Steve Jobs Biography: 10 Interesting Facts About the Apple Guru

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson came out on Monday. Here are 10 facts about the Apple guru.

Jobs had a sense of fashion.

Jobs disliked the clothes worn by his biological sister, writer Mona Simpson, so much that he sent her clothing made by his friend, Japanese designer Issey Miyake. Simpson said: He'd gone shopping for me, and he'd picked out great things, exactly my size, in flattering colors.

Jobs saved Toy Story- and kept Woody from being the bad guy.

When Disney higher-ups halted production on the film Toy Story, Jobs used his own money to keep the work going. Of Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jobs said, He had Toy Story all messed up. He wanted Woody to be a bad guy, and when he shut us down we kind of kicked him out and said, 'This isn't what we want,' and did it the way we always wanted.

Jobs could be romantic.

Jobs would fly across the country to visit writer Jennifer Egan, who he dated for a year. They would spend several nights on the phone talking for hours. Wrote Isaacson: At a Boston Macworld event, he told a large gathering how much in love he was and thus needed to rush out to catch a plane for Philadelphia to see his girlfriend. The audience was enchanted.

Jobs did not like his required courses at Reed College.

Jobs' parents tried talking him out of going to Reed College, citing the expense, but they relented. When Jobs was required to take a number of courses he found undesirable, and also saw how the high tuition was hurting his parents' finances, he dropped out. Isaacson wrote: He didn't actually want to leave Reed; he just wanted to quit paying tuition and taking classes that didn't interest him.

Jobs thought of his adoptive parents as his real parents.

Jobs hated it whenever people referred to Paul and Clara Jobs as his adoptive parents. Isaacson wrote: 'They were my parents 1,000%,' he said. When speaking about his biological parents, on the other hand, he was curt: 'They were my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more.'

Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell, may have just been the perfect woman for him.

For a while, Jobs was unsure of marrying Powell, but those who knew them both said that he was lucky to have her. Google's Andy Hertzfeld described Powell as a tough woman and armor-plated. That's why the marriage works.

Jobs did not like a certain calligrapher's work.

Jobs and Powell were meeting with the calligrapher who was going to do their wedding invitations when he suddenly left the room. Isaacson wrote: They waited for him to come back, but he didn't. After a while Powell went to find him in his room. 'Get rid of her,' he said. 'I can't look at her stuff. It's shit.'

Jobs had a tumultuous relationship with first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs.

Father and daughter could go weeks and even months without speaking to each other. The fights got so bad during her college years that Jobs would occasionally stop supporting her. Jobs once paid back Andy Hertzfeld, who had given her money for tuition. She was always unsure of their relationship, Hertzfeld said. I went to a birthday party of hers, and Steve was supposed to come, and he was very, very, late. She got extremely anxious and disappointed. But when he finally did come, she totally lit up.

Jobs was not a fan of the American education system, and wanted more foreigners.

Isaacson wrote that Jobs thought the U.S. education system was antiquated and harmed by union rules. At a dinner with other technology bigwigs and President Obama, Jobs talked about the need for engineers, saying that foreign students who earned engineering degrees in the U.S. should be given visas to stay.

Jobs made Apple stores accessible.

Jobs refused to have Apple stores located in remote areas like other tech stores. We may not be able to get them to drive ten miles to check out our products, but we can get them to walk ten feet, he said. Of Windows users, he said, If they're passing by, they will drop in out of curiosity, if we make it inviting enough, and once we get a chance to show them what we have, we will win.

What was on his iPod?

Alicia Keys, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles, Black Eyed Peas, Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, the Doors, Janis Joplin, John Mayer, and Talking Heads, to name a few. Jobs downloaded songs by rapper Eminem, but those never made it to his iPod. I respect Eminem as an artist, but I just don't want to listen to his music, and I can't relate to his values the way I can to Dylan's, he said.