A great deal has been said and uncovered since Apple’s founder Steve Jobs’ passing. His sister, Mona Simpson an acclaimed author and professor at University of California, delivered a special eulogy as part of a featured article for the New York Times. Among other interesting insights, that casts a more human side to his iconic status, she revealed his last words were of amazement as gazed upon his family members – “Oh, wow”
It was only after a very long while, when Simpson was 25 that she first found out about her biological brother. Then, while she was still in New York, a lawyer came and contact her, revealing she had a long lost brother, extremely rich and famous. The two brothers soon met afterwards and a relationship began to cement. They remained close until Jobs’ very end.
Steve Jobs, a simple, yet relentless man
Simpson remembered her brother as being a very simple man, but unrelentless when put to task , a man of remarkable ambition and will power. He was also somewhat of a fix-freak.
“If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them,” she said at the Oct.16 service at Stanford University. “In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.”
One of his greatest contribution as founder, and later on as CEO, of Apple was his visionary legacy. He believed that consumer electronics should not only be practical, but beautiful, deeply rooted inside art itself. Design can change the world.
“Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
Jobs, in Simpson’s view, was a romantic, who would often worry about his coworker’s love lives and was a consummate matchmaker. “He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere,” she said.
Aged 56, Jobs died of respiratory arrest as a result of complications related to his pancreatic cancer, which caused the disease to spread across his vital internal organs. He has been very sick for the past couple of years, fact which still didn’t seem to affect him too much in work.
Steve Jobs’ final words
Simpson remembered his final moment, with Jobs glancing toward his family.
“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,” she recalled. “Steve’s final words were, ‘Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.'”