Some two weeks after downloading a copy of the highly anticipated Steve Jobs biography, V3 finally finished the 600-page epic.

Our initial thoughts on the opening pages were positive. They detail Jobs' upbringing and friendship with Steve Wozniak, and the rest of the book didn't disappoint, offering a wealth of anecdotes and insight into Jobs and his tumultuous life.

Jobs was, it's well known, something of a perfectionist. The book reveals time and again just how manic this perfectionism could be, with Jobs tearing people apart for the slightest design fault and insisting on absolute control on all aspects of production.

Many former colleagues interviewed by author Walter Isaacson recounted this criticism with a sense of injustice that Jobs had to be so ruthless, yet they all admit that his leadership helped them produce some of their best work.

It's a testament to Jobs that, despite his fiercely outspoken personality, he was able to build loyal, dedicated teams that developed some of the most compelling and unique technology products ever produced.

For many, the most interesting chapters will be those that discuss these products, as Jobs and his team, notably Jony Ive who Jobs describes as his "spiritual partner", developed the products that made Apple the most valuable company in the world: the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Jobs is often derided as a trumped up marketing guru, yet the book dispels that myth, explaining, for example, that it was Jobs who hit on the idea of producing an iPod with no screen, which subsequently became the hugely popular iPod Shuffle.

Thankfully, Jobs also saw that the iPod scroll wheel was not a viable system for operating a phone and that a touch-screen device - without a stylus ("God gave us 10 styluses") - was the way to go.

Product genius or not, Jobs was certainly not your everyday chief executive, regularly bursting into tears at the end of fights over product or design issues, insisting on a series of bizarre dietary habits, and with terrible personal hygiene in his early years.

But the book really shines when Jobs' unfiltered voice comes through, offering telling insights on Apple, business negotiations, rivals, friends and family. Isaacson has done a great job of balancing these moments without letting Jobs' voice become too dominant.

Ultimately, the book offers a fascinating insight into Jobs and his role in turning Apple into the world leading firm it is today, and will be of great interest to anyone with more than a passing interest in Apple and its 'God-like' leader.

The Steve Jobs biography is published by Little Brown and is available now.

A disgruntled Apple store worker has revealed that he is behind a union that has been in operation since May with a mission to secure a better and fairer deal for the thousands of blue shirt workers who labour to flog the firm's range of shiny iGadgets.

Cory Moll, an employee in one of Apple's San Francisco stores, set up the Apple Retail Workers Union to help push his agenda in calling for better wages and benefits for shop floor workers.

The organisation has a sparse web site which offers the Marxian motto: 'At Apple, our most important resource, our soul, is our people. Our time has come.'  Moll also uses Facebook and Twitter to publicise his movement.

The Facebook page has almost 500 'Likes' but, given that Apple employs some 30,000 blue shirts, this hardly represents a significant outburst of support. Moll told Reuters that it's a tough fight and that enough support to form an official union is some way off.

"It's kind of a feeling of David versus Goliath. Right now what I hope to gain is to get people to start talking about it and get comfortable with it - there's a lot of hesitation to want to speak about it," he said.

"I don't think there's 50 per cent [support] in any one store but, as people talk about it, we could get close in a couple of stores."

Moll could be waiting a long time. Apple has one of the most fanatical followings of consumers and staff, as witnessed by the fervour around the launch of devices such as the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2.

Apple, which is valued at $317bn on the stock market and has countless billions in cash tucked away, will no doubt be keeping its eye on the situation and deciding on its offical stance, which probably won't involve giving Moll everything he wants and a free iPad 2.

Twitter will soon be deeply integrated into Apple's upcoming iOS 5 mobile operating system, the firm said at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday.

The integration will allow iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users to log-in to Twitter with a single sign-on and tweet photos, maps, videos and web sites from their mobile devices.

Apple users currently have a number of options to share a photo, such as by setting it as 'wallpaper' or emailing it to a contact. The Tweet button will now upload the photo directly to a Twitter account.

Twitter announced the partnership in its company blog. "Building Twitter into iOS 5 creates the easiest way to share everything that's happening in your world. Take a picture, tap 'Tweet'. Tweeting has never been simpler," said the firm.

The Apple integration conveniently coincides with the new version of Twitter Search, which started rolling out last week and displays photos and videos in users' search results.

Twitter said at the time that it will release a feature over the next few weeks that allows users to attach photos to tweets from Twitter.com.

The news of the Apple and Twitter partnership is not likely to be welcomed by Facebook. For some reason Apple chose to ignore the most popular social network in the world when choosing a social partner for its latest operating system.

Apple could just have easily allowed its users to upload photos into Facebook directly from its camera application.