The last time I saw Steve Jobs | Hacker News Reader

The last time I saw Steve Jobs

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390 pointsstevenleeg44 comments

I think one of the things that made Jobs death such a punch to the gut for me was the fact that until very recently, we all had some hope that his health problems were chronic, debilitating, but not terminal (Joe Nocera had, for instance, reported that Jobs cancer had not recurred at his last medical L.O.A.).

When Jobs' death was announced, I immediately began reevaluating the little moments and snapshots we had of Jobs in the last year; his head resting on his wife's shoulder after a talk, his voice at the Cupertino city council meeting. Someone else pointed out how remarkable it was that Jobs had achieved all he had while staring death in the face. Remarkable, yes, but also very sad.

So, I'm relieved at stories like this, showing Jobs enjoying his life even as he knew it was drawing to a close.

Thanks!

I admit that after the paparazzi photo of him was released, I loaded up HN every morning expecting to see the announcement of his passing away at the top.

But, I was also hoping that it wouldn't happen. I think part of me thought of him as so fundamentally stubborn that if anyone could cheat death, he could. I liked to imagine Death showing up at Jobs' side, and Jobs fixing Death with his patented steely glare, and saying, "No, wait, there's one more thing..."

I was saddened by the news of his death in a way that I haven't been in a long time. He was a human being, with all the requisite faults and foibles -- and some people are trying to ignore those now, and others are trying to hilite them -- but he aspired to greatness, and he accomplished it in a way that so few people do. In a sometimes dispassionate world, he seemed to be a passionate exception.

As I too was (and am) a nobody, who got to meet Steve Jobs on several occasions, I bring you: My first encounter with Steve: http://dailyperry.com/post/11206943414/my-first-meeting-with...

"That’s my memory of Steve. He showed me the World of Tomorrow."

Thank you for that. I feel the same way. So many things are so misunderstood, but there's always a reason. Apple makes a whole lot of sense if you stop to think about why they did whatever.

Yet the magic comes from people not thinking why.

Remember all the criticisms of the iPad when it was announced? All gone now, now people just want it. They don't know why, but they've experienced it.

Glad to see that I am not the only one who liked the hockey puck mouse.

I like the tidbid about Jobs knowing how to focus the iPhone by tapping a part of the screen. He's one of the few CEOs who know how to use their products. What was it, Eric Schmidt never used Google Buzz or Wave?

Well, go and compare the amount of products google has to the amount of products apple has. Eric Schmidt isnt going to use them all, but i bet he knows how to use Google Search.

I'd be more interested to hear whether Eric Schmidt knows how to use AdWords. After all, that's Google's main source of income.

Also worth remembering that Apple products were largely what they were because Steve had Apple build things Steve wanted to use.

Google isn't built in that image and even if it were, the image it would be built in is Larry and Sergey's, not Eric's.

Steve Jobs wasn't a conventional CEO and was widely known to micromanage the design of products. It's likely that he personally signed off on exactly how the tap to focus feature worked from a design standpoint.

Schmidt's no slouch though, he's just on the engineering side (he co-write lex!) instead of design side. I bet Schmidt has a great understanding of how Google's search software works.

What a wonderful story. Just when I thought I had shed all the tears I was going to shed over this over this past week, it just all comes right back. He was a legend, but also a good human being. A true rarity.

Yup, really rare.

The man seems to be an infinite source of eye-moistening stories.

Really nice, thanks.

I'm sure some employees from his early days would have less flattering stories to tell, but it wouldn't be classy for them to tell them now that he's gone. So the other side of Steve will be buried with history.

I don't understand what is "eye-moistening" about somebody failing to act like an asshole and doing what any normal person what have done.

I have a rather cold heart myself but still had no trouble seeing how a cute story like this told shortly after a tragic and untimely death could resonate in a heartfelt way.

No doubt it is a touching story. That was my reaction to it as well. But when you read hyperbovine's point, and think about it... it is also true. So touching story yes, but normal human behavior - yes.

Hyperbovine's point was "I don't understand what is "eye-moistening"". And very honestly, I'm not sure how normal it is for the guy who runs the most valuable company in the world to be walking out to his company's general parking lot by himself unrecognized.

That's just it, though. Any normal person would have done that.

The billionaire CEO of a worldwide, multi-billion-dollar company at the forefront of its industry is not a normal person. A normal one of those would be surrounded by assistants, walking fast, and brusquely brush off such an uninvited interruption by the hoipolloi.

Steve was not a normal billionaire CEO.

A story about Steve taking a photo, and his attention to detail in doing so, is especially fitting because of his apparent passion for photography. You could tell in his keynotes that he was especially proud of iPhoto, which seemed to be his favorite application to demo, and he is said to have served as photographer at Larry Ellison's wedding.

This story isn't about an important, busy man with his own problems stopping to have a normal interaction with naive strangers. It's about a man appreciating the important, everyday moment in life when a family asks a bypasser to take their picture to document their memories of going to a special place, and seeing through their eyes the difference his work has made.

It's a great story. Steve is a human being , yes humans do make mistakes , else who else will. Its the ones who change themselves are the ones to talk about, he is one of them. Steve was arrogant and cocky during the starting days of apple. Come on guys, he was still in his 20s and owns millions, all self made who wouldn't be ? After his return he was a completely different man. These days i see some posts talking about Steve's grey days , this story shows what kinda person he really was at the end. SO lets forget about his past grey days and lets try taking the good in him :)

I've been following Steve Jobs since I was a kid, about 30 years ago. Woz was more my hero then, but I read everything I could about Jobs even then, and ever since.

I think Jobs transformed himself on a fundamental level. The young Steve seemed arrogant and self centered. Getting pushed out of Apple seems to have been a kick to the soul, and then in his 10 years away, he seems to have changed everything about him that was bad. Just check out how he responded to the insult given to him at the 1997 after WWDC session. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE

Now that enough time has passed, all the people who were bashing Jobs from 1990-2011 are back bashing Jobs again.

But I think these stories are the real guy.

I was in his presence on a couple of occasions. You can fake some things, but its really hard to fake who you are. Everyone has their good and bad days... but one thing I can say about Steve, he was always genuine.

Made him a great salesperson, too, cause even if he was wrong, he believed.

So, I am grateful for these anecdotes. I'm eternally grateful for the 2005 commencement address. He was so private, and for good reason, and until the biography comes out these are some of the few views we have to him as a person. (I think the biography is going to be very revealing, and surprising when it comes out, since he's such a "control freak" but I think he didn't exercise any control, and people will be shocked.)

There is a wonderful argument about product strategy in there. Steve Jobs says, ""you've got to start with customer the video and work backward to the technology"".

1) Silicon Valley's prodigal son is banished from his company.

2) Grows up

3) Comes back to become one of the greatest visionaries of our time. Inspires millions.

4) Dies young.

Reminds me of The Hero's Journey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero%27s_Journey (the pattern of separation, initiation, and return common to many hero myths).

I think these stories show that, like all of us, any one line summary of who we are is going to be a gross over simplification.

He wasn't all bad, he wasn't all good, he was a human and like all of us he was a mix of things we're proud of, things we're ashamed of and things which are somewhere in between.

If he was a complete arse he'd never have held on to the talent he did at Apple and Pixar and never have held down a marriage. On the other hand there are too many stories about him being a dick to people to suggest that he certainly had that within him.

But I do think that within the few weeks of his death the respectful thing to do is to remember the better things and then over time we can let history work out the truth.

ok. wtf is going on. why does this story have 314 points? it's about a man taking a photo of a couple. Is this supposed to be a top quality post or what? Why does it matter that the man was Steve Jobs and not some random dude? Did you get more out of this story one way or the other? HN FAIL.

That makes no sense. If you are as much a fan as you bring your family there, but you don't know what Steve Jobs looks like? Has he not be on the cover of absolutely everything since 2007?

there's a whole cohort of people who are entranced by the iphone but have never seen steve jobs. To be fair, he doesn't appear anywhere in the stores or in most advertisements.

I realize it's hard to believe, but you can be a fan of the product without being aware of the key members of the company that produced the product.

I'd say it's conceivable. Isn't there a statistic out there that says something to the effect of a large portion of the population can't name the current president of the United States?

I think that was the vice-president. What is shocking is that in another survey, some 40% of Americans asked didn't know who or what the Taliban were.

Celebrities often look very different in person than your mental image of them.

Most people who love the Mac or some other Apple product are fans of the _product_, many of them have never even heard of Steve Jobs, and most of them don't know what he looks like.

I know that doesn't jive with the popular misconception that everybody who loves an Apple product idolizes Steve Jobs, but, really, it's all about the product.

Perhaps they were visiting a family member. I've passed by Infinite Loop to have lunch with friends.

I can totally believe it, we went with the family once to visit/snoop around the Google campus, but if Eric Schmidt or Larry Page had showed up, I don't think I would have recognized them. (And we use Google products every day.)

I just started laughing after reading this article but I mean no disrespect.

It's an inane story about a man that takes a photo for some tourists.

Take a step back. I know many consider him your hero but he was a human being. It should not be surprising or interesting that Steve did normal things.

It's very interesting to me how society both elevates leaders and then humanizes them while adding modern societies virtues. It reminds me of how heroic and chivalric virtues were mixed into Arthurian literature.

I'd love to read a parody. Perhaps there could be a set of parables with Steve doing normal human things which represent modern human virtues.

This is an interesting story precisely because it is so ordinary. Over the past week we've heard and read so much about all of his grand accomplishments. After all of that, this is a little story that reminds us that he was a human being.

And it's not an inane story either. How often is he not recognized in public? Does he get pleasure when he sees a family using his products? You'd like to think that interactions like this made him happy, and that's what makes it sweet.

Hear me out.

(1) I don't think you would be interested in the answers to those questions if the article was about an ordinary man. The only redeeming feature of the story is that it's about a famous genius that died recently. Remove that and tell me that story isn't inane.

(2) You're attempting to study the character of a man whose work interests you. It has turned out that his character is that of an ordinary man who acts with humanity. This is completely unsurprising but you assert that this is 'interesting'. The belief that this story is significant and unusual is utterly unbelievable to me. It suggests that many people believe that those that are considered geniuses or visionaries are somehow completely different from normal men and may not socialize or empathize with others in the same way as a normal human being.

(3) The really interesting thing about this thread is that there are so many people that (a) are trying to judge his character -- I believe that this might be because we seek our highest values in celebrities, (b) believe that they can analyze his character from just a few recounted events, (c) elevate leaders to the level that they need to be deliberately humanized with stories for others to realize that they're "just like you and me".

Please help me understand how you and others think.

I'll try to explain how I viewed the story:

I think the story is better taken as a lesson in both humility, and finding happiness rather than an example of Steve's benevolence. The reason is that this man had very legitimate reasons to take this interaction negatively: He's the famous CEO of the company they are standing in front of, and they didn't recognize him. He's battling a serious illness, rather publicly, and they don't seem to think this could be imposing. His time is incredibly important to him, both in the fact that he is CEO, but also because of his health, he's working fast to try and get everything in order to secure the future success of his company. From his point of view, he could've viewed them as ignorant people who are wasting his very limited time, and he would be right on some level.

He could've said no or simply ignored them, and he would've have legitimate excuse to do so - but the fact that he didn't says something about him. I think a lot of people assume that what that says is "because he wasn't a jerk, it makes him a nice person" but I think it's more that he was able to take what very well could've been a negative interaction and instead of dismissing it, see the positive side of it, and get enjoyment out of it. He was able to take the humble route, and instead of ignoring them, lambasting them, or simply revealing who he was and risk embarrassing them, he simply fulfilled the request and went on his way.

I took this is more a lesson in ego, humility, and happiness than it is evidence for/against his character.

(1) No I wouldn't be interested in the answers to those questions for a regular person, and that's the point. Seeing extraordinary people in ordinary situations is interesting. For example, I would like to see Barack Obama walk into a Starbucks and order something. I would like to see how Bill Gates shops for groceries, if he does at all. In the press, you only get one view of a person, and it is often repetitive - unusual situations can be a lot more telling about the real human underneath.

But even if it wasn't interesting in itself, there is more to this story, because there is so much subtext. The story doesn't work for a regular person because a regular person wouldn't have helped create that camera. A regular person wouldn't have a company that tourists would want to get their picture taken with.

(2) It is not unsurprising that he acted like this. After reading all of the other stories about him, one might think that he wouldn't stop to help. Another type of celebrity or CEO would have been offended that the person didn't know who he was.

(3) Judging and trying to guess about his character is part of the fascination of all this. Since he was so reclusive, we really don't know what he was really like. And maybe little moments like this give a little insight into who he was.

Yeap, it's kinda interesting (or sad, YMMV) that even down-to-earth, no-nonsense geeks have the same needs for inventing and worshipping heroes as teenage girls or soap watching housewives mourning, say, princess Diana. If never having (the need for) heroes is a disorder, I most likely have it.

This is a good story because it raises a lot of questions: What did the picture look like? Did the family keep it? Did they post it to Facebook or Flickr? Did they ever figure out who was taking their picture?

Obviously they were impressed with Apple, owning an iPhone and visiting the campus, did they not recognize Jobs because he was sick or because they just didn't know any better?

There's a line in this post about Job's personality when he walked that reminds me a lot about accounts of Walt Disney during his own battle with cancer - clearly labored, but still upbeat and energetic.

Nothing inane about this one.

You're thinking too much. It's an anecdote about kindness and greatness and their inherent compatibility. You can't understand it with your head. You have to feel it with your heart.

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