“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.” He told Google’s Eric Schmidt, “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.’’ Interesting to note: Jobs’ vendetta is still going on full force, just look at litigation battles between Apple and Samsung over patents owned by Apple. One of the most recent developments could be seriously detrimental to the Android platform. An Australian judge issued a temporary injunction banning the sale of the Samsung Galaxy Tab in Australia because it infringes on two patents held by Apple relating to multitouch. Because multitouch is such a broadly defined technology, the injunction could impede any Android product release in Australia.

Steve Expected to Die Young

Jobs confided to former Apple CEO John Sculley that he believed he would die young, and therefore needed to accomplish very much very quickly in order to make his mark on Silicon Valley history.

“We all have a short period of time on this earth,” he told the Sculleys. “We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we’re going to be here nor do I, but my feeling is I’ve got to accomplish a lot of these things while I’m young.” [Huffington Post]

Jobs’ now famous 2005 Stanford commencement speech expanded on his views of life, death and our limited time on earth. At that event, he said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

Steve Became an Expert on Cancer Treatment — If Only Too Late

Despite pleas from friends and family, Jobs initially declined surgery to treat his cancer, waiting nine months before going under the knife. As the book reports: “The big thing was that he really was not ready to open his body,” Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell, said. “It’s hard to push someone to do that.”

However, when Jobs finally did come around to traditional medical treatments, he did so with all the intellectual penetration of Apple product development. Or so reports the book:

“When he did take the path of surgery and science, Mr. Jobs did so with passion and curiosity, sparing no expense, pushing the frontiers of new treatments. According to Mr. Isaacson, once Mr. Jobs decided on the surgery and medical science, he became an expert — studying, guiding and deciding on each treatment. Mr. Isaacson said Mr. Jobs made the final decision on each new treatment regimen.” [NYT]

Jobs also said 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.” [AP]

The Beatles were one of his favorite bands, and he always hoped to get the iconic group’s music on iTunes. This was eventually accomplished in late 2010.

New York Times, Huffington Post and Associated Press