Then, when Brennan-Jobs went to live with him as a teenager, she says, he forbade her from seeing Brennan for six months, even though her mother had been the only constant figure in her life up to then. After moving in with them, Brennan-Jobs told him and her stepmother, Laurene Powell Jobs, that she felt lonely and asked that they tell her goodnight in the evenings. Instead of acknowledging her feelings and acceding to such a simple request, Powell Jobs apparently responded, "We're cold people."
Even after Jobs started paying more attention to Brennan-Jobs, her mother, Chrisann Brennan, apparently felt uncomfortable leaving him with her alone after an incident in which he was said to have questioned and teased the then-9-year-old Brennan-Jobs about her sexual attractions and proclivities.
But Brennan-Jobs' book adds fresh details. He rarely saw her when she was a young child , she says, even after admitting his paternity. While he was avoiding her and avoiding paying child support — despite already having founded and been making money at Apple — she and her mother lived in poverty, subsisting on welfare payments, her mother's low-paying jobs, and the charity of others. When he was finally forced to pay child support, he made sure that the case against him was closed days before Apple went public and he became a multimillionaire.
We've known for years that Jobs initially denied being Brennan-Jobs' father and didn't start paying child support until after a DNA test proved he was and a court ordered him to start paying. We've also known that he denied for years that Apple's Lisa computer, which debuted right before the Macintosh, was named for his daughter — before finally acknowledging it to her and the world.
There have been plenty of accounts over the years that have detailed his cruelty, rudeness, and miserliness to workers, business partners, and even family and friends.
It's hard to say whether his business achievements outweigh his cruelty, but they certainly got more attention during his lifetime — and helped enable his bad behavior.
The new anecdotes add color to the many stories of how Jobs was mean or rude to employees and business partners.
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Laurene Powell Jobs
Steve Jennings / Stringer / Getty ImagesBut there's more. Once, she says, as Jobs groped his wife and pretended to be having sex with her, he demanded that Brennan-Jobs stay in the room, calling it a "family moment." He repeatedly withheld money from her, told her that she would get "nothing" from his wealth — and even refused to install heat in her bedroom.
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