A biography of Steve Jobs, set to go on sale Monday, goes into detail about his near obsession with Android. Walter Isaacson worked on the book for more than 2 years, interviewing Jobs multiple times, as well as numerous friends, family members, colleagues, and competitors of the visionary, and sometimes abrasive, Apple co-founder. According to an AP article on the book, it paints a picture of Jobs as a man dedicated to destroying Android. He described Android as, "a stolen product."
Jobs recounted turning down an offer from Google's Eric Schmidt to settle an Android related lawsuit. He told 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.
Of course, Steve Jobs had no aversion to copying ideas from others. In a 1994 interview he famously laid out a completely different philosophy when he said:
Picasso had a saying. He said, "Good artists copy. Great artists steal," and we have, you know, always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
He was talking about the development of the Macintosh. The ideas Apple "stole" for the Mac came from Xerox.
The difference is that Apple copied Xerox technology after licensing it. Of course, another difference is Apple's refusal to license their phone technology to other handset vendors.
