This is a sweet story, but I just wanted to point out that this is pretty common for someone with terminal cancer. Jobs was a private, controlling man, for sure, but I feel like this reporter is unfairly stretching the narrative to fit this caricature.
The endless stream of visitors to the house can be absolutely exhausting for a person who already only has enough energy to stay awake and active a few hours each day. A big part of the family's responsibility, and burden, is prioritizing and intercepting visitors.
I'm sure many of you here on this board have had the misfortune to experience this yourself, so you know what I'm talking about.
It's not a big deal; it was a good article. But for once, Jobs' behavior didn't stem from being some larger than life cartoon figure of a business-genius-prophet-dictator.. he was just really sick.
Every summer Steve had a talk with the Apple interns. In 2008, I was there (at what, as far as I know, would end up being his last intern talk). One question came from the audience: "What is your dream?"
After a beat, his dead-pan response: "To not be asked questions like that."
That was the line that got me. At the end, after everything he had accomplished and all the billions of dollars he had made, all he wanted to do was spend time with his family.
I might never be anything more than someone who's pretty good at his job and is appreciated by the people he works for, but I get to do the exact same thing that Steve Jobs held most dear — spend time with my wife and son.
Amazing that so many people knew, and no one leaked it... Most famous people who died suddenly of an illness like that (e.g. Freddie Mercury, Bill Hicks) kept it secret except to a circle of close friends. Presumably, hundreds or even thousands knew about this illness, yet not one of them peeped about it.
Of course, it would have been an incredible lack of decorum to do so, and that's probably what stopped them. And yet, it seems fitting that news of Steve's rapidly declining health were even more leak-proof than the average Apple product release.
My girlfriend's father died of the same illness as Jobs. When she saw Jobs giving a keynote in June, she was amazed that he was still working when it was so obvious (to her, having watched her father fade away) that the end was near.
I'm sad that Steve has died and do not mean to be disrespectful. That line touched me too, and a moment later I realized that his sister said it and she is a writer.
It's odd that the article didn't mention that he gave a pretty big part of the WWDC keynote in June, in the middle of the period mentioned in this article.
But I guess that doesn't fit with the tone of a retired champion receiving visitors for the final time.
And this is why all my personal donations are in cash and anonymous. It's no one else's business, I'm not going to be pretentious about it, and receiving "services" from an organization will not be predicated on how much I give.
How do you know it wouldn't have the reverse effect, and make others think, "Oh, now I don't need to bother, Gate's has this..."?
I don't have the source handy, but I remember reading about when Gates and Buffet went to Germany with their giving pledge. One of the German billionaires they approach replied something to the effect of: "Why should I give money to support life-saving research or to feed the poor? Isn't that the job of the government? If I give the money on my own, then that removes the incentive for government to figure out how to take care of societies ills."
It seems unlikely that by giving $X we reduce the government's giving by even 1/4 $X. There's a huge amount of room for funding, and I don't think the apparent need the government sees decreases much as private charity increases.
The endless stream of visitors to the house can be absolutely exhausting for a person who already only has enough energy to stay awake and active a few hours each day. A big part of the family's responsibility, and burden, is prioritizing and intercepting visitors.
I'm sure many of you here on this board have had the misfortune to experience this yourself, so you know what I'm talking about.
It's not a big deal; it was a good article. But for once, Jobs' behavior didn't stem from being some larger than life cartoon figure of a business-genius-prophet-dictator.. he was just really sick.