Benjamin franklin and albert einstein, this is the exclusive biography of steve jobs

New York Times
wrote a column denouncing the handling of Jobs’s health 
issues. “Apple simply can’t be trusted to tell the truth about its chief executive,” he wrote in late 
July. “Under Mr. Jobs, Apple has created a culture of secrecy that has served it well in many 
ways—the speculation over which products Apple will unveil at the annual Macworld conference 
has been one of the company’s best marketing tools. But that same culture poisons its corporate 
governance.” As he was writing the column and getting the standard “a private matter” comment 
from all at Apple, he got an unexpected call from Jobs himself. “This is Steve Jobs,” he began. 
“You think I’m an arrogant asshole who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime 
bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” After that rather arresting opening, Jobs offered up 
some information about his health, but only if Nocera would keep it off the record. Nocera 
honored the request, but he was able to report that, while Jobs’s health problems amounted to 
more than a common bug, “they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of 
cancer.” Jobs had given Nocera more information than he was willing to give his own board and 
shareholders, but it was not the full truth.
Partly due to concern about Jobs’s weight loss, Apple’s stock price drifted from $188 at the 
beginning of June 2008 down to $156 at the end of July. Matters were not helped in late August 
when 
Bloomberg News
mistakenly released its prepackaged obituary of Jobs, which ended up on 
Gawker. Jobs was able to roll out Mark Twain’s famous quip a few days later at his annual music 
event. “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” he said, as he launched a line of new iPods. 
But his gaunt appearance was not reassuring. By early October the stock price had sunk to $97.
That month Doug Morris of Universal Music was scheduled to meet with Jobs at Apple. Instead 
Jobs invited him to his house. Morris was surprised to see him so ill and in pain. Morris was about 
to be honored at a gala in Los Angeles for City of Hope, which raised money to fight cancer, and 
he wanted Jobs to be there. Charitable events were something Jobs avoided, but he decided to do 
it, both for Morris and for the cause. At the event, held in a big tent on Santa Monica beach, 
Morris told the two thousand guests that Jobs was giving the music industry a new lease on life. 
The performances—by Stevie Nicks, Lionel Richie, Erykah Badu, and Akon—went on past 
midnight, and Jobs had severe chills. Jimmy Iovine gave him a hooded sweatshirt to wear, and he 
kept the hood over his head all evening. “He was so sick, so cold, so thin,” Morris recalled.
Fortune
’s veteran technology writer Brent Schlender was leaving the magazine that December, 
and his swan song was to be a joint interview with Jobs, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Michael 
Dell. It had been hard to organize, and just a few days before it was to happen, Jobs called to back 
out. “If they ask why, just tell them I’m an asshole,” he said. Gates was annoyed, then discovered 
what the health situation was. “Of course, he had a very, very good reason,” said Gates. “He just 
didn’t want to say.” That became more apparent when Apple announced on December 16 that 
Jobs was canceling his scheduled appearance at the January Macworld, the forum he had used for 
big product launches for the past eleven years.
The blogosphere erupted with speculation about his health, much of which had the odious smell 
of truth. Jobs was furious and felt violated. He was also annoyed that Apple wasn’t being more 
active in pushing back. So on January 5, 2009, he wrote and released a misleading open letter. He 
claimed that he was skipping Macworld because he wanted to spend more time with his family. 
“As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008,” he added. “My doctors think 
they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been robbing me of the proteins my 
body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis. The remedy for 
this nutritional problem is relatively simple.”

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There was a kernel of truth to this, albeit a small one. One of the hormones created by the 
pancreas is glucagon, which is the flip side of insulin. Glucagon causes your liver to release blood 
sugar. Jobs’s tumor had metastasized into his liver and was wreaking havoc. In effect, his body 
was devouring itself, so his doctors gave him drugs to try to lower the glucagon level. He did have 
a hormone imbalance, but it was because his cancer had spread into his liver. He was in personal 
denial about this, and he also wanted to be in public denial. Unfortunately that was legally 
problematic, because he ran a publicly traded company. But Jobs was furious about the way the 
blogosphere was treating him, and he wanted to strike back.
He was very sick at this point, despite his upbeat statement, and also in excruciating pain. He 
had undertaken another round of cancer drug therapy, and it had grueling side effects. His skin 
started drying out and cracking. In his quest for alternative approaches, he flew to Basel, 
Switzerland, to try an experimental hormone-delivered radiotherapy. He also underwent an 
experimental treatment developed in Rotterdam known as peptide receptor radionuclide therapy.
After a week filled with increasingly insistent legal advice, Jobs finally agreed to go on medical 
leave. He made the announcement on January 14, 2009, in another open letter to the Apple staff. 
At first he blamed the decision on the prying of bloggers and the press. “Unfortunately, the 
curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but 
everyone else at Apple,” he said. But then he admitted that the remedy for his “hormone 
imbalance” was not as simple as he had claimed. “During the past week I have learned that my 
health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.” Tim Cook would again take 
over daily operations, but Jobs said that he would remain CEO, continue to be involved in major 
decisions, and be back by June.
Jobs had been consulting with Bill Campbell and Art Levinson, who were juggling the dual 
roles of being his personal health advisors and also the co-lead directors of the company. But the 
rest of the board had not been as fully informed, and the shareholders had initially been 
misinformed. That raised some legal issues, and the SEC opened an investigation into whether the 
company had withheld “material information” from shareholders. It would constitute security 
fraud, a felony, if the company had allowed the dissemination of false information or withheld 
true information that was relevant to the company’s financial prospects. Because Jobs and his 
magic were so closely identified with Apple’s comeback, his health seemed to meet this standard. 
But it was a murky area of the law; the privacy rights of the CEO had to be weighed. This balance 
was particularly difficult in the case of Jobs, who both valued his privacy and embodied his 
company more than most CEOs. He did not make the task easier. He became very emotional, both 
ranting and crying at times, when railing against anyone who suggested that he should be less 
secretive.
Campbell treasured his friendship with Jobs, and he didn’t want to have any fiduciary duty to 
violate his privacy, so he offered to step down as a director. “The privacy side is so important to 
me,” he later said. “He’s been my friend for about a million years.” The lawyers eventually 
determined that Campbell didn’t need to resign from the board but that he should step aside as co-
lead director. He was replaced in that role by Andrea Jung of Avon. The SEC investigation ended 
up going nowhere, and the board circled the wagons to protect Jobs from calls that he release more 
information. “The press wanted us to blurt out more personal details,” recalled Al Gore. “It was 
really up to Steve to go beyond what the law requires, but he was adamant that he didn’t want his 
privacy invaded. His wishes should be respected.” When I asked Gore whether the board should 
have been more forthcoming at the beginning of 2009, when Jobs’s health issues were far worse 
than shareholders were led to believe, he replied, “We hired outside counsel to do a review of 
what the law required and what the best practices were, and we handled it all by the book. I sound 
defensive, but the criticism really pissed me off.”
One board member disagreed. Jerry York, the former CFO at Chrysler and IBM, did not say 
anything publicly, but he confided to a reporter at the