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.
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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 went to a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproved approaches before having surgery in 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.
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 touch and other 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.”
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.
Philly playlist: Playing Liszt
PHILADELPHIA – Superstar pianist Lang Lang is celebrating what would’ve been the 200th birthday of his hero Franz Liszt by playing a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra that will be broadcast live in movie theaters around the world. But first, he’s getting a cheesesteak.
“This is a homecoming for me,” he said Wednesday before his rehearsal with the orchestra. He first came to Philadelphia in 1997 as a 15-year-old prodigy from provincial China to attend the exclusive Curtis Institute of Music, a few blocks from where he will take the stage at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.
Two years later, while still a student, he was beginning to play sold-out concert halls.
Now 29 and a worldwide sensation, Lang Lang is joining the orchestra and its chief conductor, Charles Dutoit, for three performances of Liszt’s famed Piano Concerto No. 1 and other pieces.
Late to morgue, actress to shoot for 7 a.m. today
LOS ANGELES – Lindsay Lohan arrived late to her first day of community service at the county morgue Thursday and was turned away, another hiccup in the actress’ effort to prove to a judge that she is complying with terms of her probation. Lohan had been told to arrive at 8 a.m. for an orientation session but arrived 40 minutes late, spokesman Craig Harvey said. The actress was told to try again today, but will have to arrive at 7 a.m., he said.
The “Mean Girls” star’s tardy arrival at the morgue came a day after she was scolded by a judge for being terminated from a community service assignment at a women’s shelter. The hearing ended with Lohan’s probation being revoked and her being led from court in handcuffs.
She was freed on $100,000 bail.
She remains on probation for two drunken driving arrests in 2007 and a theft case filed this year.
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