The Associated Press has received an early copy of Steve Jobs’ upcoming biography. In the no-holds-barred biography of the man we love to hate (and hate to love), Steve’s true feelings about Android come out.

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.Steve JobsApple

It’s painfully obvious that Steve Jobs thought that Android stole almost its entire operating system from Apple, even though many of the introductions we saw from Apple in iOS 4 and 5 were of features that already existed in Android. Steve wanted a monopoly when it came to the smartphone market, and anything that even remotely resembled the iPhone or iOS should not be allowed to exist, a notion he carried to the very end.

At the very least, this helps explain why Apple has picked up the pace on the lawsuit front, seeking to block sales of Android devices (especially Samsung devices) around the world.

Though I have a lot of respect for what Steve was able to do at Apple and Pixar, I feel his stance on competition in the mobile sphere is simply misguided. Competition is a good thing, and challenges each company involved to do things a little better. As a result, the mobile market has grown tremendously, and the things we’re able to do with our Android (or Apple) devices are infinitely better than what we could just a few years ago.

I’m sure Steve’s legacy of hate for Android will live on in the minds of Apple’s legal team, and we will continue to see Apple going on the offensive when it comes to legal battles. Fortunately, Google and its partners are building a pretty strong portfolio of patents that should keep Apple on its toes.

What do you guys think? Was Steve wrong about Android?