SAN FRANCISCO
Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs rejected current CEO Tim Cook’s offer of a liver transplant, according to a new biography about Jobs set to be released later this month.
An excerpt of “Becoming Steve Jobs,” was published Friday on the website Fast Company. It was authored by technology reporter Brent Schlender and the executive editor of Fast Company, Rick Tetzeli.
Jobs, who co-founded Apple in the 1970s and introduced the world to the iPod, iPhone and iPad, announced in 2004 that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer. Just five years later, he was too sick to go into the Cupertino, California, company’s office and was waiting for a liver transplant.
In the excerpt, the writers reveal that after one of many visits to see the ailing Jobs in 2009, Cook had his own blood tested and found he had the same rare blood type as his old friend and boss.
He went again to Jobs’ house to offer a part of his liver—the livers of the donor and recipient in a liver transplant grow to an operative size.
Jobs was not interested in Cook’s liver, and angrily told him so, according to Schlender and Tetzeli.
"He cut me off at the legs, almost before the words were out of my mouth," Cook said in the excerpt. "'No,’ he said, 'I'll never let you do that. I'll never do that.'"
Jobs, who had a notorious reputation for mistreating employees and others, apparently did not often become cross with Cook.
"Steve only yelled at me four or five times during the 13 years I knew him, and this was one of them," the excerpt claimed.
Jobs received a liver transplant several months later, but passed away in 2011 at the age of 56. “Becoming Steve Jobs” will be released March 24.
