Meanwhile, how can we possibly disappear while crazy stuff like another biography tussle is unfolding? New Power Macs (at least these new Power Macs) might be a relative snoozefest for Apple drama-fiends, but no one's going to care as long as Steve Jobs is butting heads with yet another book publisher. Longtime viewers will recall that we've incorporated this general plot twist into the story before; about five years ago, Uncle Steve got his undies in a bunch over the imminent publication of The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman, and indeed Steve had actually called the book a "hatchet job" before it had even been written. Evidently omniscience is not without its benefits.

So, remember all those "mysterious obstacles" that suddenly sprang up just prior to that book's release? First it came to light that, while the publishers had paid Corbis to license the photo of Steve Jobs it had used on the book's cover, Corbis had never paid the original photographer, who was claiming that his work was being used without his permission. For a while it looked like the book might even be delayed while Random House printed up a million new dust jackets and a slew of redone marketing materials. And as if that weren't bad enough, Vanity Fair magazine, which had paid up front to print some of the book's juicier excerpts in one of its upcoming issues, suddenly bailed on the whole plan, citing a "lack of space." Right about at that time, author Alan Deutschman was quoted thusly: "It really looks to me as if Steve Jobs is trying to cause problems for this book."

So was it Steve behind the problems that plagued Second Coming? Had he RDFed the photographer into claiming that he'd never licensed that photo for sale? Did he blackmail a higher-up at Vanity Fair and persuade him to use Second Coming's space for a couple of ads for Captain Morgan Spiced Rum? Oh, sure, you may have thought it far-fetched at the time-- but it starts looking a whole lot more likely when you consider how far Steve has already gone to derail the success of another bio: Young & Simon's iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, available for preorder. (At least, available for preorder right now; with Steve on the warpath, who knows how long that'll last?)

For example, faithful viewer Jason Romney tipped us off to a Reuters article which reports that, because Steve "did not like" the book and didn't want it published at all, Apple has pulled every other book by the same publisher from the shelves at every Apple retail store. That's right, folks: Steve's dislike for iCon has reportedly resulted in a complete and total lack of John Wiley & Sons books at Apple's retail outlets, so if you drop by to purchase a copy of Tiger Friday night, you'll have to look elsewhere for The Mac OS X Tiger Book by Andy Ihnatko or Bob LeVitus's Mac OS X Tiger for Dummies.

Since whether or not iCon is a hatchet job (and Young claims that, if anything, it's a Jobs-positive sequel to his previous negative Steve bio, Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward) has no bearing whatsoever on the merit of other Wiley-published Mac books, banning the publisher's entire catalog from Apple's stores starts looking pretty megalomaniacal indeed. But hey, look on the bright side: at least Young's already got some juicy material for the next installment in his ongoing "Life o' Steve" series... and a whole lot of free publicity making the public wonder just what it is that Steve doesn't want them to find out. Must be that preposterous chapter about how he sometimes lets his personal ego dictate his business decisions...