LAS VEGAS: IBM kicked off its Impact conference in Vegas on Monday in a rather unusual way. Out was the corporate video, showing a corny round-up of all the firm’s achievements over the past 12 months followed by a stilted executive speech; in was a talk by Walter Isaacson, chairman of policy studies organisation the Aspen Institute, and more famously known as Steve Jobs’ biographer, on the lessons Jobs' legacy can teach on innovation and creativity.

Isaacson introduced his subject with a typical example of Jobs’ humility.

“Steve called me after I’d done my books on [Benjamin] Franklin and [Albert] Einstein and said ‘Why don’t you do me next?’, Isaacson said. However, Isaacson went on to explain that this was a fair comparison based on the passion and creativity these individuals had.

One of the anecdotes Isaacson gave about Jobs was back when the Apple former chief executive was a child and was helping his father build a fence. Jobs’ father said to him they had to make the back of the fence just as beautiful as the front. When Jobs questioned this, pointing out that nobody would ever see the back, his dad responded: ‘You will know’. Jobs said this was one of the most important lessons of his life.

Isaacson also told delegates that Jobs’ favourite phrase was, ‘Don't be afraid, you can do it’, which he’d use to encourage anyone from Steve Wozniak to Corning’s chief executive to do what he wanted them to do – in this case, speed up some coding or design Gorilla Glass respectively - and meet his exacting standards.

The passion that Jobs had for his products was matched by that of Einstein, Isaacson said.

“For Einstein, it started at about age seven, when his father gave him a compass. Einstein marvelled that nothing was touching the needle, but it kept twitching,” Isaacson explained.

“[In response to the rule that] time marches along second by second, irrespective of how we observe it, Einstein said, ‘How do we know?’ He came up with the idea that time is relevant as he thought different.”

Jobs and Einstein were also similar in continuing to think differently on their deathbeds.

Einstein was still trying to figure out a unified field theory days before his death, working out why the compass needle twitched and pointed North. During the process of writing his biography, Isaacson said he went to view the six or seven pages Einstein wrote about this: “He wrote line after line of maths equation, even when he was dying in hospital. Eventually the hand writing gets shaky and dribbles off.”

Jobs was similarly driven to the end. Isaacson said that last summer, when it became clear that Jobs was having real trouble in his battle with cancer, he talked about the legacy of great products and worried over whether 100 years from now, Apple would still be seen as an innovator, as a handful of firms like IBM and Disney have managed to do.

Isaacson asked Jobs at the time whether he still felt spiritual.

“Yeah I like to believe that there’s something more to what we do here,” Jobs said.

“But then sometimes when I’m depressed, I think maybe death is like an on/off switch, click and you’re gone. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like big on/off switches on Apple devices.”

Isaacson finished by reminding the Impact audience that the lesson of any great innovator is “you’re part of something bigger. Every single one of the people I wrote about, they felt they were part of something bigger.”

The next project for Isaacson is a book about computing history, and he noted that the IBM name keeps cropping up. No doubt Jobs and his legacy at Apple will feature heavily also.

One of the most interesting things about Facebook filing its $5bn initial public offering (IPO) is that it finally provides some hard evidence into the company's success and operating strategies, having for so long been a private company with closed books.

Mostly notably, the firm is already making some strong returns on its advertising model, with revenues up to $3.7bn for 2011, an increase of $1.7bn from 2010, showing the company's advertising-led model is paying off.

However, it is not just advertising that is driving this income, with the firm revealing in the filing that Zynga was responsible for 12 per cent of this income, as Facebook takes a cut of any purchases made by users in the games that run on the site.

Away from the financial figures, the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), also highlights some of the ways in which the company is setting itself up to deal with having to appease Joe Public once they get their greasy mitts on shares in the firm.

The most interesting of the caveats Facebook has placed within its IPO relates Mark Zuckerberg's right to appoint the company's successor in the event of his death.

"In the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death, control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor," the filing notes.

However, Zuckerberg clearly has no intention of handing control over any time soon as he's made sure that the share structure of the company works in his favour.

Each share of the 28.4 per cent stake he controls in the firm has a 10 times greater power than normal shares on any issues shareholders vote on, ensuring he retains overall control of the firm.

"[This] provides Zuckerberg with the ability to control the outcome of matters requiring stockholder approval, even if he owns significantly less than a majority of the shares, [...] including the election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets," it reads.

Zuckerberg has also committed to only draw a salary of $1 a year from 1 January, 2013, similar to Steve Jobs during his time at Apple. He probably expects to eek out a living via bonus schemes and share grants.

The firm will also likely be forced to start providing regular updates on the number of active users on the site, which has now been revealed as 845 million, so it may even be the case it can tout one billion members in the run up the firm going public in May.

No doubt that will send already rabid investors into a full-blown frenzy. All this from its inception in a dorm room in Harvard. Amazing.

Steve Jobs was known for his uncompromising management style - refusing to accept anything less than perfection on every facet of his products, which ultimately led him down the path of the closed ecosystem that melded hardware and software together.

As such, releasing the iPhone onto the carrier networks in the US and elsewhere must have been a painful process as it took away an element of control from Jobs, even if he had turned the carriers into mere pipes for iPhone data, texts and calls.

However, it's been revealed by a close associate of Jobs and a wireless industry stalwart in the US, John Stanton, that he actually considered creating Apple's own wireless network in order to try and circumvent the need for carriers.

"He wanted to replace carriers. He and I spent a lot of time talking about whether synthetically you could create a carrier using Wi-Fi spectrum. That was part of his vision," said Stanton.

Stanton said Jobs envisioned this network running on the same unlicensed spectrum that Wi-Fi uses but ultimately Jobs realised this system was unworkable and instead set about making long-term deals with operators to carry the iPhone instead.

The story certainly sounds like the level of control Jobs would have wished he could have for his products, as anyone who's read the recently released biography of the great man, or even just our Top 10 Steve Jobs quotes will be able to testify.

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.

The sister of Steve Jobs, novelist Mona Simpson, has revealed that the Apple founder's final words were: "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow," as he lay surrounded by his family members.

In a moving eulogy published on The New York Times web site, and first read at Jobs' memorial service on 16 October, Simpson reveals that, even when in hospital during the last days of his illness, Jobs was developing new product ideas.

"He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit," she said.

Simpson also reveals that Jobs' well-known perfectionism even followed him to the hospital, dismissing a staggering 67 nurses during his periods of illness before accepting just three to tend to him.

The anecdote is perfectly in keeping with Jobs' character, and the recently released biography by Walter Isaacson charts many instances of Jobs clashing with those around him over tiny details of style and taste.

V3 is currently working its way through the 600-page epic, which is proving an engrossing read, even for non-Apple fans, offering fascinating insights into how Jobs and Apple came to develop the iPod and his work at Pixar that helped create Toy Story.

Jobs died on 6 October after a long-running battle with cancer, provoking a wealth of tributes from the great and the good in the worlds of technology, music and politics.

Like most of the technology world, V3 was eager to get its hands on a copy of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs and, thanks to the nifty powers of Amazon's Kindle system, we've been enjoying the biography since yesterday afternoon.

The opening chapters provide a swift but thorough overview of Jobs' early life as he discovers that he was adopted, meets tech whiz Steve Wozniak, and eventually founds Apple, all while accidentally getting his on/off girlfriend pregnant and doing a lot of acid.

Jobs' voice comes through little but often in the opening chapters, Isaacson instead setting the scene and using information from those who knew him at the time to paint the background of his life, with hints at how these formative years would shape the success of Apple.

This involved Jobs' fascination with Buddhism that fed his desire for clean, intuitive technologies, to the ethos instilled in him by his father of ensuring that each and every component of a product is designed with love and care.

What also comes through a lot in the early chapters is just how pivotal Wozniak was to the early success of Apple, and how well the two Steves worked together. Woz's enduring love for HP for its research philosophy also shines through, something he told V3 about last week.

Yet the book is about Jobs and from the opening chapters there's a clear sense of destiny around him: the way he was able to bend those around him to his will, landing jobs at Atari, securing funding for Apple, making deals with resellers.

Isaacson admits that he tried hard to avoid the influence of Jobs' famous "reality distortion field", and perhaps here and there he succumbs. But it's impossible not to imagine a wiry, manic Jobs aged 22 acting in the manner described and getting his way.

This, of course, also means that there was an ugly, ruthless side to Jobs, and many recall being insulted, dismissed and overlooked by Jobs even at that young age, traits well known throughout his distinguished career.

For those interested in Apple and Jobs the book is clearly going to be something of a must-read. The early chapters suggest that it will live up to the hype, magnified by Jobs' death on 5 October and the access to the Apple founder and those around him granted to Isaacson.

We'll have a full review on V3 when we've finished the 600-page epic.

Steve Jobs vowed to wage "thermonuclear war" on Google, threatening to destroy an Android platform he saw as nothing short of "grand theft", according to leaked revelations from Walter Isaacson's much-anticipated biography of Jobs.

In a technology world dominated by humourless executive automatons, Jobs' outburst once again highlights his unique passion and approach to business.

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40bn in the bank to right this wrong," he is widely quoted as saying in the book.

Such utterances would, of course, never have been made in public, but it casts an interesting light on just how far the relationship between Apple and Google, and Eric Schmidt and Jobs, had soured.

Schmidt used to sit on the Apple board, before he left in 2009 owing to conflicts of interest.

Apple is currently involved in bitter legal disputes with HTC, Samsung, Motorola and others over alleged patent infringements in Android, and the cases threaten to dominate Jobs' legacy.

On a personal level, there have also been interesting revelations about Jobs' reaction to the news that he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer. According to Isaacson, interviewed on 60 Minutes, Jobs initially refused to be operated on even though it could have saved his life.

"He tries to treat it with diet, he goes to a spiritualist, he goes to various ways of doing it macrobiotically. He doesn't get operated on," said Isaacson in the programme.

"I think he kind of felt that if you don't want something to exist you can have magical thinking and it worked for him in the past. He regretted it."

The book certainly sounds like it could make for fascinating reading when it's launched on 24 October.