
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs - NaOH
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?pagewanted=all
======
rmason
It was a moving and powerful eulogy. Probably the most beautiful thing I've
seen written about Jobs since his passing. One important takeaway for me was
the quote:

“Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at
first but it becomes beautiful later.”

I've experienced this firsthand. I've been privileged to work with some great
web designers. I've forced myself to wait a minimum of 24 hours before
rejecting a design and it has always served me very well. Sometimes your first
reaction is going to be negative but in a day or so it reverses. I am not
certain why this is true but for me it's been a winning strategy.

~~~
bluekeybox
_I've forced myself to wait a minimum of 24 hours before rejecting a design
and it has always served me very well._

I've just completed designing a logo for the project I'm working on. Lacking
experts around me whose judgement I could rely on, I came up with the
following creative process:

1\. Come up with an idea and prepare a demo/prototype.

2\. Show the demo to a few people around you, preferably those who have some
semblance of taste, but they don't have to be experts. If you own a smart
parrot, the parrot will do. Since you want to avoid disclosing your idea to
competitors, those people should preferably be either close friends or ones
who work in a completely different field.

3\. Note their reaction. If it is silent or if they say something generic and
don't go with an enthusiastic "WOW" in the first three seconds, they are
unimpressed. Expect them to be unimpressed, but don't worry about it right
away, because even if you showed them, for example, a Paul Rand-designed logo
pretending to be your work, they would not recognize it either and would
remain unimpressed (they are not experts, remember?).

4\. Wait 24 hours. Then ask yourself if you are bothered at all by the
disinterest of the people you showed your work to. If you are indeed bothered,
it means that your intuitive/emotional brain is telling you that your work is
not good enough and that you should go back to step 1. If you are not bothered
at all, it means your work is as good as your intuitive judgement is, and you
can move on.

The goal is to convince _yourself_ that your work is good enough. Once you
achieved that, the opinion of others doesn't really matter. I find this
algorithm to be pretty efficient; it lets me hone in on a correct design
within a week's time. Your mileage may vary.

~~~
IsaacL
Maybe it doesn't apply so much for visual design, but I often find that a
negative reaction to a new concept or piece of software is better than a "meh"
reaction. One example: I made a browser game a few years back, one of the
early players posted a huge rant about how frustrating the game was, I fixed
the design issues they raised, they grew to love the game.

So I tend to think that a negative reaction is often a sign you have something
good, but flawed. You don't want people saying "yeah, that's kinda cool", you
want them saying "OMG THIS THING SUCKS I'M TRYING TO GET IT TO DO X BUT I CANT
BECAUSE IT DOESNT HAVE FEATURE Y" - at least in the second case you know you
have something they want, and you know how to fix it.

------
mstroeck
1) This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read.

2) I finally realize what has always fascinated me about him. He was ALWAYS
working, with every single breath he took. He seems to have found a way of
taking the hazy concept of "work" as it is commonly understood, and elevating
it to a more in-focus ideal form through which to understand and shape his
life.

~~~
technoslut
The 2nd point you made reminds of Beethoven and how he overcame deafness to
write some of his most brilliant pieces. He was incredibly passionate about
his work and it was reflected in his music. It's amazing to see read this
story and to realize that maybe Jobs' most important inventions, the iPhone
and iPad, came at a point of extreme illness where most others would've quit.
Passion drove everything he did and defined who he was.

Sidenote: I hate broccoli too.

~~~
javek
As a side note, in a way it's misleading to speak of Beethoven "overcoming"
deafness. All of the master composers were so well-trained at their craft that
they could hear the music in their head without "trying it out" on a piano or
other instrument. By the time Beethoven was deaf being able to hear was
superfluous as far as composing was concerned...

~~~
mechanical_fish
We know that _Beethoven himself_ was tremendously depressed by the onset of
deafness and thought of it as a terrible misfortune to be heroically struggled
with:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligenstadt_Testament>

But we also know that he gave himself excellent pep talks and then kept going
for another thirty years, writing great stuff long after his deafness was far
worse than it was in 1802. So, yes, it seems that Beethoven eventually came to
agree with you!

And, come to think of it, as I remember Beethoven's biggest complaints about
deafness centered on loneliness, and on his fear that nobody would want to
hire a deaf composer. I don't actually recall him complaining that his work
might suffer. So that's another point in favor of your argument.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Oops, too late to edit, but I forgot that when Beethoven wrote his Testament
his fame up to that point had been largely as a _pianist_ , with a healthy
side order of composition. And I believe he might have expressed some worry
that his piano playing might suffer... which in fact it did; history contains
quite a few tragi-comic written descriptions of Beethoven's latter-day
attempts to play and conduct.

But his composition just got better, so in fact his declining fame as a
performer was balanced by his increasing fame as a composer.

------
MikeCapone
I cried like a baby while reading the last part of this eulogy. It brought me
straight back to a hot hotel room where I saw my uncle - a second father to me
- die from brain cancer.

Makes me want to donate more to medical research (my favorite foundation is
SENS.org, but there are many good ones). I think it's okay to be sad, but we
also have to do something to make things better.

~~~
stashdot
So sad, buddy, but why was it a hotel room?

~~~
MikeCapone
That was a weird typo; I meant to write hospital room.

------
paraschopra
Absolutely beautiful. I couldn't get my eyes of the writing. What I REALLY
like about the piece was portrayal of Jobs as a loving and affectionate human
being which is what ultimately matters. Feels good to know that Jobs parted
with such an expression of amazement...

Thanks for writing this, Mona.

------
blantonl
_He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-
special-enough hospital unit._

It is scary to think what Steve could have accomplished if he lived into his
70's.

~~~
plnewman
I once read that Howard Hughes did something similar while he was recuperating
from an accident.

~~~
philwelch
Robert Heinlein, while hospitalized, once designed, in his head, a far more
comfortable hospital bed. He later wrote about it in one of his books in such
great detail that when the waterbed was eventually invented, it couldn't be
patented because Heinlein's written descriptions gave so much detail to
qualify as prior art.

------
RyLuke
This is a really beautiful piece of writing; it’s quite a gift that Mona
Simpson would deign to share such a personal eulogy with the world. The Jobs
family certainly didn’t owe any of us insight into his final time on earth.

From all popular accounts, Jobs was an intensely private man about his
personal and family life; something refreshing in an age when celebrity is
conflated with talent and young people like Mark Zuckerberg opine that privacy
is an anachronistic social norm. Love him or loath him -- and there is
certainly enough evidence to support both reactions -- the conversation is
almost always about the work and Steve Jobs as a professional. As one who
still values the notion of personal privacy, I’ve always been grateful for
that.

Yet what makes this piece so potent is that Simpson reflects primarily on
Steve Jobs as a person: a brother, father, and husband, not a boss, or
showman. In so many ways, her eulogy could be applied to any person who has
lived fully and loved their family deeply.

There’s quite a sublimity in that contrast, something I suspect was not lost
on Jobs and his family in the creation and dissemination of this eulogy and
the Isaacson biography to the public.

And perhaps on that point, it’s wonderfully surprising that Steve Jobs, widely
considered an arbiter of taste and design curation, wasn’t yet familiar with
Mark Rothko -- one of the premier painters of the 20th century -- until the
final year of his life.

------
cheez
I'm glad the stream of "Steve Jobs was an asshole/genius" articles is done.
This one shows his real human side.

~~~
ethank
I don't think any of the "asshole" or "genius" articles were diminishing of
his humanity. We as humans are made up of all aspects of our beings. The good
an the bad, public and private, personal and not.

What distinguishes Jobs is he existed in layers from exceedingly public,
second hand, apocryphal to private.

What I love about this is it feels like a balancing of that gradient.

------
alexholehouse
I think that fact he was sketching x-ray machines, iPad holders etc. even in
hospital is just fantastic. The man did what he loved.

------
Gaussian
Extraordinary writing. Everybody should have such a talented sister at the
lectern on the day they're remembered.

~~~
UjjwolL
She was a passionate writer as Steve Jobs was for Technology. He even read her
books.

~~~
mikeleeorg
_We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many
stories._

This line is so beautifully & hauntingly crafted. I wish I had thought to add
her books to my reading list sooner.

~~~
jjtheblunt
The idea is great, but it's not "in media res" which means "INTO the midst of
things" not "IN the midst of things".

She might not have had Latin, so may not have known it was a literary
technique in Latin, and perhaps Greek, a way to start a story with no intro,
just by jumping right into the action.

~~~
F_J_H
"INTO the midst of things" things could be very fitting as well, depending on
your thoughts on the after life. Some choose to believe we join a party
already in full swing...

------
seanmccann
_OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW._

One can only wonder what he was referring to. Such a well written piece.

~~~
hugh3
Without wanting to burst anyone's bubble, I'm guessing that the words actually
refer to a dose of serious palliative care grade painkillers.

I don't like the emphasis on "last words" anyway. When I'm dying (and probably
not especially lucid), I don't want to have to cope with the pressure that any
set of words could be my last and hence I'd better make 'em good. I think we
should let everyone record their official last words ahead of time, just so
there's one less thing to worry about when you're actually dying.

~~~
hugh3
Aw c'mon, I got downmodded to -3 for being cynical yet realistic on HN? I
really do think that "massive injections of painkillers is the most likely
context in which someone a few hours of dying of cancer is likely to say "oh
wow oh wow oh wow".

~~~
malvim
I didn't downvote your reply, even if I don't especially care for your
explanation. I do believe in the power of painkillers, I just think that
there's more to it than that.

The idea of pre-recording one's last words, though, is brilliant!

~~~
Anti-Ratfish
A will?

------
TWSS
It's obvious that his sister shares his genius. I'm so grateful she shared
this intensely private experience with the world.

I have a half brother, ten years older. We didn't grow up together. Mona's
story gives me hope that there are relationships we seek out later in life
that are just as fulfilling, if not more so, than those we are given as
children and take for granted.

------
kloc
After reading several articles about Steve before and after his death and
after reading his official biography,I always felt that nothing could yet
capture the essence of how Steve actually was. This eulogy comes really really
close. Beautiful piece of writing. Thank you.

------
gsk
Alongside Einstein's final hours (see Einstein: A Life by Denis Brian), I
found Steve Jobs final hours to be profoundly human and moving. Steve Jobs
admired Einstein and in some ways he seems to have faced death as Einstein
had: with calm dignity, love, and atop a mountain of great work on this pale
blue dot of ours.

------
simplegeek
Beautiful writing. Thank you. I always thought why people cried reading such
stuff.....until now.

------
HankMcCoy
Very well written, but I noticed that his parents are never mentioned, what
happened to them? (Paul Jobs, Clara Jobs)

~~~
crb
Paul Jobs died in 1993 at 70; Clara Jobs in 1986 at 62.

[http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/What-is-the-story-about-
Paul...](http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/What-is-the-story-about-Paul-and-
Clara-Jobs-Steve-Jobs-adoptive-parents)

------
drawkbox
This shows a good side of him, love. He put that in the products.

Great writing, his final words were striking.

------
HSO
Insanely moving.

The ending takes my breath away.

------
24pfilms
Having lost both of my older brilliant brothers to HIV AIDS this passing of SJ
conjures up many many emotions. Life is fleeting, live it fully in all you do.
For the reaper does come, always unexpectedly.

------
mikecaron
What I really find remarkable about Mr. Jobs is that he lived without
extravagance. I am impressed by his desire to teach his kids to be "normal"
and I am astonished that he was there for his family first and foremost,
valuing love and fun in front of them. His kids (and wife) know a man who did
not value success and money, but love and family. It is an impressive man who
can ignore the pull of riches and embrace the pull of love.

------
alexwolfe
I think this Eulogy helped give many people closure on Steve's passing. Such a
well written piece. I'm really appreciate that she publicly shared this very
personal moments with the rest of us, touching.

------
sandee
"He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-
special-enough hospital unit. "

Instead of charity, if the billionaires or super smarts like gates,
larry/sergey, bezos,pg etc can live in ordinary people situations for 2-3 days
a year, their imagination will fuel creations that benefit all. Is this not
tried already ?

~~~
philwelch
A lot of billionaires live in "ordinary people situations" more than you
think. There's always the Bill Gates or Larry Ellisons of the world building
supermansions and owning all the yachts, but Steve wasn't exactly one of
those. And mere millionaires largely can't afford anything more than living
like ordinary people.

And there are a lot of ways that rich people can't actually get anything more
special than anyone else, at least not easily. It's not feasible to build
hospitals just for rich people, so a billionaire goes to the same hospitals as
ordinary people. Consumer electronics don't generally cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars, so a billionaire has the same kind of stuff ordinary
people have.

~~~
Stratoscope
> There's always the Bill Gates or Larry Ellisons of the world building
> supermansions and owning all the yachts, but Steve wasn't exactly one of
> those.

Indeed. I've run into Steve three times. Twice we were both shopping for
produce at a natural food store (Country Sun in Palo Alto, and the old
Richard's Natural Foods in Los Gatos).

The last time was just a year ago. I sat down for dinner on the patio at La
Strada, a nice Italian restaurant on University Avenue a few doors down from
the Palo Alto Apple store, and there were Steve and his daughter at the next
table. After dinner they took a stroll down University Avenue, just the two of
them. I imagine they were probably going to get some frozen yogurt. I thought
to myself, "Doesn't he have some security? A bodyguard? _Something_?"

There are a lot of Silicon Valley executives who I'd recognize if I saw them.
But Steve is the only one who I've ever run into doing ordinary things like
produce shopping.

------
antr
i've cried reading this article. god bless sj

~~~
notagain2
that was an incredibly moving eulogy. I just so happen to be about a quarter
the way through his biography, and its an interesting contrast to read about
"young" ambitious steve vs steve in the sunset of his life. Mona really hit on
something when she said we die in the middle of many stories. Im interested to
read some of her work now.

------
mrb
Beautiful eulogy. However either it, or Jobs' biography, is erroneous about
who called Mona to let her know she had a brother.

This eulogy claims a lawyer called Mona. But the biography, in chapter 20,
claims it is Mona's mother, Joanne, who called:

""" [Joanne] had never told Mona that she had a brother, and that day she
broke the news, or at least part of it, by telephone. "You have a brother, and
he's wonderful, and he 's famoous, and I'm going to bring him to New York so
you can meet him," she said. """

~~~
davidu
Either version is true enough.

~~~
theFco
I love this idea of true enough, as some things we won't know, but either
version shall do for us. Thank you it was a nice feeling.

------
jacquesm
Not a SJ fan, but man that hurts.

------
mikeleeorg
_Intubated, when he couldn't talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices
to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray
equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit._

I hope someone takes his sketches and runs with that vision. He's been able to
re-imagine other devices wonderfully. To think of what he could have done with
hospital equipment is amazing (that at his core, at his most vulnerable, he
resorts to creativity) and sad (that he won't be around to execute upon these
visions).

------
pknerd
Now I realize why most of his products are so poetic.

------
_corbett
very beautiful, felt voyeuristic reading it though–private Jobs public eulogy.

------
S_A_P
that was an incredibly moving eulogy. I just so happen to be about a quarter
the way through his biography, and its an interesting contrast to read about
"young" ambitious steve vs steve in the sunset of his life. Mona really hit on
something when she said we die in the middle of many stories. Im interested to
read some of her work now.

------
erickhill
Steve Jobs had a daughter named Eve (as in she who bit the fabled apple)? I
did not know that. How perfect.

------
latchkey
What is more amazing is how quickly someone registered his last words.com

------
dhirajbajaj
"he didn't died he achieved it" simply beautiful...

------
manish_gill
That was extremely moving. Beautifully written.

"Oh Wow".

One can only wonder...

------
mixmastamyk
I'm glad to hear he made some time for family.

------
js2
Extraordinary.

------
ghiculescu
Ad at the bottom of the article: <http://i.imgur.com/sC0g8.png>

I know it's automated, but still :/

------
stevenj
Wow.

------
jamesrom
Wow. Simply beautiful.

------
edo
Beautiful.

------
a1235813
so beautiful.

------
notagain2
Beautifully written. I feel I have a lot to learn from Steve. He was so
greatly misunderstood by so many. Steve was an incredibly smart man who knew
exactly what he wanted, and wouldn't stop at anything to get that. I'm glad he
spent his life doing what he loved. He will always be an inspiration to me.

------
notagain2
Very moving, and a different side to the personality that we've been hearing
about.

------
dilap
Fucking fantastic.

------
jfb
I always thought of him as a sociopath. It's nice to read an insider's take
that isn't suffused with narcissism and loathing, although I always did figure
him for a jerk for parking that Merc in the handicapped space every.
goddamned. day.

~~~
jimbokun
I really found this eulogy quite moving and beautiful and gave me an
appreciation for a Steve Jobs that has not been captured by any of the other
things I've read about him since his passing.

But the part about going through 67 nurses did give me a little chill. My
heart goes out to those poor 64 people who tried and failed to care for him up
to the level of his demanding standards.

~~~
tristan_louis
On the other hand, maybe one of them was shaken into improving, leading the
next person to get a better level of care. One never knows.

It is true that to demand better than good is a tough challenge but I suspect
it is why people look to Jobs with some confusion: he expected the best from
himself and from those around him. In a regular corporate setting, that may
seem dictatorial; in a hospital or care room, that seems psychotic; but in
either case, it is about trying to inspire people into giving their best and
breaking through to new levels.

