Jobs

Finally finished the Steve Jobs biography. Took me a while (I started before the end of December), but what a fascinating book about a fascinating man. Completely authorised and all access account, and Isaacson doesn’t hold back in explaining the man’s faults as well as his virtues, but even so, what a truly remarkable guy. To be at the forefront of so much creativity and so many amazing changes is difficult to comprehend.


But then, to be struck down by that dreadful cancer at such an early age was just awful. Having learned so much about him, reading the last part of his story was extremely difficult. This passage towards the end nearly finished me off:


Later, Jobs took his son out to the barnlike storage shed to offer him one of his two bicycles, which he wouldn’t be riding again … When Reed said he would be indebted, Jobs answered, “You don’t need to be indebted, because you have my DNA.” A few days later Toy Story 3 opened. Jobs had nurtured this Pixar trilogy from the beginning, and the final instalment was about the emotions surrounding Andy’s departure for college. “I wish I could always be with you,” Andy’s mother says. “You always will be,” he replies.


Oh crikey! Not even the greatest of reality distortion fields or wishing that the normal rules of life don’t apply to you are enough sometimes.