In an interesting move, Apple has thrown its support behind a forthcoming unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs, praising it for providing a broader view of the company’s late founder.
“Becoming Steve Jobs,” written by veteran tech journalists Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, includes interviews from Apple CEO Tim Cook and Eddy Cue, the company’s senior vice president of internet software and services. Both men have been publicly supportive of the book, which is a departure from Apple’s response to other books about Jobs and the company.
The company initially refused to cooperate with Schlender and Tetzeli, but changed its tune later to provide four high-level executives for interviews.
“After a long period of reflection following Steve’s death, we felt a sense of responsibility to say more about the Steve we knew,” Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling told The New York Times. “We decided to participate in Brent and Rick’s book because of Brent’s long relationship with Steve, which gave him a unique perspective on Steve’s life. The book captures Steve better than anything else we’ve seen, and we are happy we decided to participate.”
The new book comes three and a half years after the publication of “Steve Jobs,” the authorized biography of Apple’s chief written by Walter Isaacson. Apple’s participation in this upcoming text comes after what executives saw was an unfair portrayal of Jobs in Isaacson’s book. Cook said Isaacson’s book did a “tremendous disservice” to Jobs, while Jony Ive told the New Yorker that his regard for it “couldn’t be any lower.”
Of course, Isaacson was hand-picked by Jobs to write his biography, and that book was based on interviews with more than 100 people who knew Jobs, including Cook, Ive and Cue – along with Steve Jobs himself.
The public support for “Becoming Steve Jobs” showcases a cultural shift at Apple since Jobs’s departure. The company, which was notoriously tight-lipped, has since opened up for more interviews with high-level executives. Under Cook’s leadership, the company’s executives are more available for interviews and take up a larger presence in the public eye.
