Smetana was deaf, too, and one of the best composers.

As a side note, in a way it's misleading to speak of Beethoven "overcoming" deafness. All of the master composers were so well-trained at their craft that they could hear the music in their head without "trying it out" on a piano or other instrument. By the time Beethoven was deaf being able to hear was superfluous as far as composing was concerned...

The 2nd point you made reminds of Beethoven and how he overcame deafness to write some of his most brilliant pieces. He was incredibly passionate about his work and it was reflected in his music. It's amazing to see read this story and to realize that maybe Jobs' most important inventions, the iPhone and iPad, came at a point of extreme illness where most others would've quit. Passion drove everything he did and defined who he was.Sidenote: I hate broccoli too.

which book? I've never read any of his before

From Neal Stephenson:<pre><code> YT: That's the problem with you hackers, you're always working.
 HT: No, that's what hackers _are_.
</code></pre>
Apologies if I've misquoted.

1) This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read.2) I finally realize what has always fascinated me about him. He was ALWAYS working, with every single breath he took. He seems to have found a way of taking the hazy concept of "work" as it is commonly understood, and elevating it to a more in-focus ideal form through which to understand and shape his life.

This shows a good side of him, love. He put that in the products.Great writing, his final words were striking.

that was an incredibly moving eulogy. I just so happen to be about a quarter the way through his biography, and its an interesting contrast to read about "young" ambitious steve vs steve in the sunset of his life. Mona really hit on something when she said we die in the middle of many stories. Im interested to read some of her work now.

i've cried reading this article. god bless sj

The quote is:"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."I assumed the "Oh wow"s referred to each of those people.

More specifically, there is an enormous importance placed on dying well. Read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying for a really good explanation.

No, it is not. Yet not knowing what the alternative is like gives us that delusion.<a href="http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html</a>

In the Buddhist tradition, being aware and clear minded (no grasping to life, no desires, no regrets, no fear) during the end of the self, while being in a meditative state, is the greatest feeling you can experience.It seemed to me like Steve got to that place he was referring to when he last talked to his wife.&#62; He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.It's not exactly a "place", but you can only do so much with words.Imagine fully realizing that you're one with the Universe ... and then your mind shuts off, your body dies, there is no more action, what you where is no more, there is only silence. The end.But that's a good thing!

"I have no idea what that would actually feel like, or if that's what happened/is possible"You can experience ego death relatively safely using various techniques, which science has shown is the same as a near death experience. This is covers most of the experience of dying, minus the last part.

For me I interpreted it as him being somewhat conscious as the feeling of your body dying comes over you and you pass. I have no idea what that would actually feel like, or if that's what happened/is possible, but the thought of being awake and experiencing that feeling gives me chills.

Try to go into Steve's mind when he said "OH WOW OH WOW OH WOW"....try going to the mind of a person who is about  to die.....try going to the mind of a person who realizes that this is the end....these last few seconds are the last of a lifetime of seconds....I cant either but at least I am trying.

Aw c'mon, I got downmodded to -3 for being cynical yet realistic on HN? I really do think that "massive injections of painkillers is the most likely context in which someone a few hours of dying of cancer is likely to say "oh wow oh wow oh wow".

When I'm dying (and probably not especially lucid), I don't want to have to cope with the pressure that any set of words could be my last'Pressure'? Exactly what are you afraid of happening if you screw up your last words??

Without wanting to burst anyone's bubble, I'm guessing that the words actually refer to a dose of serious palliative care grade painkillers.I don't like the emphasis on "last words" anyway. When I'm dying (and probably not especially lucid), I don't want to have to cope with the pressure that any set of words could be my last and hence I'd better make 'em good. I think we should let everyone record their official last words ahead of time, just so there's one less thing to worry about when you're actually dying.

It reminds me of Hamlet's last words in the Folio edition:<pre><code> O I dye Horatio:
 The potent poyson quite ore-crowes my spirit,
 I cannot liue to heare the Newes from England,
 But I do prophesie th'election lights
 On Fortinbras, he ha's my dying voyce,
 So tell him with the occurrents more and lesse,
 Which haue solicited. The rest is silence. O, o, o, o.
</code></pre>
It has been suggested that the final four "O"s were inserted as a Christian reference to the pure joy expressed upon the revelation of death. One hopes this is what Steve experienced.

That line sent and still sends shivers down my spine.

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.One can only wonder what he was referring to. Such a well written piece.

Absolutely beautiful. I couldn't get my eyes of the writing. What I REALLY like about the piece was portrayal of Jobs as a loving and affectionate human being which is what ultimately matters. Feels good to know that Jobs parted with such an expression of amazement...Thanks for writing this, Mona.

I think that fact he was sketching x-ray machines, iPad holders etc. even in hospital is just fantastic. The man did what he loved.

Now I realize why most of his products are so poetic.

Maybe it doesn't apply so much for visual design, but I often find that a negative reaction to a new concept or piece of software is better than a "meh" reaction. One example: I made a browser game a few years back, one of the early players posted a huge rant about how frustrating the game was, I fixed the design issues they raised, they grew to love the game.So I tend to think that a negative reaction is often a sign you have something good, but flawed. You don't want people saying "yeah, that's kinda cool", you want them saying "OMG THIS THING SUCKS I'M TRYING TO GET IT TO DO X BUT I CANT BECAUSE IT DOESNT HAVE FEATURE Y" - at least in the second case you know you have something they want, and you know how to fix it.

I follow a similar series of steps.But, my step 4. is slightly different. I also give them some time; and 24 hours is an excellent choice.Now, I ask them to draw me the logo they saw the other day, and reiterate it in words. Depending on how they respond you should take action. If they can't recall it, you should start from scratch. If they can mention a few things, especially details, you should revision your work such that you make these very details even more bold and stand out. In the end, a good logo is something that is unique and well remembered.

I've forced myself to wait a minimum of 24 hours before rejecting a design and it has always served me very well.I've just completed designing a logo for the project I'm working on. Lacking experts around me whose judgement I could rely on, I came up with the following creative process:1. Come up with an idea and prepare a demo/prototype.2. Show the demo to a few people around you, preferably those who have some semblance of taste, but they don't have to be experts. If you own a smart parrot, the parrot will do. Since you want to avoid disclosing your idea to competitors, those people should preferably be either close friends or ones who work in a completely different field.3. Note their reaction. If it is silent or if they say something generic and don't go with an enthusiastic "WOW" in the first three seconds, they are unimpressed. Expect them to be unimpressed, but don't worry about it right away, because even if you showed them, for example, a Paul Rand-designed logo pretending to be your work, they would not recognize it either and would remain unimpressed (they are not experts, remember?).4. Wait 24 hours. Then ask yourself if you are bothered at all by the disinterest of the people you showed your work to. If you are indeed bothered, it means that your intuitive/emotional brain is telling you that your work is not good enough and that you should go back to step 1. If you are not bothered at all, it means your work is as good as your intuitive judgement is, and you can move on.The goal is to convince yourself that your work is good enough. Once you achieved that, the opinion of others doesn't really matter. I find this algorithm to be pretty efficient; it lets me hone in on a correct design within a week's time. Your mileage may vary.

Jean Cocteau, at least in one formulation &#38; attributionArt produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.<a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jeancoctea100975.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jeancoctea100975....</a>

Someone said that Steve Jobs painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that Dennis Ritchie built. Does that count?

It is not a matter of hours or days, it is a matter of years and centuries. Bach is more beautiful every new century, so is Vermeer, so is Pride and Prejudice. It is the mark of a Classic, regenerated by each new generation.But we are off-topic, this is again a Jobs thread, unless someone dare compare Sixtine Chapel (priceless) and an Ipad (expensive)?

Almost inherently, however, Jobs' creations were more aesthetically beautiful for their fashion and design trend than their art. In terms of usability, it's another area of continuous improvements, so the simplicity of a product has to be judged partially on the time of its creation.Does anyone look at the Apple II and think it would be a beautiful design for a computer today? Or the orignal Mac? Or even the Steve Jobs 2nd go-around products G3? Original iPod? Original MacBook?

I have to agree with you about giving a design time to sink in. So many times have I been sent designs for me to start working and a few hours later they are sending me an email saying to stop work while they rework something. First impressions can be very powerful, good or bad, but I do think its important to not rush into an idea.As for the eulogy, there have been so many amazing things said about Steve Jobs, my wife has been a massive Apple fan for a long time and when she read what Obama said there were a few tears.

It was a moving and powerful eulogy. Probably the most beautiful thing I've seen written about Jobs since his passing. One important takeaway for me was the quote:“Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”I've experienced this firsthand. I've been privileged to work with some great web designers. I've forced myself to wait a minimum of 24 hours before rejecting a design and it has always served me very well. Sometimes your first reaction is going to be negative but in a day or so it reverses. I am not certain why this is true but for me it's been a winning strategy.

I don't think any of the "asshole" or "genius" articles were diminishing of his humanity. We as humans are made up of all aspects of our beings. The good an the bad, public and private, personal and not.What distinguishes Jobs is he existed in layers from exceedingly public, second hand, apocryphal to private.What I love about this is it feels like a balancing of that gradient.

I'm glad the stream of "Steve Jobs was an asshole/genius" articles is done. This one shows his real human side.

Having lost both of my older brilliant brothers to HIV AIDS this passing of SJ conjures up many many emotions. Life is fleeting, live it fully in all you do. For the reaper does come, always unexpectedly.

Paul Jobs died in 1993 at 70; Clara Jobs in 1986 at 62.<a href="http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/What-is-the-story-about-Paul-and-Clara-Jobs-Steve-Jobs-adoptive-parents" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/What-is-the-story-about-Paul...</a>

Very well written, but I noticed that his parents are never mentioned, what happened to them? (Paul Jobs, Clara Jobs)

After reading several articles about Steve before and after his death and after reading his official biography,I always felt that nothing could yet capture the essence of how Steve actually was. This eulogy comes really really close. Beautiful piece of writing. Thank you.

Beautiful writing. Thank you. I always thought why people cried reading such stuff.....until now.

very beautiful, felt voyeuristic reading it though–private Jobs public eulogy.

I love this idea of true enough, as some things we won't know, but either version shall do for us. Thank you it was a nice feeling.

They could both be true, the bio only claims that Joanne had never told Mona until that phone call. The claims aren't mutually exclusive. The excerpt of the bio also quotes Joanne so it could be assumed that it's Joanne's perspective.

Beautiful eulogy. However either it, or Jobs' biography, is erroneous about who called Mona to let her know she had a brother.This eulogy claims a lawyer called Mona. But the biography, in chapter 20, claims it is Mona's mother, Joanne, who called:"""
[Joanne] had never told Mona that she had a brother, and that day she broke the news, or at least part of it, by telephone. "You have a brother, and he's wonderful, and he 's famoous, and I'm going to bring him to New York so you can meet him," she said.
"""

Insanely moving.The ending takes my breath away.

That was extremely moving. Beautifully written."Oh Wow".One can only wonder...

What is more amazing is how quickly someone registered his last words.com

On the other hand, maybe one of them was shaken into improving, leading the next person to get a better level of care. One never knows.It is true that to demand better than good is a tough challenge but I suspect it is why people look to Jobs with some confusion: he expected the best from himself and from those around him. In a regular corporate setting, that may seem dictatorial; in a hospital or care room, that seems psychotic; but in either case, it is about trying to inspire people into giving their best and breaking through to new levels.

Having visited loved ones in the hospital, it's not hard to imagine Steve declaring a lot of nurses "bozos" and demanding better. There is a lot of variability in nurse quality.

I really found this eulogy quite moving and beautiful and gave me an appreciation for a Steve Jobs that has not been captured by any of the other things I've read about him since his passing.But the part about going through 67 nurses did give me a little chill. My heart goes out to those poor 64 people who tried and failed to care for him up to the level of his demanding standards.

Don't throw the word "sociopath" around so casually.

At the same time. From the Issacson bio, I think there was no reserved CEO parking spot either.Buddhist Billionaires can be confusing.

I should have clarified: since he died.  At Apple, his complexities were largely well understood; I can't speak for those who reported to him directly.

Are you saying that in about 5 years of working at Apple, you've only ever heard words about Steve Jobs that were "suffused with narcissism and loathing"?

I always thought of him as a sociopath.From your other comments we know you're not a troll and that you worked at Apple. So I find it regrettable that you can't say this here. Two forces prevent it: the taboo against speaking ill (i.e. objectively) of the dead, and the cult of personality. That's not to say that SJ isn't a fascinating character and the OP moving -- I feel both those things too -- but there's a lot of myth-making going on here. The author is a novelist. That's what novelists do.Edit: not to share your description, necessarily. He seems too emotional to have been a normal sociopath, if there is such a thing. That's one thing I like about the OP - it dwells on the emotional side.

I always thought of him as a sociopath.  It's nice to read an insider's take that isn't suffused with narcissism and loathing, although I always did figure him for a jerk for parking that Merc in the handicapped space every.  goddamned.  day.

It's obvious that his sister shares his genius. I'm so grateful she shared this intensely private experience with the world.I have a half brother, ten years older. We didn't grow up together. Mona's story gives me hope that there are relationships we seek out later in life that are just as fulfilling, if not more so, than those we are given as children and take for granted.

This is a really beautiful piece of writing; it’s quite a gift that Mona Simpson would deign to share such a personal eulogy with the world. The Jobs family certainly didn’t owe any of us insight into his final time on earth.From all popular accounts, Jobs was an intensely private man about his personal and family life; something refreshing in an age when celebrity is conflated with talent and young people like Mark Zuckerberg opine that privacy is an anachronistic social norm. Love him or loath him -- and there is certainly enough evidence to support both reactions -- the conversation is almost always about the work and Steve Jobs as a professional. As one who still values the notion of personal privacy, I’ve always been grateful for that.Yet what makes this piece so potent is that Simpson reflects primarily on Steve Jobs as a person: a brother, father, and husband, not a boss, or showman. In so many ways, her eulogy could be applied to any person who has lived fully and loved their family deeply.There’s quite a sublimity in that contrast, something I suspect was not lost on Jobs and his family in the creation and dissemination of this eulogy and the Isaacson biography to the public.And perhaps on that point, it’s wonderfully surprising that Steve Jobs, widely considered an arbiter of taste and design curation, wasn’t yet familiar with Mark Rothko -- one of the premier painters of the 20th century -- until the final year of his life.

that was an incredibly moving eulogy.  I just so happen to be about a quarter the way through his biography, and its an interesting contrast to read about "young" ambitious steve vs steve in the sunset of his life.  Mona really hit on something when she said we die in the middle of many stories.  Im interested to read some of her work now.

That was a weird typo; I meant to write hospital room.

So sad, buddy, but why was it a hotel room?

I cried like a baby while reading the last part of this eulogy. It brought me straight back to a hot hotel room where I saw my uncle - a second father to me - die from brain cancer.Makes me want to donate more to medical research (my favorite foundation is SENS.org, but there are many good ones). I think it's okay to be sad, but we also have to do something to make things better.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.This line is so beautifully &#38; hauntingly crafted. I wish I had thought to add her books to my reading list sooner.

And I hope she still is a passionate writer ;)

She was a passionate writer as Steve Jobs was for Technology. He even read her books.

Extraordinary writing.  Everybody should have such a talented sister at the lectern on the day they're remembered.

"situation" is about putting a different level of constraints on them and asking them to optimize within those. And not necessarily involving only buying stuff.

&#62; There's always the Bill Gates or Larry Ellisons of the world building supermansions and owning all the yachts, but Steve wasn't exactly one of those.Indeed. I've run into Steve three times. Twice we were both shopping for produce at a natural food store (Country Sun in Palo Alto, and the old Richard's Natural Foods in Los Gatos).The last time was just a year ago. I sat down for dinner on the patio at La Strada, a nice Italian restaurant on University Avenue a few doors down from the Palo Alto Apple store, and there were Steve and his daughter at the next table. After dinner they took a stroll down University Avenue, just the two of them. I imagine they were probably going to get some frozen yogurt. I thought to myself, "Doesn't he have some security? A bodyguard? Something?"There are a lot of Silicon Valley executives who I'd recognize if I saw them. But Steve is the only one who I've ever run into doing ordinary things like produce shopping.

A lot of billionaires live in "ordinary people situations" more than you think. There's always the Bill Gates or Larry Ellisons of the world building supermansions and owning all the yachts, but Steve wasn't exactly one of those. And mere millionaires largely can't afford anything more than living like ordinary people.And there are a lot of ways that rich people can't actually get anything more special than anyone else, at least not easily. It's not feasible to build hospitals just for rich people, so a billionaire goes to the same hospitals as ordinary people. Consumer electronics don't generally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so a billionaire has the same kind of stuff ordinary people have.

Actually, on second thoughts I feel the need to contradict myself: Steve Jobs probably could have done a pretty good job of redesigning the user interfaces of these machines. Many devices in the "big fancy machine" category have terrible user interfaces, because the people who design them spend all their effort on the fancy internal bits, and then just stick a bunch of random buttons on, without a great deal of thought put into usability.

Do I have to be cold-hearted cynic guy again? Fine.He redesigned things around his hospital room because he had a pad and pencil, and he was bored. There's no reason to believe that the X-ray machine he drew was better than the X-ray machines designed by X-ray machine designers with a better idea of the details and tradeoffs involved with designing X-ray machines. And that's no insult to Steve, because I'm sure he knew that too -- he was just drawing for the sake of drawing.

"He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. "Instead of charity, if the billionaires or super smarts like gates, larry/sergey, bezos,pg etc can live in ordinary people situations for 2-3 days a year, their imagination will fuel creations that benefit all. Is this not tried already ?

Very moving, and a different side to the personality that we've been hearing about.

I expressed the same thought on my blog a few weeks ago:"He managed to inspire a whole industry, while doing what he truly loved. Millions of entrepreneurs world wide have been inspired to do the same as a result of his work. This may be his greatest legacy and something that will live on in all of us long after his passing."

it's even scarier to think what the millions of artists, entrepreneurs, etc. who Steve inspired will accomplish in the future.Right now there's someone working on the next billion dollar start-up in his garage that's going to blow us all away because he was inspired by Steve.That's Steve's greatest legacy.

Robert Heinlein, while hospitalized, once designed, in his head, a far more comfortable hospital bed. He later wrote about it in one of his books in such great detail that when the waterbed was eventually invented, it couldn't be patented because Heinlein's written descriptions gave so much detail to qualify as prior art.

I once read that Howard Hughes did something similar while he was recuperating from an accident.

Diffusion of responsibility?When trying to create something disruptive and radical, it is much easier to screw things up than to get them right. (There are more Dunning-Kruger poster children with grandiose over-estimates of their own ability out there than there are actual geniuses.)Most corporations are structured to restrain loose cannons in positions of authority, because everybody except the loose cannon in question is afraid of losing their meal ticket. (See, for example, the recent fiasco at HP, where Leo Apotheker decided to turn HP into a fundamentally different kind of corporation and did immense damage to internal groups that didn't fit within his vision.)The standard form of corporate restraining structure is the committee. Committees are designed to promote consensus decisions, and consensus decisions stop random-looking outbursts from happening. From the stake-holders' point of view, this is a good thing. However, committee decision-making gets in the way not only of the very common bad internal entrepreneur, but in the way of the much rarer good internal entrepreneur.The last time Steve Jobs answered to a committee was 1985. And they fired him. Thereafter, he carefully structured his working environments as start-ups, where the founder could impose their autocratic will on the company without having to drag a boat anchor of committees after him. For most people, this would have been disastrous. Luckily for Jobs, he was as good as he thought he was.

I do wonder; he was a multi billionaire personally, and Apple was a multi tens-of-billionaire as a company.So what was the most causative bottleneck stopping more new products and creations? Clearly not financial limits. Apparently not a lack of ideas. Was it logistical organisation of stuff? Managerial organisation of people? Which was the most constrained resource? Had anyone studied it or tried to optimise it?

He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit.It is scary to think what Steve could have accomplished if he lived into his 70's.

Beautifully written. I feel I have a lot to learn from Steve. He was so greatly misunderstood by so many. Steve was an incredibly smart man who knew exactly what he wanted, and wouldn't stop at anything to get that. I'm glad he spent his life doing what he loved. He will always be an inspiration to me.

I think this Eulogy helped give many people closure on Steve's passing. Such a well written piece. I'm really appreciate that she publicly shared this very personal moments with the rest of us, touching.

Intubated, when he couldn't talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit.I hope someone takes his sketches and runs with that vision. He's been able to re-imagine other devices wonderfully. To think of what he could have done with hospital equipment is amazing (that at his core, at his most vulnerable, he resorts to creativity) and sad (that he won't be around to execute upon these visions).

Alongside Einstein's final hours (see 
Einstein: A Life by Denis Brian), I found Steve Jobs final hours to be profoundly human and moving. Steve Jobs admired Einstein and in some ways he seems to have faced death as Einstein had:  with calm dignity, love, and atop a mountain of great work on this pale blue dot of ours.

Ad at the bottom of the article: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/sC0g8.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/sC0g8.png</a>I know it's automated, but still :/

"he didn't died he achieved it"
simply beautiful...

What I really find remarkable about Mr. Jobs is that he lived without extravagance. I am impressed by his desire to teach his kids to be "normal" and I am astonished that he was there for his family first and foremost, valuing love and fun in front of them. His kids (and wife) know a man who did not value success and money, but love and family. It is an impressive man who can ignore the pull of riches and embrace the pull of love.

I'm glad to hear he made some time for family.

Steve Jobs had a daughter named Eve (as in she who bit the fabled apple)? I did not know that. How perfect.

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs