Apple CEO Steve Jobs has finally agreed to participate in a book about his life.

Simon & Schuster announced Sunday that Walter Isaacson's iSteve: The Book of Jobs will be published in early 2012.

Isaacson has been working on the long-rumoured biography since 2009 and has interviewed Jobs, members of his family, colleagues at Apple Inc. and competitors.

Many books have been published about Jobs, but not with his approval. Isaacson has written best-selling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.

Jobs, 56, has had numerous health problems and announced in January that he would take his third leave of absence in seven years.

During that time, he has survived a rare but curable form of pancreatic cancer and undergone a liver transplant. There's much speculation about the state of his health.

Gaunt and rail-thin, he appeared at a news conference in early March to announce the iPad 2.

Jobs, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and others, designed and developed the Apple II series of personal computers in the late 1970s, which then lead to the creation of the Macintosh, a breakthrough in PC technology.

He resigned from the company in 1984 after a power struggle and left to start own company, NeXT, which specialized in educational and business platforms. In 1996, he returned to Apple when it bought up NeXT and has been serving as its chief executive officer.

Steve also co-founded and was once the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which created Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille. Pixar merged with The Walt Disney Company in 2006.