Steve Jobs isn’t exactly the kind of guy to let a grudge go. That’s why when Google released Android and it featured a “pinch to zoom” feature just like iOS, Jobs decided to make sure that Apple board member and Google CEO Eric Schmidt couldn’t steal any of Cupertino’s other bright ideas… like the original iPad.
So says Steven Levy, whose forthcoming book In The Plex is the result of two years inside the Google campus.
Problems came when Google bought and started work on the Android mobile phone system.
When he saw features like the ‘pinch-and-zoom’ control to look at websites and images during a visit to Mountain View, California, the home of ‘Googleplex’, he was apparently furious.
He believed the best ideas from the iPhone had been stolen.
Mr Schmidt stayed on the board at Apple but Mr Jobs somehow managed to keep the development of the iPad hidden from him.
It’s always amazing to me that the rest of the industry seems to have been caught with their pants down by the iPad, even though it was an open secret that Apple was working on a tablet for years. At least this explains why Google didn’t anticipate iPad: their CEO was convinced that if Apple had anything to show, he’d see it first just by dint of being on the board.
