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Conversation around the Jobs’ dinner table in the 1990s, according to Time, often centered on politics. Steve leaned left, which perhaps wasn’t a surprise considering his hippie background but could have oscillated during his later years when he ran a powerful corporate enterprise. Steve dined with presidents including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who the Jobses hosted at their house. In one meeting with President Obama, as recounted in the biography Steve Jobs, Steve cautioned him less-than-cordially on perceived antibusiness sentiments, and said, “You’re headed for a one-term presidency.”

Apple, under Steve Jobs, was not a company much involved in the political process. It has never been the target of a formal antitrust inquiry, as its principal rivals, Google and Microsoft, have. Apple doesn’t needlessly involve itself in federal lawsuits and has mostly avoided being called into U.S. courtrooms, with a few exceptions such as when several tech companies had to explain their policies on tracking customers’ phones. Apple also tends to avoid making contributions to political campaigns, though it did donate $100,000 in 2008 to fight California’s Proposition 8, a measure to end same-sex marriage.

Apple generally takes great pains to avoid the appearance of taking a side on the political spectrum. Alec Vance, who runs a small development company called Juggleware LLC., vented to Steve by e-mail when his app showing a goofy George W. Bush cartoon clock counting down to “freedom time,” which is when President Bush was set to leave office. Steve reasoned: “Even though my personal political leanings are democratic, I think this app will be offensive to roughly half our customers. What’s the point?”

In a never-before-published exchange, Joel Sercel, a technical consultant in Southern California, e-mailed Steve Jobs about a scandal that had been making a small splash on conservative blogs, including Andrew Breitbart’s influential Big Journalism website. The assertion apparently originated in a column penned by prominent media commentator Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post. Deep within a lengthy article about Glenn Beck’s show on the Fox News channel, Howard mentions, almost in passing, that more than 200 companies had joined together to boycott Glenn Beck, and that “a handful of advertisers, such as Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether.” When Joel posed this matter to Steve, the then Apple CEO squashed rumors of a sweeping Glenn Beck and Fox ban, saying: “We have never advertised on Fox news.” He offered no further explanation.

The political right has its reasons for criticizing Apple as a liberal-minded operation, and the left has offered its own justifications to reject Apple’s need to control every aspect of its products, to exploit Chinese workers who manufacture its products cheaply, and to shut out certain competitors and media. A private e-mail correspondence, and the article posted to the gossip blog Gawker that soon announced them, were rife with the latter sorts of condemnations. Gawker had already had a brush with Steve before when its sister site, Gizmodo, outed a prototype iPhone 4 before Apple’s official unveiling. But in this case, Gawker blogger Ryan Tate e-mailed Steve late one night in May 2010 after seeing an iPad advertisement describing the product as “revolutionary.” The combative Ryan had consumed a few drinks, he admitted, and that much is evident.

From: Ryan Tate

To: Steve Jobs

If Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company?

Would he think the iPad had the faintest to do with “revolution?”

Revolutions are about freedom.

From: Steve Jobs

To: Ryan Tate

Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.

Apparently unsatisfied with this response, Ryan shot back with a lengthy missive implying that Apple’s decision not