Steve Jobs believed the "Antennagate" controversy around the launch of the iPhone 4 last year was part of a smear campaign by smartphone rivals Google and Motorola, according to an authorised biography of the Apple co-founder.
Jobs first reaction to the issue, which saw a small number of iPhone 4 users lose signal if they held the phone in a certain way, was that Google and Motorola were trying to "shoot Apple down", according to the book, published on Monday.
He was apparently only moved to tackle the problem after Tim Cook, who replaced Jobs as Apple chief executive five weeks before his death, quoted someone who warned that Apple was in danger of "becoming the new Microsoft, complacent and arrogant".
Apple called an emergency press conference to deal with the iPhone 4 antenna media frenzy after its launch in July last year. Jobs offered a free rubber "bumper" to iPhone 4 owners affected by the issue, which saw signal drop dramatically when the metal antenna on the bottom and left sides of the phone was gripped by users.
According to the new biography by Walter Isaacson, Jobs was on holiday with his family in Hawaii when the media storm broke.
Jobs's first reaction was "defensive", according to Isaacson, who said that the Apple co-founder became "emotionally anguished" at suggestions that the company he co-founded was arrogant in refusing to immediately address the problem.
The book says that Jobs told Art Levinson, the chairman of Genentech and Apple board member, "Fuck this, it's not worth it," when he was told not to take the criticism personally.
"Finally, Tim Cook was able to shake him out of his lethargy," the biography adds. "He quoted someone as saying that Apple was becoming the new Microsoft, complacent and arrogant. The next day Jobs changed his attitude. 'Let's get to the bottom of this,' he [Jobs] said."
Jobs then flew to the Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California, to get internal data about the dropped calls and scrambled to organise an emergency press conference.
After the press conference, Jobs told Isaacson that he sounded "too annoyed" when on-stage, but that the media frenzy was overblown. "This is blown so out of proportion that it's incredible," he told his official biographer.
The return rate for the iPhone 4 turned out to be just 1.7% of customers, according to the book, which is less than a third of the return rate for the iPhone 3GS.
