Towleroad Guide to the Tube #1024

BILLION DOLLAR HIPPIE: A BBC made-for-TV documentary about Steve Jobs.

SILENT NIGHT: A cat and dog carol.

SOME PEOPLE: Mama Roses through the years.

LAUGHTER IS CONTAGIOUS: At least, in Berlin it is.

For recent Guides to the Tube, click HERE.

Steve Jobs' Last Words: 'Oh Wow. Oh Wow. Oh Wow.'

Brandon mentioned this in his link round-up, but the eulogy written for Steve Jobs by author Mona Simpson, the sister he discovered he had two decades into his life, is the most heartfelt piece I've read about the Apple founder since his death:

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”

“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze. Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple. Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us. His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

Finally:

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs [nyt]

Towleroad Guide to the Tube #991

STEVE JOBS: Apple designer Jonathan 'Jony' Ive delivers a great eulogy to Jobs that makes me think he should be always speak for the company.

HOW TO DEVELOP TRUST WITH YOUR CHILDREN: Not.

FREEING ENERGY FROM THE GRID: An amazing TED talk from Justin Hall-Tipping.

STILETTOS ON BROKEN BOTTLES: 25th Annual 17th Street High Heel Race.

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Steve Jobs Describes the First Time He Met a Gay Man, in New Bio

I've been reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs , which came out today, and I was curious to know if the book described any of Jobs' interactions with gay and lesbian friends or employees.

The book does, in fact, discuss Steve Jobs' first encounter with someone gay, and how he handled it, and it happened shortly after February 1974, when Jobs became one of the first fifty employees of Atari.

Jobs developed a reputation at the company for arrogance and body odor, two qualities that made many of the employees want to avoid him. He did find one close friend, however.

I've transcribed this segment by hand, so apologies in advance for any inaccuracies to the original text, or typos:

Not all of his coworkers shunned Jobs. He became friends with Ron Wayne, a draftsman at Atari, who had earlier started a company that built slot machines. It subsequently failed, but Jobs became fascinated with the idea that it was possible to start your own company. "Ron was an amazing guy," said Jobs. "He started companies. I had never met anybody like that." He proposed to Wayne that they go into business together; Jobs said he could borrow $50,000, and they could design and market a slot machine. But Wayne had already been burned in business, so he declined. "I said that was the quickest way to lose $50,000," Wayne recalled, "but I admired the fact that he had a burning drive to start his own business."

One weekend Jobs was visiting Wayne at his apartment, engaging as they often did in philosophical discussions, when Wayne said that there was something he needed to tell him. "Yeah, I think I know what it is," Jobs replied. "I think you like men." Wayne said yes. "It was my first encounter with someone who I knew was gay," Jobs recalled. "He planted the right perspective of it for me." Jobs grilled him: "When you see a beautiful woman, what do you feel?" Wayne replied, "It's like when you look at a beautiful horse. You can appreciate it, but you don't want to sleep with it. You appreciate beauty for what it is." Wayne said that it is a testament to Jobs that he felt like revealing this to him. "Nobody at Atari knew, and I could count on my toes and fingers the number of people I told in my whole life. But I guess it just felt right to tell him, that he would understand, and it didn't have any effect on our relationship."

In related news, Apple has posted its company memorial to Jobs on its website.

You can also watch 60 Minute lengthy segment on Jobs from last night, AFTER THE JUMP...

NYT Times Frenzy Over Imminent Steve Jobs Bio

After Steve Jobs died, there were a few days when it seemed like every reporter on the New York Times payroll had been conscripted to write about the man. Encomia, reminiscences, and meditations filled page after page -- at one point, the Jobsian deluge became so absurd that Nora Ephron parodied it, in a mock-solemn Times piece beginning with the sentence: "I, too, did not know Steve Jobs."

Now, the online Times has more-or-less simultaneously published three -- three! -- pieces about Walter Isaacson's official Steve Jobs bio, due Monday.

 Making the iBio For Apple's Genius: A straight-ahead review from Janet Maslin. It is ceaselessly adulatory, both of the book's author and its subject.

As a biographer of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, Mr. Isaacson knows how to explicate and celebrate genius: revered, long-dead genius. But he wrote “Steve Jobs” as its subject was mortally ill, and that is a more painful and delicate challenge. (He had access to members of the Jobs family at a difficult time.) Mr. Jobs promised not to look over Mr. Isaacson’s shoulder, and not to meddle with anything but the book’s cover. (Boy, does it look great.) And he expressed approval that the book would not be entirely flattering. But his legacy was at stake. And there were awkward questions to be asked. At the end of the volume, Mr. Jobs answers the question “What drove me?” by discussing himself in the past tense.

... Mr. Isaacson takes his readers back to the time when laptops, desktops and windows were metaphors, not everyday realities. His book ticks off how each of the Apple innovations that we now take for granted first occurred to Mr. Jobs or his creative team. “Steve Jobs” means to be the authoritative book about those achievements ...

 Steve Jobs Biography: A Scorecard of Put-Downs: A catalogue of the nasty things Jobs told his biographer about the broad range of people and institutions that bugged him. John Mayer makes the list, for some reason. So do Google, Microsoft, Intel, a former Apple exec, and Barack Obama:

At a meeting with the president in 2010, Mr. Jobs told Mr. Obama bluntly that he was going to be a one-term president, Mr. Isaacson says, and that he needed to be more friendly to businesses. Mr. Jobs told Mr. Isaacson he was disappointed in Mr. Obama because the president did not want to offend anyone, a quality that Mr. Jobs conceded he lacked.

 Hints of Apple Plans In Jobs Book: Apparently, Jobs wanted to get into the textbook business.

If textbooks were given away free on iPads he thought the publishers could get around the state certification of textbooks. Mr. Isaacson said Mr. Jobs believed that states would struggle with a weak economy for at least a decade. “We can give them an opportunity to circumvent that whole process and save money,” he told Mr. Isaacson.

Skeptic after skeptic made the mistake of underrating Steve Jobs, and Mr. Isaacson records the howlers who misjudged an unrivaled career. “Sorry Steve, Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work,” Business Week wrote in a 2001 headline. “The iPod will likely become a niche product,” a Harvard Business School professor said. “High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product,” Mr. Sculley said in 1987.

Mr. Jobs got the last laugh every time. “Steve Jobs” makes it all the sadder that his last laugh is over.

Biographer Suggests Steve Jobs Might Be Alive Today Had He Not Pursued Alternative Medicine: VIDEO

In an interview to be aired Sunday on 60 Minutes, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson said that the Apple co-founder waited nine months before pursuing cancer treatment options that would have likely saved him. In that time he pursued alternative health treatments.

"I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking…we talked about this a lot...He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it….I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner."

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

The book also detailed a 2010 meeting Jobs had with Obama, the HuffPost adds:

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.

Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year...

...Though Jobs was not that impressed by Obama, later telling Isaacson that his focus on the reasons that things can't get done "infuriates" him, they kept in touch and talked by phone a few more times.

Watch Isaacson talk about Jobs and alternative medicine, AFTER THE JUMP...