Hasta La Gadget!

Normally as quiet and retiring as a geek at the Homecoming dance, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been on an unusual e-mail spree in the weeks leading up to the iPad launch, according to multiple reports.

By our count, Jobs has sent at least four e-mails to eager Apple nerds asking about issues such as iPad tethering, future MacBook upgrades, open e-books and Picasa photo syncing.

On Tuesday morning, Cult of Mac posted an e-mail exchange between Jobs and an Apple customer inquiring about whether the iPad would support open (i.e., non-DRM) e-books. Like his past e-mails, Jobs’ reply was terse:

Yep.

Sent from my iPad

Jobs has been known to occasionally respond to e-mails from customers similar to the way a celebrity musician or movie star might write back to fan mail. Though extremely concise, his e-mails offer a tiny window into the workings of the famously secretive corporation.

This is also the first published e-mail from Jobs with the “Sent from my iPad” signature.

In another e-mail, Jobs also reportedly told an iPhone customer that the iPad could not be tethered to an iPhone for a 3G internet connection.

No.

Sent from my iPhone

And in another more amusing exchange posted last weekend, someone who likes both Google and Apple asks Jobs whether iTunes will sync with Google’s Picasa photo services, which includes face recognition, and the CEO uses the opportunity to diss his rival:

No, but iPhoto on the Mac has much better Faces and Places features.

Sent from my iPhone

Another e-mail, posted Monday by MacRumors, quotes Jobs telling an eager Apple customer “Not to worry” about the slower upgrade cycles for the MacBook Pro, even though Apple appears to be focusing most of its energy on the iPad. That would imply new MacBooks and MacBook Pros might soon be on the way.

And now the fun part. From this flurry of e-mails, we can extract a few key factoids about Jobs:

• He checks his e-mail about as often as most of us do — that is to say, obsessively.
• He’s still got hard feelings against Google’s Eric Schmidt, and the two have yet to settle their dispute like mature adults: arm-wrestling in the cafeteria.
• Even though the ability to read open e-books on the iPad is a big plus worth bragging about, apparently the iPad keyboard is too hard to type more than one word with. (We’re half-joking, but from our hands-on testing, the iPad’s virtual keyboard leaves a lot to be desired, and text-entry will likely be the iPad’s greatest challenge.)

Meanwhile, we can also add two more bullet points to the list of things the iPad can’t do:

• Tether with the iPhone;
• Sync with Google’s Picasa services.

See Also:

• Steve Jobs’ 6 Sneakiest Statements
• Rumor: Apple Considers iPhone Tethering Option

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com