[Update] Walter Isaacson on 60 Minutes [Videos]

Update 1: YouTube links from CBS now below:

Part 1: http://youtu.be/1jqSK8Qv4ZY

Part 2: http://youtu.be/CXcfDN6L9d8

Walter Isaacson just appeared on 60 Minutes, and divulged some more details about Steve Jobs, including taped conversations. Here are some notes on the episode:

• Steve was affected by his father Paul Jobs at a young age; his dad taught him about attention to detail when it came to making the back of a fence looking just as good as the front
• Jobs felt the ‘beginning’ of Apple was when Steve and Woz sold their telephone ‘blue box’
• ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’. What Jobs realized from his trip to India
• ‘Reality Distortion Field’ – Steve drove himself by magical thinking; thought he was special and chosen, rules didn’t apply to him
• Steve didn’t have a license plate on his Mercedes–because he didn’t have a license plate (he said he didn’t want people to follow him)

• he would park in handicap parking spots
• Apple II: Steve wasn’t afraid to tell people ‘god we really fu**ed up the engineering on this’; Jobs loved arguments as part of his managements style
• Walter on Steve’s house: just a regular, normal house; even the kitchen door in the back was unlocked
• Walter was given family photos of Steve’s family; his first child with his estranged girlfriend moved into the family’s home when she was a teenager
•  Jobs on his birth father: “I learned a little bit about him, and I didn’t like what I learned”

• Jobs and his birth father had met before without knowing each other when his father ran a restaurant in Silicon Valley
• Steve refused to treat his tumour with an operation, and decides to use other natural treatments. Steve get an operation 9 months later, and doctors realize his cancer had spread around to his pancreas; Steve regret his decision to delay surgery
• Steve told everyone he was ‘cured’ but secretly received cancer treatments; during the iPhone 3G announcement he looked too frail
• Steve gets a secret liver transplant in Memphis, people found out 3 months later
• Jobs on death: “I saw my life as an arc…and it would end and compared to that nothing mattered. You’re born alone you’re going to die alone…what exactly do you have to lose Steve?

• Steve on God: ever since he had cancer, he believed in God more; possibly an afterlife
• Sometimes I think it’s just like an ON/OFF switch. Click, and you’re gone–that’s why he didn’t like to put off switches on Apple devices.

You can find clips of the entire interview on the CBS website. The Steve Jobs Biography hits bookstores tomorrow, although some people in Canada already have their copy. You can order it from Amazon.ca for $23 or find it in the iBookstore.