Steve Jobs biography to be released on 24 October

Publisher brings forward official biography of Apple co-founder, who told author: “I want my kids to know me”

The official Steve Jobs biography will be released on 24 October after being rushed forward because of the Apple co-founder’s death.

The authorised biography Steve Jobs is written by Walter Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time magazine. Customer pre-purchases have already made it the number one bestseller at Amazon. Publishing house Simon & Schuster had originally planned to release it on 21 November.

Isaacson has told how Jobs, in pain and too weak to climb stairs a few weeks before his death, wanted his children to understand why he wasn’t always there for them. “I wanted my kids to know me,” Isaacson quoted Jobs as saying in their final interview at Jobs’ home in Palo Alto, California. “I wasn’t always there for them and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”

Isaacson said he visited Jobs for the last time a few weeks ago and found him curled up in some pain in a downstairs bedroom. Jobs had moved there because he was too weak to go up and down stairs “but his mind was still sharp and his humour vibrant”, Isaacson writes in an essay that will be published in Time magazine’s 17 October edition.

Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56 after suffering a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

Simon & Schuster’s synopsis says the book is based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years – as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues. “Although Jobs co-operated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against.

“Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership and values.”

Another publisher, Bluewater Productions, has said it is rushing out a special edition e-book of its forthcoming comic book on Jobs.

The 32-page comic titled Steve Jobs: Founder of Apple is initially being sold on the NOOK and Kindle readers. The print edition is due for release at the end of October, with a portion of the profits from both issues going to the American Cancer Society.

Goodbye, Steve!

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple and mind behind the company’s visionary products, passed away at the age of 56.

Steve Jobs was famous for creating a “reality distortion field” in which his charisma, words, personality and vision succeeded in making him the most persuasive evangelist in the technology world.

The following is a collection of his quotes on technology and life:

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the ones who think differently. While some may see crazy, we see genius.”

“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

“The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network.

We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people – as remarkable as the telephone.”

“Picasso had a saying, ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. … I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”

“You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. … Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

“I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometre. Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. … That didn’t look so good, but then someone at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle and a man on a bicycle blew the condor away. That’s what a computer is to me: The computer is the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, … that’s what matters to me.”

“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. … We just want to make great products.”

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”