But it seems Apple owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Gates' firm - because the iconic iPad would never have been created had a Microsoft employee not boasted to Jobs over dinner that they had a revolutionary tablet in production.
'This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, "F**k this, let's show him what a tablet can really be",' Jobs said.
His anger drove him to create the seven-inch touchscreen iPad - launched in April 2010 and now in its second incarnation, which has sold a combined total of 39.8 million units.
The true inspiration behind the iPad is one of many extraordinary revelations contained in Walter Isaacson's authorised biography 'Steve Jobs', published yesterday.
The biographer, who interviewed Jobs 40 times during his final battle with cancer, also had access to the inventor's friends and family.
The hotly-anticipated book, predicted to become an instant best-seller, reveals how Jobs had a 'problematic psychological attitude' to food.
He would stick to strange diets where he would only eat cereal, carrots or 'starchless vegetables'. Sometimes he would only eat Apples, a quirk that is said to have inspired his company's name.
Elizabeth Holmes, a friend and early Apple employee, is quoted in the book as saying: 'Steve would be starving when he arrived, and he would then stuff himself. Then he would go and purge. For years I thought he was bulimic.'
On his fight with pancreatic cancer, diagnosed in 2004, Jobs for months tried alternative therapies that may have cost him his long-term health. It was a decision, Isaacson wrote, that Jobs came to realise was wrong.
According to the biography, Jobs had a 'very slow growing' type of pancreatic cancer 'that can actually be cured,' but still opted not to get the surgery until nine months had gone by and it may have been too late.
Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic.
He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, the book says, before finally having surgery in July 2004.
The rapid advance of the cancer caused Mr Jobs to undergo an operation known as a 'Whipple procedure' in which he had his pancreas and duodenum removed.
According to Isaacson, Jobs was one of 20 people in the world to have all the genes of his cancer tumour and his normal DNA sequenced. The price tag at the time was $100,000.Isaacon added of his interviews with Jobs: 'On some nights he would stare at the floor and ignore all of the dishes set out on the long kitchen table.
'When others were halfway through their meal he would abruptly get up and leave, saying nothing. It was stressful for his family. They watched him lose 40lb during the spring of 2008.'
On his 'arch-nemesis' Bill Gates, father-of-four Jobs said: 'He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.'
He later said: 'Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas.'
The book recounts a meeting between the pair, in November 1983, where Gates revealed his firm was developing a new operating system with a graphic interface.
A furious Jobs said to him: 'I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us'. To which Gates replied: 'Well, Steve... I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out you had already stolen it.'
The book makes clear that, some 30 years later, Jobs was still angry about the incident, saying: 'They just ripped us off completely, because Gates has no shame.'
The biography also reveals that the computer visionary offered to design political ads for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, despite being highly critical of the administration's policies.
Jobs, notorious for his fiery temper and stubborn nature, also refused to meet the president in the autumn of 2010 saying he would not meet him unless Obama personally asked him.When they did eventually meet, Jobs told Obama: 'You're headed for a one-term presidency.' He insisted the administration needed to be more business-friendly and criticised the country's education system saying it was 'crippled by union work rules'.
The by-then frail Apple chief was photographed having dinner with the president and other Silicon Valley technology leaders including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at a dinner in California.
The president joined 12 leaders from technology companies to discuss ways to work together to invest in American innovation and promote private sector job growth.
The book also details how Steve Jobs was often bullied in school and stopped going to church at the age of 13.
When he saw starving children on the cover of Life magazine, he asked his Sunday school pastor whether God knew what would happen to them. Jobs never went back to church, though he did study Zen Buddhism later.
Isaacson said Jobs used to think there was a 50-50 chance God existed, but his cancer diagnosis made him think more about the possibility.
Jobs, who quit as Apple CEO six weeks before his death, was also against conspicuous consumption, claiming Apple employees turned into 'bizarro people' when they were made rich by their stock.
The book also reveals how Jobs pledged to use his 'last dying breath' to destroy rival Google's Android because he believed it was based on stolen iPhone technology.
He branded it 'grand theft Android' and promised to spend all his company's money to wreck them. He vowed 'thermonuclear war' and said that he would not accept any compensation because all he wanted was the company ruined.
He said: 'I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong.
'I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this.'
The rant in the book provides insight into the unravelling of Jobs' relationship with Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and an Apple board member from 2006 to 2009.
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