Steve Jobs believed he was a reincarnated second world war fighter pilot and his early success turned him into a “demon”, according to a new memoir by his former girlfriend and the mother of his eldest child.
“He’d tell me how, when driving, he felt a strong impulse to pull the steering wheel back as if for takeoff,” Chrisann Brennan, the Apple guru’s first long-time girlfriend claims in her book, The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life With Steve Jobs.
According to an exclusive extract published in the New York Post, Jobs had the “unadorned glamour from the 1940s. He loved the big-band sound of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Count Basie. At the first Apple party he even danced like he was from the 40s.”
Brennan and Jobs met in 1972 when they were both students at Homestead high school in Cupertino, California. They dated on and off for five years and lived together with their friend Daniel Kottke, a computer engineer and one of the earliest employees of Apple.
Their relationship ended on a sour note in late 1977, after Brennan became pregnant with their daughter. Jobs denied paternity, claiming he was infertile, although a paternity test in 1979 proved he was the father. In 1983 he told Time magazine “28% of the male population in the United States could be the father.”
Brennan paints a picture of a driven man whose deep interest in spirituality was combined with a dismissive attitude to people and tasks he thought were beneath him. In restaurants he would order the same meal time and again and complain about the side sauces.
Brennan writes that as Apple took off, so did Jobs’ ego. His “behaviors didn’t improve with success: they changed from adolescent and dopey to just plain vicious,” she writes.
“Steve would run down the waitstaff like a demon, detailing the finer points of good service, which included the notion that ‘they should be seen only when he needed them.’ Steve was uncontrollably critical. His reactions had a Tourette’s quality — as if he couldn’t stop himself,” Brennan writes.
He would be sarcastic toward the restaurant staff. “The host would say, 'Two?' and Steve would reply, 'No, 15!' driving for the implicit 'duh!'" she writes.
At the same time, Jobs was spending an increasing amount of time with long-time spiritual adviser, Japanese Zen master Kobun Chino Otogawa. “I would wake up to find Steve gently ecstatic, speaking to me in symbolic language with the Zen master’s distinct speech pattern. A number of times he spoke to me about how he had been given ‘five brilliant flowers,’” she writes. Brennan believe she was one of the “flowers”.
Jobs tried to take over Brennan’s spiritual development too. He took LSD with her and tried to get her to shout “Mummy. Daddy. Mummy, Daddy” in primal scream therapy while they were high, she writes. “The fact that he had never gone through primal therapy himself didn’t seem to concern him. It was that Pygmalion thing again,” she writes.
Jobs began work on the Apple Lisa in the year of his daughter’s birth. As he denied paternity he claimed Lisa was an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture. He later told biographer Walter Isaacson: “Obviously, it was named for my daughter.” She later reconciled with her father.
The Bite in the Apple will be published by St Martin's Press on October 29.据史蒂夫·乔布斯的前女友，也是他第一个孩子的母亲回忆，史蒂夫·乔布斯坚信他是二战飞行员转世，且他过早的成功将他变成了“恶魔”。
“开车的时候，他会告诉我，他感到一股强烈的冲动要把方向盘往回拉，仿佛要起飞。”乔布斯的第一个交往多年的女友克里斯兰·布伦南在她的新书《咬一口苹果：我与史蒂夫·乔布斯的相处回忆录》中写道。
据《纽约邮报》独家刊登的一段摘录，乔布斯有着“40年代人的朴素魅力。他爱托米·多西尔、班尼·古德曼和贝西伯爵的大型爵士乐队音乐。在苹果公司的第一次聚会上，他像40年代的人一样跳着舞。”
布伦南和乔布斯于1972年相识，当时他们都是加利福利亚州库比提诺霍姆斯泰德高中的学生。他们分分合合五年，与他们的朋友丹尼尔·库特克——一位电脑工程师，同时也是苹果的早期员工，住在一起。
在布伦南怀上他的女儿后，他们于1977年末不欢而散。乔布斯不承认自己是父亲，称自己不能生育，尽管1979年的亲子鉴定证实他的确是父亲。1983年，他仍对《时代》杂志称，“美国28%的男性都有可能是孩子的父亲”。
布伦南画了一幅画。画上有一个开着车的男人。这个男人的深层兴趣在于精神。同时，他对地位比他低的人和屈才的任务投以轻蔑。在餐厅，他会一次又一次地预定同样的用餐时间，并且抱怨身边的酱汁。
布伦南写道，随着苹果的成功，乔布斯也开始越来越自我。他的“行为并未因成功而得到改善：它们由不成熟和愚笨变成单纯的恶毒。”
“史蒂夫会像恶魔一样跑到服务员跟前，详细列举出优质服务的要点，包括‘只有在他需要他们时，他们才能出现’的想法。史蒂夫无可救药地吹毛求疵。他的行为具有抽动症患者的特点——仿佛他没法让自己停下来，”布伦南写道。
他会用一种挖苦的口吻对侍者说话。“侍者问，‘两位？’史蒂夫会回答，‘不，15！’，以表示这还用得着问吗？”她写道。
与此同时，乔布斯在他的长期精神顾问日本禅师乙川弘文身上花去的时间越来越多。“我醒来的时候，发现史蒂夫欣喜若狂，用跟禅师交谈时那种独特的象征性的语言跟我说话。有好多次，他对我说起他如何被赋予‘五朵灿烂的花儿，’”她写道。布伦南相信她是这些“花”中的一朵。
乔布斯也试图掌管布伦南的精神发展。他和她一起吃迷幻药，当他们兴奋的时候，用原始的尖叫疗法让她大叫，“妈妈，爸爸，妈妈，爸爸”她写道。“他并不关心他自己从未用过尖叫疗法的事实。就像皮格马利翁效应（指期望者通过一种强烈的心理暗示，使被期望者的行为达到他的预期要求）一样，”她写道。
在他女儿丽莎出生的那一年，史蒂夫开始研究苹果丽莎计算机。因为他否认他是父亲，所以他宣称丽莎是本地集成软件架构的首字母缩写。他在后来告诉传记作者沃尔特·艾萨克森：“很显然，它是以我女儿命名的”。史蒂夫的女儿后来与她的父亲和解。
《咬一口苹果：我与史蒂夫·乔布斯相处回忆录》将由圣马丁出版社于10月29日出版。