During Apple's e-book price fixing case on Thursday, Apple executive Eddy Cue testified that Steve Jobs initially wasn't interested in getting into the e-book market at all. Lucky for us, All Things D was on hand to capture all of the courtroom details describing the backstory behind Apple's eventual foray into the e-book market.

Cue explained that when he first approached Jobs and broached the topic of getting Apple into the e-book business, Jobs wasn't on board.

"He wasn't interested," Cue explained. "Steve never felt that the Mac or the iPhone were ideal reading devices. In the case of the phone, the screen was smaller, and in the case of the Mac, you had this keyboard and device, and it didn't feel like a book."

The iPad, however, was a game changer.

When Cue first began using the iPad in the months before Apple publicly unveiled the device, he immediately recognized the potential for it to become a wildly successful and popular e-reader.

So with the iPad unveiling steadily approaching, Cue in the fall of 2009 said that he approached Jobs yet again with the idea of getting into the e-book market.

And so I went to Steve and told him why I thought [the iPad] was going to be a great device for ebooks... and after some discussions he came back and said, you know, I think you're right. I think this is great, and then he started coming up with ideas himself about what he wanted to do with it and how it would be even better as a reader and store.

Cue noted that Jobs finally came around to the idea of an iBookstore in November of 2009. Now bear in mind that Apple first introduced the iPad in January of 2010, meaning that Cue, Apple's chief content negotiator, was left with little to no time to secure deals with major publishing companies as Jobs wanted to demo Apple's new e-book initiative on stage for the world to see.

Of particular interest was Cue's testimony detailing how he was especially motivated to secure content deals ahead of the iPad's introduction on account of Jobs' worsening health.

Steve was near the end of his life when we were launching the iPad, and he was really proud of it. He was working hard on it. I believed that iBooks was going to be a tremendous feature of the product. People were going to love it; our customers were just going to go wild about iPad and iBooks, and I wanted to be able to get that done in time because it was really important to him... I like getting my work done and I pride myself on being successful, but this had extra meaning to me.

Now aside from the usual intrigue typically associated with discovering what goes on behind the scenes at 1 Infinite Loop, I find this whole story noteworthy for two reasons.

First, this isn't the first time we've heard a story about Cue successfully convincing Jobs to move Apple in a particular direction. During last summer's Apple/Samsung trial, emails came to light which revealed that Cue had been pushing Jobs to release an iPad with a smaller form factor as early as 2010.

In a January, 2011 email sent out to members of Apple's executive team, Cue wrote:

I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one. I expressed this to Steve several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time. I found email, books, facebook and video very compelling on a 7''. Web browsing is definitely the weakest point, but still usable.

Apple would of course go onto announce the iPad Mini in October of 2012.

Second, the story provides further proof that Apple is teeming with talented employees and that the company is poised to succeed even in the absence of Jobs. While Jobs was a visionary without compare, the stories above illustrate that Jobs sometimes needed a bit of convincing before deciding where the "puck was going." In short, the notion that an Apple without Jobs is destined for failure is ridiculous. Indeed, one of the reasons Jobs was able to successfully bring Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy was precisely because he surrounded himself with top tier talent.

To that end, this old quote from Jobs regarding his hiring philosophy is worth a mention:

... you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done. You can then build a team that pursues the A+ players. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. That's what I've tried to do.

How’s this for irony: Steve Jobs was initially opposed to entering the e-book market over which Apple is now sparring with the U.S. Department of Justice in a Manhattan federal court.

Testifying in the DOJ’s e-book price-fixing case Thursday, Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, said that when he first approached Jobs with the idea of a bookstore in the fall of 2009, the Apple co-founder dismissed it.

“He wasn’t interested,” Cue said. “Steve never felt that the Mac or the iPhone were ideal reading devices. In the case of the phone, the screen was smaller, and in the case of the Mac, you had this keyboard and device, and it didn’t feel like a book.”

But as Apple began ramping up for the launch of the iPad, Cue broached the idea again, and Jobs had a change of heart.

“… When I got my first chance to touch the iPad, I became completely convinced that this was a huge opportunity for us to build the best e-reader that the market had ever seen,” Cue said. “And so I went to Steve and told him why I thought [the iPad] was going to be a great device for ebooks. … and after some discussions he came back and said, you know, I think you’re right. I think this is great, and then he started coming up with ideas himself about what he wanted to do with it and how it would be even better as a reader and store.”

That was the “good part,” Cue explained, and it inspired Apple to approach publishers about selling their e-book titles. But there was a “bad part,” as well: Timing.

“This was in November,” said Cue. “We were launching the iPad in January. And so Steve said, ‘you can go do this, but you’ve got to get it done by January. … I want to be able to demo it onstage.’ And so that was the sort of challenge presented to me.”

And a challenge that Cue took upon himself to complete not just for Apple and the promise of a new revenue stream, but for Jobs, whose health was in decline at the time.

“Steve was near the end of his life when we were launching the iPad, and he was really proud of it,” Cue said. “He was working hard on it. I believed that iBooks was going to be a tremendous feature of the product. People were going to love it; our customers were just going to go wild about iPad and iBooks, and I wanted to be able to get that done in time for [the event] because it was really important to him. … I like getting my work done and I pride myself on being successful, but this had extra meaning to me.”

Although Apple’s WWDC 2013 event was primarily focused on major announcements regarding the iOS 7 and OS X releases, the company also made other announcements which were very significant. For instance, Apple announced that it is finally bringing the popular iBooks reading app to the Mac machines.

Apple released iBooks app some three years ago and since then, it has mustered significant popularity among iOS users. The app was initially released for iOS users only and Mac users have long been asking Apple to bring it over to Mac machines too.

Now, much to the delight of Mac users, Apple has finally decided to bring ‘iBooks’ to Mac users. The original ‘iBooks’ offers a whole lot of features such as notes, textbooks and highlights. And Apple has assured that when porting the app to Mac, all these features will remain intact.

For avid readers of e-books, the best thing about iBooks is that you can even purchases books straight from the app. Moreover, since the app is supported on iCloud, you can leave the book mid-way on one iOS device or Mac machine and then resume it from that very spot at another iOS device or Mac machine.