Edible Apple

Walter Isaacson’s definitive biography of Steve Jobs isn’t slated for release until November 21, and measuring in at over 600 pages, it’s bound to keep Apple fans busy for quite some time.

But if you just can’t get enough of behind the scenes stories about Steve Jobs, Fortune this week published a new Kindle e-book titled “All About Steve” which encompasses 17 stories sourced from Fortune’s archives. While that may not sound appealing at first glance, Fortune has a solid track record of delivering interesting and eye-opening behind the scenes accounts of life at Apple.

The description reads in part:

All these stories are the product of deep reporting. In many cases FORTUNE’s writers spent hours interviewing Jobs and delving into his mind. The result is a singular journalistic collection, which will leave you with a comprehensive picture of Steve Jobs and Apple, a picture that is complex in the making yet simple in its triumph.

The e-book is available exclusively from Amazon, though iOS users can read it on their Apple devices providing they have the free Kindle app.

Some of the highlights include:

• Bro Uttal’s blow-by-blow account of the failed boardroom coup that left Jobs — stripped of all operating authority — tearfully declaring to his closest advisors on May 24, 1985 at 1:07 p.m. (someone noted the time) that he was resigning from Apple. (He stuck around for four more months.)
• A 1991 joint Steve Jobs-Bill Gates interview in which Jobs describes Microsoft as “a very small orifice” and Gates, responding to a seemingly innocuous remark about Go Corp., says “That’s one of the nastiest comments I’ve ever heard.”
• Schlender’s March 1997 reporting inside the chaos that was Apple before Jobs — at his Machiavellian best — managed to wrest control from CEO Gil Amelio. “I’m giving Gil the best advice I know,” Jobs says, “and I’ll keep doing it until he stops listening or tells me to go away.”
• “You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple,” Jobs tells Schlender at the end of a 1995 piece about Pixar. “But nobody there will listen to me…”

Notably, Fortune Senior Editor Adam Lashinsky is planning a new book about Apple that promises to expose a number of tantalizing secrets about the inner-workings of Apple. The book is set for release in January of 2012, and if Lashinsky’s previous work about Apple is any indication, this will be a must-read.

via Fortune