"I want my kids to know me" - Steve Jobs
Weak and in pain before his death, Steve Jobs just wanted his children to know why he wasn't always there for them.
By Alistair Barr and Poornima Gupta
Pic: Getty Images
Article originally in
Reuters
"I wanted my kids to know me," Jobs was quoted as saying by Walter Isaacson, when he asked the Apple Inc co-founder why he authorized a tell-all biography after living a private, almost ascetic life. He had 4 children from 2 relationships.
"I wasn't always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did," Jobs told Isaacson in their final interview at Jobs' home in California.
Isaacson said he visited Jobs for the last time a few weeks ago and found him curled up in some pain in a downstairs bedroom. Jobs had moved there because he was too weak to go up and down stairs, "but his mind was still sharp and his humour vibrant," Isaacson wrote.
The death of a visionary
Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56 after a long battle with a rare form of pancreatic cancer.
Outpourings of sympathy swept across the globe as state leaders, business rivals and fans paid respect to the man who touched the daily lives of countless millions through the Macintosh computer, iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Jobs had struggled with health issues but said very little about his battle with cancer since an operation in 2004. When he stepped down in August, handing the CEO reins to long-time operations chief Tim Cook, Jobs said simply that he could no longer fulfill his duties as chief executive.
How it all began
Jobs was given up for adoption soon after his birth in San Francisco to an American mother, Joanne Carole Schieble, and a Syrian-born father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali.
A college dropout, Jobs started Apple Computer with friend Steve Wozniak in his parents' garage in 1976.
Jobs changed the technology world in the late 1970s, when the Apple II became the first personal computer to gain a wide following. He did it again in 1984 with the Macintosh, which built on breakthrough technologies developed at Xerox Parc and elsewhere to create the personal computing experience as we know it today.
The rebel streak that was central to his persona got him tossed out of Apple in 1985, but he returned in 1997 and after a few years began the roll-out of a troika of products - the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad - that again upended the established order in major industries.
How will you remember Steve Jobs?