Jobs was not warm, fuzzy: Biographer

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs could be mean, abrasive and cuttingly dismissive of co-workers in his quest for perfectionism, according to his biographer Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs. “He’s not warm and fuzzy,” he said.

“He was very petulant,” Isaacson said of Jobs, who died on October 5 at the age of 56. “He was very brittle. He could be very, very mean to people at times — whether it was to a waitress in a restaurant, or to a guy who had stayed up all night coding, he could just really just go at them and say, ‘You’re doin’ this all wrong. It’s horrible’.”

“And, you’d say, ‘Why did you do that? Why weren’t you nicer?’ And he’d say, ‘I really want to be with people who demand perfection. And this is who I am’. You know, he was a pretty abrasive and in some ways, you know, cantankerous character,” Isaacson said. Jobs’ quest for perfection came in part from his adoptive father, Paul Jobs, who taught him “how to make great things,” his biographer said.

TOP-SELLING BIOGRAPHY
The new biography of deceased Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs may be Amazon.com Inc’s top-selling book of 2011, a spokeswoman at the largest internet retailer said today.

The biography Steve Jobs hit bookstores on Monday, but was released earlier than expected on Apple’s iBooks online store and Amazon’s Kindle late Sunday.

The book is the best-selling book on Amazon.com and is also listed as the top-selling electronic book on the company’s Kindle ebook store.