Roundup of the best Steve Jobs links
The internet still ripples with the news of Steve Jobs’ passing, but some articles and pictures have risen above the tributes to canonize the day. This post rounds up the most striking moments from my day reflecting on the life and death of Steve Jobs.
Walt Mossberg set a positive tone with this collection of anecdotes about his meetings with Steve:
He explained that he walked each day, and that each day he set a farther goal for himself, and that, today, the neighborhood park was his goal. As we were walking and talking, he suddenly stopped, not looking well. I begged him to return to the house, noting that I didn’t know CPR and could visualize the headline: “Helpless Reporter Lets Steve Jobs Die on the Sidewalk.”
But he laughed, and refused, and, after a pause, kept heading for the park. We sat on a bench there, talking about life, our families, and our respective illnesses (I had had a heart attack some years earlier). He lectured me about staying healthy. And then we walked back.
Steve Jobs didn’t die that day, to my everlasting relief. But now he really is gone, much too young, and it is the world’s loss.
How did Apple staff hear of the news? One employee, Blake Golliher, shared his experience on Quora:
The various employees around me were questioning the belief that the, then rumor, could be true. Looking at twitter, the first hit was a funnyordie.com clip. Nobody knew in my group until someone in ichat sent out apple.com/stevejobs, then it all got very quiet in my area. It was the same quiet it got when Steve stepped down just a few months ago, a mix of shock and disbelief, and a little bit of expectation. Even the sarcastic jokers didn’t have anything to say. This was pretty big. As I drove out, news vans were already on approach.
An account of Steve from one of his neighbours, written soon after he stepped down as Apple CEO, shows a human side to the Apple leader:
While Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal and CNET continue to drone on about the impact of the Steve Jobs era, I won’t be pondering the MacBook Air I write on or the iPhone I talk on. I will think of the day I saw him at his son’s high school graduation. There Steve stood, tears streaming down his cheeks, his smile wide and proud, as his son received his diploma and walked on into his own bright future, leaving behind a good man and a good father who can be sure of the rightness of this, perhaps his most important legacy of all.
In 2010, Gizmodo famously got hold of an iPhone 4 before its launch. In a piece titled ‘Regrets of an Asshole,’ former editor Brian Lam reveals the tense moment Jobs personally called him to return the prototype:
Steve called me back, with a cold tone in his voice, saying he would send a note claiming the device. The last thing I said to him was “Steve, I just wanted to say that I like my job, and its exciting sometimes, but sometimes we have to do things that are difficult and what some might consider parasitic, with regards to reporting on health. And things like this.”
I told him I love Apple, but I have to do what’s right for the public and readers. I was trying to hide the fact that I was sad.
He replied, “You’re just doing your job.” And he said it in the kindest way possible. Which made me feel better and worse.
This was the last time Steve would be kind to me.
Jack Schofield got some flak for writing this obituary in the Guardian, but history deserves a factual account of both the highs and lows:
Where most computer companies had fought against IBM – the dominant IT supplier attacked in the 1984 advert – Jobs wanted to emulate the consumer electronics company he most admired: Sony. Apple had enjoined users ungrammatically to Think Different, a riff on IBM’s slogan, Think. Jobs certainly did that. Although Jobs was idolised, he was not universally admired, partly because of his tyrannical management style. A Wired magazine article quoted Apple’s hardware guru Jon Rubinstein saying “We have cells, like a terrorist organisation,” with the company’s former chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki adding: “Steve proves that it’s OK to be an asshole”.
On Quora today someone posted their story about how Steve sent cancer victims special gifts - something the public never knew he did. Hopefully this kind of story will nix the comments that Jobs was never philanthropic or charitable:
In this thick envelope was a letter from Steve Jobs speaking of his cancer fight and how he wished Rebecca a quick recovery. Also in this envelope was six Pixar prints signed by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Mike Doctor, And Joe Ranft (a fellow cancer sufferer). Each of these men had written a letter to Rebecca wishing her well.
Jobs did not have to go to this kind of trouble, but he did anyway. Steve Jobs was not a man known for his public charity and many people think he was driven by selfishness and greed. But this act goes against that idea for me. This was most certainly a positive, selfless, and charitable act.
On a similar note, Drew Olanoff revealed a personal email he sent to Steve discussing his cancer, how he was inspired to sell his twitter name @drew for over $1 million, and added:
Many a day after chemo I sat with my iPhone and Macbook Pro, and it kept me connected to the world around me during a lonely dark time.
Drew hinted that he would keep Steve’s reply private, but that line has since been edited out.
Those ‘God Hates Fags’ weirdos tweeted that they would picket Jobs’ funeral from an iPhone:
XKCD demonstrates its poetic genius in this silent animated tribute:
Newspapers the world over led with an image of Jobs. This was my favourite (via Cult of Mac):
I loved the temporary design on Boing Boing:
Jonathan Mak designed a poignant Apple logo with Steve’s face back in August:
Following Steve’s death, it has been shared the world over. I would say it was now as iconic as the official Apple memorial:
I wrote my own account of Steve’s passing, in which I discuss the morals of profiting from death:
I drove too fast down wet country lanes to get home. I ran to my laptop, and with the document and research already open, I rewrote the passionless draft with something authentic. Then I wrote a shorter obituary for another client.
Then I asked myself if it was really alright to be profiting from the death of one of my heroes.
Don’t worry, there’s a happy ending.
My favourite website, Mac Rumors, posted an exceptional roundup of photos and comments from prominent figures reacting to Steve’s death. A particularly touching addition is this photo of a small flowerpot which Jobs’ wife Laurene placed on the fence outside their home:
Job’s biographer Walter Isaacson is quoted on 9to5 Mac describing the emotional last moments after the final interview for their forthcoming book one month ago:
I was hit by a wave of sadness as I tried to say goodbye. In order to mask my emotion, I asked the one question that was still puzzling me: Why had he been so eager, during close to 50 interviews and conversations over the course of two years, to open up so much for a book when he was usually so private? “I wanted my kids to know me,” he said. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”
I will finish on this popular quote from Steve at his address to Stanford University graduates in 2005. Thank you for reading.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Stay hungry, stay foolish.
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