Apple Praises 'Becoming Steve Jobs' as 'Better Than Anything Else We've Seen'

Apple continues to offer praise for Becoming Steve Jobs, the unauthorized biography of the late Apple co-founder set to be released on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Apple told The New York Times that the upcoming book is "better than anything else we've seen," and several executives at the company agreed to be interviewed for the title because they "felt a responsibility to say more" about the Steve that they knew and worked with.

“After a long period of reflection following Steve’s death, we felt a sense of responsibility to say more about the Steve we knew,” Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, said. “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.”

Apple senior executive Eddy Cue tweeted last week that Becoming Steve Jobs is "well done and first to get it right" in regards to reflecting on Jobs, after he called the film Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine "an inaccurate and mean-spirited view of my friend." Apple CEO Tim Cook also dismissed Walter Isaacson's official biography of Jobs as a “tremendous disservice” to the Steve that he knew, adding that “the person I read about there is somebody I would never have wanted to work with over all this time.”

Best portrayal is about to be released - Becoming Steve Jobs (book). Well done and first to get it right. — Eddy Cue (@cue) March 16, 2015

While it appears that Apple is now set on changing the narrative surrounding Jobs posthumously, the company initially showed no interest in participating in Becoming Steve Jobs, co-written by authors Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, executive editor of Fast Company. Apple refused to provide the tech journalists with interviews in 2012, but changed its mind 18 months later, according to The New York Times.

“I think our patience and quiet perseverance was what eventually won them over,” said Mr. Schlender, who covered Mr. Jobs for almost 25 years. He said he wanted to write the book because he felt there was a side of Mr. Jobs’s personality that had never been captured by journalists. While the authors fact-checked portions of the book with Apple and other sources and showed the finished volume to the company, Apple wasn’t allowed to have “any editorial input whatsoever,” Mr. Tetzeli said.

Jobs passed away in October 2011 following a lengthy battle with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Revolutionary Leader will be available through Amazon on March 24 in hardcover and digital formats. Both official excerpts and leaked content from the biography has surfaced in recent weeks, and a sample of the book's prologue and first chapter is available through iBooks in select countries.