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Steve Jobs email: "2011: Holy War with Google"

steve jobs holy war

Steve Jobs was never one to mince words, which makes recently released emails from the former Apple CEO not all that surprising. In documents that have come to light as part of Apple and Samsung's second California trial, the Wall Street Journal highlights a October 2010 email from Jobs, in anticipation of Apple's Top 100 retreat, where he categorized Apple's battle with Google as a "Holy War."

In case you're unfamiliar with the event, Apple some years holds a "Top 100" retreat attended by the company's most important 100 employees. Adam Lashinsky, who originally shed light on the retreat in a 2011 Fortune article, explained that the grouping is composed of the 100 employees Apple would theoretically want to keep if forced to start from the ground-up.

The retreat is replete with meetings and presentations, while also giving employees in attendance to hobnob with Apple executives and learn first-hand what type of products Apple has in the pipeline. That said, the above email relays a few more of Jobs' planned talking points for the retreat, including an appreciation for the fact that Apple was/is in danger of falling prey to the innovator's dilemma.

In the same email, Jobs identified issues for the executives overseeing Apple's iOS mobile software. He said the company "needed to catch up to Android where we are behind." He cited "notifications, tethering and speech" as three areas, while writing that Apple could leapfrog Android with features like Siri, Apple's speech-recognizing digital assistant.

Samsung's lead attorney John Quinn revealed the emails from Apple's co-founder to highlight a key point of Samsung's legal strategy: that Apple's real fight is with Google. Google's prominence in the case has introduced a new element to this latest round of the Apple-Samsung battle.

Apple, of course, maintains that the case has everything to do with Samsung. Hopefully we can look forward to some more revelations this Friday when proceedings are slated to continue.