And to cap off Massive Sense of Déjà Vu Day, remember when Uncle Steve recently threw a hissy fit over the imminent publication of Young & Simon's iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business? Remember how his wrath took the form of every single Apple retail store being ordered to pull all copies of other books by the same publisher? Remember how this wild 'n' crazy behavior reminded you of how Steve allegedly tried to sink the publication of another unauthorized bio a few years back, Alan Deutschman's The Second Coming of Steve Jobs? Well, if you're the type who actually reads these books, word has it that you've still got a hefty dose of unauthorized bio-related déjà vu headed your way.

See, there's a review of iCon in the San Francisco Chronicle, and it's not particularly favorable-- largely because, due to what we're certain was merely a whopping great coincidence of near-biblical proportions, said review was penned by, um, Alan Deutschman. As in, the guy who wrote Second Coming. And he's less than pleased at some striking similarities between iCon and his own book that brought down the Fury O' Steve lo these many moons ago. Granted, seeing as both books are (allegedly) nonfiction accounts of the same guy's life, you'd expect some pretty hefty overlap, but Deutschman points out that the samenesses go beyond what anyone might reasonably expect when two guys write about the same mercurial CEO; to begin with, iCon's "brief prologue" describes the Macworld Expo crowd's reaction when Steve announced that he'd be Apple's full-time CEO-- which is exactly what Second Coming's prologue did.

A natural choice, you say? Well, okay, maybe... but Deutschman quotes a couple of passages from both iCon and his own earlier book (one's about a meeting at which Disney's Jeff Katzenberg tries to look tough, the other's about Steve throwing a tantrum when someone writes on his whiteboard), and they really do look eerily similar, all the way down to some of the word choice and syntax. Not similar enough to count as outright plagiarism, mind you, but based solely on the passages as quoted, it does look entirely likely to us that Young & Simon's research on Steve's life from 1985 through 2001 may well have consisted primarily of reading Second Coming, highlighting the juicy bits, and then running parts of them through a thesaurus.

So what does this all mean? It means that not only does Steve hate all of his biographers, but also that his biographers apparently hate each other, too. Seeing as there's already way too much hate in the world, may we propose a solution that might help restore the karmic balance of our shared plane of existence? Two words and a hyphenation: unauthorized biographer slap-fight! Let's throw Young, Simon, and Deutschman into a big steel cage and let 'em settle this like savages. (Maybe give Deutschman brass knuckles or something, seeing as it'll be two against one.) When the dust and horrifying red mist settles, the remains of the loser(s) will be served to Steve for breakfast. (Okay, sure, he's vegan, but that doesn't mean he can't appreciate the gesture.) Everybody winds up happy. Or eaten. Whatever.