Steve Jobs bio sets techies abuzz - Boston Herald

A new biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs doesn't hit stores until Monday, but the tech world is buzzing about tantalizing leaks detailing Jobs' clashes with President Obama, his belief that Google stole its smartphone tech from Apple and how he delayed treatment for pancreatic cancer.

Walter Isaacson's "Steve Jobs" reportedly says the late Apple chairman delayed surgery for his pancreatic cancer for nine months — until it was too late.

Later, Jobs paid $100,000 to have the DNA of his tumor sequenced — a tactic that can help some patients' treatment, according to Nathan Pearson, director of research at Cambridge personal genomics company Knome.

"Today, we're still throwing darts at the dart board," Pearson said. "We're still collecting variants trying to understand how you target them."

Knome first provided the service, for which it charges more than $10,000, about a year ago. Pearson said the practice is becoming more common, especially as the cost rapidly drops.

The biography also reportedly tells of an up-and-down relationship between Jobs and President Obama, an admirer. Jobs wouldn't meet Obama without a personal invitation from the president, and when he did, he told him he should be friendlier to business.

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," the book says Jobs told Obama.

Jobs offered to design advertising for Obama's re-election campaign, but also reportedly said he was infuriated by the way the president concentrated on the reasons things don't get done.

Boston University social science professor Thomas Whalen said the dynamic is one that's been common between tycoons and presidents throughout history — J.P. Morgan and Teddy Roosevelt had a contentious relationship, for example.

"When you get to be as big as Jobs — and Henry Ford falls in to this category, too — they often think they're the equivalent of the president of the United States," Whalen said.

The book expands on Jobs' anger over Google's Android smartphone operating system, which Jobs believed was stolen.

"I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this," the book quotes Jobs as saying.

Google declined to comment yesterday for this story.

Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe said it can be hard to differentiate between an independently developed, but similar product or the result of a stolen trade secret.

"That's both the beauty and the ugly part of life in Silicon Valley," he said. "The beauty is that ideas diffuse very quickly. The ugly part is some people call that theft."