Edible Apple

In a bizarre revelation, Google CEO Larry Page claimed in an interview yesterday that Jobs’ anger towards Android was just for show, and was simply a means to inspire the rank and file at Apple.

I think that served their interests. For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better…

Can Page really, in his heart of hearts, believe this?

Network World calls BS on Page’s claims:

Steve Jobs had a notoriously long memory and short temper. If you crossed him, ripped off one of his products, he wasn’t likely to ever forget about it.

Is it any wonder why Jobs, after being ousted from Apple in 1985 by John Sculley, never spoke to the former Pepsi CEO again? Or how about how Gizmodo curiously stopped receiving invitations to Apple’s special media events following their iPhone 4 expose? And in a more parallel example, Jobs never had the nicest of things to say about Windows and was quick, even in the 2000s, to bluntly state that Microsoft had ripped off the Mac.

That said, are we really supposed to believe that Jobs, a man who was driven in large part by raw emotion, concocted this whole Android battle-cry to rally the troops?

Exactly.

Especially considering that it’d be absolutely asinine, and arguably illegal, for Apple to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees just to inspire the Apple faithful.

Is Page really that naive?