a cancer survivor. He worked every day as Apple CEO, just like yesterday, his last.
So how is anyone supposed to follow Jobs, especially an Industrial Engineer out of Auburn who, comparatively, seems introverted and certainly not as innovative?
Give Cook some credit
Remember, Jobs hand-picked Tim Cook to be his successor. What greater honor could you bestow on someone? Jobs didn’t just pick him out of the air, either: they’ve been working alongside each other for over a decade. Jobs picked Cook to be VP of Operations just months after taking back the reigns at Apple in 1997-98. We’re talking 13 quality years working side by side every day here.
As we know, Jobs isn’t shy about telling people what he thinks or cutting people loose who aren’t meeting his expectations. If there were a better candidate in the world for being the COO and now CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs would have found him or her.
Cook has managed Apple’s employees, partners, vendors and everything else during its decade+ renaissance. Remember, Steve Jobs’ first round at Apple and subsequent venture at NeXT were mired in operational mis-steps. Sure, Jobs learned from his mistakes, but I think Jobs would be the first to give Tim Cook credit for turning Apple into the operations machine it is today.
AAPL shares are trading at a relatively small loss of anywhere from 1.5-2.5% from yesterday’s close against a slightly up broader market. Overnight, shares had been down 5-6% in after hours trading on the news that Steve Jobs would be leaving his CEO role and taking the Chairman role. This morning Apple opened at 365 and at the time of this writing, Apple is heading towards yesterday’s close, at 370.
I think the truth is that Jobs resignation from the CEO role, while shocking in the short term, had been baked into the share price for a long time now. Expand Expanding Close
Interesting that Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn, issued a statement regarding Steve Jobs’ resignation from his CEO post at Apple. The Asian company wrote in a short email statement to Bloomberg:
Foxconn wishes Steve Jobs will get well. We think Tim Cook has shown good work as stand- in CEO during Jobs’s absences and expect Apple will perform well in the future. The relationship between Cook and Foxconn has been very close and we expect that the relationship will become even closer in future.
Asian companies are traditionally tight-lipped and shy away from commenting on their partners’ business dealings so it’s a bit surprising Foxconn would put out a statement, let alone touch on the subject of Steve Jobs well-being. On the other hand, Foxconn is Apple’s largest contract manufacturer and as such has been instrumental in ramping up manufacturing to meet the growing demand for Apple’s gadgets around the globe. Expand Expanding Close
We’re picking some of the more meaningful reactions to today’s news. It’s important to remember that Jobs isn’t gone from Apple, he’s Chairman Jobs now.
Bloombergreports that Steve Jobs will stay on the board of Disney.
Apple’s Steve Jobs is said to be remaining on Disney’s board
People familiar with the situation have said that Mr. Jobs continues to be active at Apple and is closely involved in the company’s product strategy. Apple watchers don’t expect that to change even after Mr. Cook takes over.
This is of course a sad day and one that we’ve had in the back of our minds for years now. After founding Apple 35 years ago in his garage in Silicon Valley, and subsequently getting pushed out less than a decade later, Jobs was brought back in 1997 when Apple was on the brink of collapse. In the 14 years since his return, Apple has turned into the most valuable company in the world by market cap. To say he’s leaving the CEO position on top would be an understatement.
Since his third medical leave was taken in January it has seemed Jobs has been moving into a Chairman-type roll, still leading the Keynotes but giving everyone else a bigger role. As Chairman, Jobs will “continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration,” said Apple Board member Art Levinson. Tim Cook will take over as CEO as per the Apple succession plan. Jeff Williams will likely take over as COO.
To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
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.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve
From the newswires….
CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.
“Steve’s extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company,” said Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech, on behalf of Apple’s Board. “Steve has made countless contributions to Apple’s success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple’s immensely creative employees and world class executive team. In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration.”
“The Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO,” added Levinson. “Tim’s 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does.”
Jobs submitted his resignation to the Board today and strongly recommended that the Board implement its succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO.
As COO, Cook was previously responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices. Expand Expanding Close
Hewlett-Packard engineers did dare pull unthinkable: They hacked iPad to install webOS only to find out Apple’s hardware runs their mobile operating system more than twice as fast compared to their own TouchPad hardware, a source “close to the subject”toldThe Next Web. The finding had devastating effects on the team’s morale:
The hardware reportedly stopped the team from innovating beyond certain points because it was slow and imposed constraints, which was highlighted when webOS was loaded on to Apple’s iPad device and found to run the platform significantly faster than the device for which it was originally developed.
It should be pointed out that webOS runs on Qualcomm ARM chips while iPad 2 runs on Samsung silicon. This little nugget is even more revealing:
With a focus on web technologies, webOS could be deployed in the iPad’s Mobile Safari browser as a web-app; this produced similar results, with it running many times faster in the browser than it did on the TouchPad.
In fact, the webOS team wanted HP’s TouchPad and Pre hardware “gone” even before the products hit the marketplace according to TNW. With a hardware refresh a year off and similar issues with the Pre phones, this could have contributed to the decision to shutter the webOS and perhaps license it out to other companies (with better hardware).
In a separate report, TNW details how the news was broken to the webOS group within HP.
Almost everyone at HP found out about the death of the TouchPad and Pre hardware as the public did, in the press release. Only the top executives knew anything about this decision and even senior staff as high as Ari Jaaksi, the Vice President of webOS software, didn’t know about the shuttering of hardware before it happened.
After the press release came out, there was a company wide meeting filled with a bunch of ‘corporate speak’, in which staff were told that they were going to be in limbo for 3-4 weeks.
Reutersreported this morning that top brass from China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier by both subscribers and market valuation, and Apple’s head honcho Steve Jobs met “several times on introducing an iPhone based on its network standard”. Did Jobs travel incognito or was he accompanying Apple’s operations wizard Tim Cook during his China tour (snapped paparazzi-style in the shot below)?
More likely, Jobs probably hosted China Mobile reps in Cupertino.
Interestingly, China Mobile counts a cool 7.44 million iPhone users on its network, although it doesn’t carry the handset yet and iPhone users cannot tap 3G speeds on their TD-SCDMA 3G network.
Apple’s been alleged previously as wanting to release an iPhone optimized for China Mobile’s fourth-generation TD-LTE network. The Wall Street Journalchimed in with sources saying the gadget maker and China Mobile are close to cutting a deal set to open up the carrier’s 600+ million subscribers to Apple’s phone. The highest-level meeting isn’t surprising considering that Apple is only “scratching surface” in China, having reported in the June quarter a sixfold growth in the country for a total of $3.8B in revenues from operations in the country.
The official Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, which is now set for the November 21 release, has been available for pre-order on Amazon for a while and Apple’s iBooks store also had an entry and meta data in place, but without a price and sporting the old cover, depicted below. A tipster told us (thanks, Roshan Z.) that iTunes now lists the book for pre-order for $17 (or 13 quid, above), also featuring the new cover by Albert Watson and the official description from publisher Simon & Schuster, as evident in the updated iTunes listing on the web.
Interesting that Amazon has also updated the blurb, but they still show wrong publication date (the original release date of March 6, 2012) and incorrect tittle, “Steve Jobs: A Biography” as opposed to just “Steve Jobs” (the original, rather painful title, was “iSteve: The Book of Jobs”). The online retailer has a $19.50 price tag for the hardcover, which makes it a much better deal for those preferring a dead tree version – $2.50 more compared to the digital download over at the iBooks store. iTunes already has nine “reviews” from fans eagerly awaiting this high-profile release. Also find two screenshot for the iPhone below the fold.
Given that comforting sanity check, I measured the diameter of the Apple spaceship as 1615 ft, plus or minus a few ft., depending on where one places the ruler. That’s a radius of 807.5 ft.
The outside measurement on the plans is 760′ but the large outside shader structures could account for the additional size.
Interestingly, that is a bigger footprint than the world’s largest office building, the Pentagon, which at five stories tall, two basement levels and with a smaller courtyard, still has significantly more usable square footage.
Also (using our geometry skillz) plugging the 1615 ft diameter into a perfectly round circle, you get an outside circumference of just under a mile (5074 ft). That means taking some paperwork all the way to HR might be a lunch killer.
Update: Obama Pacman notes that Apple could install 3 full sized Football fields in the courtyard (below). Expand Expanding Close
Image courtesy of Simon & Schuster. Click for larger.
The official Steve Jobs biography, which is based on forty interviews and set for publication by Simon & Schuster November 21, sports the memorable front cover shot depicting Apple’s leader touching his guru-like beard, his eyes piercing intensely at the camera and eyebrows slightly lifted as if he is imagining Apple’s next big thing. That image, also found on Apple’s recently revamped PR website under the Apple Leadership section, is the Albert Watson portrait taken in 2009, author Walter Isaacson revealed in a private email exchange with Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt. The back cover?
The back is a Norman Seeff portrait of him in the lotus position holding the original Macintosh, which ran in Rolling Stone in January 1984. The title font is Helvetica. It will look as you see it, with no words on the back cover.
More important to Apple fans, the earlier than expected book launch – which had been originally pinpointed for March 6, 2012 – has nothing to do with the state of Steve Jobs’s health, Isaacson told Fortune’s Elmer-DeWitt. Apple’s boss has gone on an indefinite sick leave in January 2011, his third health-related leave of absence from the company he co-founded. Here’s from Isaacson:
It’s actually not related to any decline. I turned most of the book in this past June. It’s now all done and edited. The March 2012 date (or whatever date it was) was never a deeply-considered pubdate. Like the original cover design, it came about because the publisher wanted to put something in the database last spring.
This is obviously an important tidbit for Apple fans concerned about Steve’s well-being. Go past the fold for the publisher’s long description of the book. The book is available for Pre-Order at Amazon for $20.
According to Barnes and Noble’s website, the official Steve Jobs biography – titled Steve Jobs: A Biography – is becoming available on November 21, 2011. This is a big leap from the previously announced March 6, 2012 release date for the first Steve Jobs-approved biography. In addition, the book seller’s website has seemingly revealed the cover for the biography (shown above), and it is unsurprisingly simple. (via AllThingsD).
The book is also 448 pages long and is based on over 40 interviews with Steve Jobs in addition to interviews with his family and friends. Interestingly, although approved by Jobs, the Apple CEO had no control over the biography’s contents. The Apple CEO had this to say about the biography:
I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that, he said. But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.
