Chapter 1
Steve Jobs, a Life in Three Acts Act One: End and Beginning
When Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, Apple was inundated with condolence messages from all over the United States and from around the world. Some of them were touching. Others probably were also, but one could not be certain because they arrived in such a variety of languages that it was difficult to find people who could translate them. Yet more problematic were the notes we (I worked at Apple from 2010 to 2018) received in alphabets no one could recognize.
These notes were sent not only to Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, but to Apple retail stores around the world. The stores posted them on their windows. In addition, some people left bouquets of flowers in front of the stores. Pause to consider this. People left flowers at stores because of the death of a CEO.
No one knows how many notes were received. According to the āRemembering Steveā page on apple.com, āOver a million people from all over the world have shared their memories, thoughts, and feelings about Steve.ā1 As he was dying, people made a pilgrimage to his home in Palo Alto. One of his daughters has written that āA few people he didnāt know came to the doors wanting to see himā¦ wandering into the garden or empty-handed. A stranger in a sari begged to talk with him. A man came in through the gate and said he had flown in from Bulgaria just to see my father.ā2
After his death, California governor Jerry Brown declared October 16 to be Steve Jobs Day. The president of the United States and the first lady, Barack and Michelle Obama, posted a condolence note.3
Jobsās death had been long anticipated. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October of 2003. He postponed surgery until July 31, 2004. The following day he sent a blast email to Apple employees informing them of the surgery and declaring that he would have a full recovery. In the meantime, Tim Cook would manage the company, āso we shouldnāt miss a beat.ā4
On June 12, 2005, Jobs delivered the commencement address at Stanford. Saying anything worth hearing on such occasions is next to impossible. Jobs succeeded. āI want to tell you three stories from my life,ā he began. One of these was the story of his cancer and his brush with death. The heart of his advice was āStay hungry. Stay foolish.ā As of this writing, the address has been viewed almost thirty-eight million times on YouTube.5
Much has been said and written about Jobs. No one has questioned whether he could tell a story. He was a great storyteller that day at Stanford. Not everything he said was quite true, but charismatic people often get away with walking the border between reality and fantasy.
By early 2008, it was clear that his cancer had metastasized. This was a truth that could not be finessed. Jobs lost weight and was in pain much of the time. On August 24, 2011, he informed Appleās board of directors that the day had come when he ācould no longer meet my duties and expectations as CEO.ā6 It was all over except the waiting. And that came to an end on October 5.
Dying from cancer is dreadful beyond words. In more than one instance, there is a denial of death until the last breath is drawn. Was this really the end? This disease had afflicted Jobs in 2003. He kept coming back.
As recently as January of 2010, he had delivered the keynote introducing yet another transformative product, the iPad. Would there be any more such products? What would happen to Apple? The company had fired Jobs on September 17, 1985. Twelve years less one day thereafterāSeptember 16, 1997āhe came back to save Apple when it was a month or two away from bankruptcy. Only he could have done it. How would the world go on without him?
Why was the death of Jobs an event of global import? Only a tiny handful of the millions of people who sent those notes had ever met him. And although there is a legion of legends about Jobs dating back to Appleās birth, he was not thought of by those who knew him or only knew of him as either nice or particularly kind. Why did all those people feel close enough to him to project their own feelings onto him? Why did they feel that he belonged to themā¦ that he was theirs?
Is it because Jobs touched so many people through his products? Is it because the products were designed with pride and beauty, thereby in a sense honoring the purchaser, in a way that the products of competitors were not? Is it because he left behind a beautiful family? Is it because he reached the height of success when his life was taken from him? Is it because he succeeded despite starting with no advantages?
Jobs was born on February 24, 1955. His parents were Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian immigrant, and Joanne Schieble, who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. He was Muslim; she was Roman Catholic. They met at the University of Wisconsin, where he was a teaching assistant for a course she was taking in graduate school in political science. They were both twenty-three, and they were unmarried.7
Jandali has said that he wanted to marry Schieble, but her parents disapproved. Her father was dying, and she did not want to upset him. Schieble was living for a time with Jandali (the son of a wealthy man) in Homs, Syria. She left Syria for San Francisco, took up residence in a home for unwed mothers, and put her son up for adoption immediately after his birth without consulting Jandali.
The couple who ad...