And I think your interpretation is far more likely. As much as I know everyone wants to believe that Steve was involved until the very end; I've seen people in the final week (and final minutes--my grandfather) of pancreatic cancer. They're not "working" on much of anything other than taking their next breath.
It makes for one hell of a story; but, I think the better story is to think of a man who spent his last 24 hours alive with those closest to him--his family.
This is kind of off topic, but isn't it a bit of an unchecked assumption that Steve actually died of pancreatic cancer? He had pancreatic cancer, seven years ago, but it was operated on, and his more recent health problems involved a liver transplant. How do we know that it was a reoccurrence of pancreatic cancer (which wasn't supposed to happen, and which reportedly didn't happen when Jobs had his earlier health issues) and not some other problem caused by a side-effect or complication of the Whipple procedure or something?
Official Death Certificate: Respiratory arrest was listed as the immediate cause of death, with 'metastatic pancreas neuroendocrine tumor' listed as the underlying cause
Not a doctor, but my wife is a nurse who cares for renal and GI diseased patients for a living. She has told me that liver problems are common alongside pancreatic cancer and that patients often receive extensive treatment for liver problems, sometimes including transplant depending on the prognosis following remission of the cancer.
There's no doubt in my mind that the liver transplant was directly necessitated by his pancreatic cancer.
Precisely. While I'm sure Steve communicated with Cook the day before he died (he knew he was dying - the PA police had been notified), and I don't doubt he expressed his last ideas for the future of Apple, I'm sure he was far more concerned with more transcendent things than the pixel density of the iPhone 5. Steve was not a shallow man.
Given that Cook no doubt knew Steve was about to die, I don't think it's reasonable to think he would tell the truth. Just imagine what he might have said if he had.
If I know steve, he is a buddist.
If one know buddism, he should not work for the world.
If steve really worked till his last moment, he tried his best to enjoy his own life, and his life is a nature harmony, a beautiful flower.
Being a flower is much more important than being great, and most of the time works better than being charitable.
If you get downvoted then probably for the tone rather than the content of your post. I do share your general feeling though: Jobs didn't know he would die the next day. Apparently he was feeling well enough that day to talk to Cook on the phone, so why wouldn't he? If he died two days later, no-one would make such a big fuzz about it. But now all of a sudden this call is presented as an almost heroic act. Strange.
Spoke to someone at Apple the day after Jobs' death and he said he was surprised as his team was getting product feedback from him on the Monday - 2 days prior.
I think it shows how dedicated he was to his own cause, to create great products for those who followed apple. Do I think he done it for the money? Definitely not. As pointed out already he could have retired a rich man when he first left apple, instead he went onto to create next & pixar and eventually took apple from being what they were to one of the biggest companies in the world. Despite the fact he was a billionaire he lived rather modestly and never rested on his laurels.
The only thing I could say he gave in charity was his time, I know that after diagnosed with cancer the last thing I would have done is keep working, especially if i was in the same financial bracket as him. Regardless tho he worked on until the day he died, that alone gets my respect regardless of the great things he done prior to his death......RIP
Regardless of whether this story is true or not, it's sad to see dedication to work and devotion to the company over all else idolized to such a degree. The only other place I've seen this is in Japan.
I'm pretty sure someone's taking the piss, but I won't be completely certain until I start hearing reports to the effect that his last words were "I wish I'd spent more time at the office".
Dennis Ritchie was working almost until he died as well. But I don't see HN posts about him on the frontpage anymore.
I'm so tired of all these Steve Jobs posts. Please stop with them. Dennis Ritchie did far more than Steve Jobs for hackers. And if this really was Hacker News we would be talking about his contributions instead of Steve's.
Is it because Jobs was rich while Ritchie was just a researcher? Is that why you folks care about him more? Is it because he was more visible and presentable?
These aren't very Hackerish reasons in my opinion. But they probably explain why this community is more interested in Jobs than in Ritchie.
I don't know why some people keep trying to compare Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie. One created an extremely successful, ubiquitous, and powerful programming language and OS. The other was a driven, successful, visionary, leader, and businessman.
It's mainly people claiming that Dennis Ritchie did not get the attention he deserved. But I have also seen Steve Jobs' fans defending the attention he got because of the ways he changed the world.
To both parties: STOP TRYING TO CHEAPEN THE DEATH OF ONE OF THESE MEN BY COMPARING THEM TO THE OTHER.
And please stop whining about Steve Jobs getting more attention than people you happen to respect more. You don't get extra votes by posting complaints here.
I've not seen very many articles about Ritchie, period. While his work was significant, he was not quite the public figure that Jobs was. Many people who are not programmers were aware of Jobs; not so with Ritchie. And even among programmers, there just weren't that many public details of Ritchie's life to weave into blog posts, at least not compared to Jobs. So it stands to reason that lots more articles will be written about Jobs than about Ritchie.
We can't vote up what isn't submitted, and we can't submit what doesn't exist. If you're aware of more articles about Ritchie than what you've seen here, please submit them!
Someone recently mentioned that Hacker News was originally Startup News, the name change made to catch more eyeballs. So it's more a 'business + tech' place than a 'tech infrastructure' place, so it's less surprising that Jobs carries more weight than Ritchie.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this matter. Things are truly just like you stated them. But the truth (as sometimes the case is) has this property of being at least a bit inconvenient to some.
Steve Jobs could have retired when forced out of Apple in 1985. He had $140million (or so, that's the figure I remember) in Apple stock. More than enough to live very well for the rest of his life. He could have even blown some of it on US festivals with Wozniak and still lived well.
Instead, he built NeXT, Pixar and then later, rebuilt Apple.
I think that his continuing to work is the most charitable act I've observed in my lifetime. He touched billions of people and made their lives better.
Sure, he got richer doing it, but it seems he never did it for the money. (I think he did it for the pleasure, personally, but the end result was massive human good.)
> I think that his continuing to work is the most charitable act I've observed in my lifetime.
Really? I doubt he did any of the stuff for our express benefit. Steve had a personal drive to produce good products, to achieve his personal goals, and he did that really well and is rightly admired for pursuing his internal drive and making it such a success.
Was his drive mainly for altruistic reasons? For the benefit of mankind? Come on - I'm all for admiring the guy, but let's not fawn over him. He's not a saint. If he is, I guess all those mega-rich CEOs of the Samsungs, Ford, General Electics of the world are also so admirable because they 'charitably' continue to work when they financially don't need to.
Look at it this way. With $140 million in 1985, Steve could've invested all of his money in a hedge fund and probably come out ahead of how he did investing in Pixar, Apple, etc. From $140 million to $7 billion over 26 years is about 16.5% return per year, which is less than the annual return of Berkshire Hathaway over the last 20 years (almost 19%).
He's not a guy who took his millions and invested it in the questionably useful products of Wall Street. Instead, he built things that people loved. That doesn't make him a saint, but I think it makes him someone worthy of respect.
> That doesn't make him a saint, but I think it makes him someone worthy of respect.
I totally agree about respect - but respect is not charity. Charity refers to noble goals/intentions - Steve 'only' built great products - those products are great - but there is nothing inherently noble about them.
If the OP had said Bill Gates is amazingly charitable - I would be more inclined to agree. Bill Gates has worked to make the world a better place and has self-sacrificed his wealth to help others. Steve did none of that - Steve is incredibly entrepreneurial and deserves boatloads of respect - but don't say his actions where charitable.
I have real problems with declaring Bill Gates 'amazingly chartitable'. Yes, he's given away huge chunks of money to worthy causes, but how did he get that money? By operating a business in a way that twice got him convicted as an abusive monopoly.
Microsoft's market position was hugely enhanced by them illegally using one captive market to create another. They forced up prices for their customers and forced competitors out of business by illegal means.
So yeah, he's giving away lots of money, but to me it's stolen money. That's not charity.
Those of you who have heard Bill Gates speak about global health will know that he is NOT just "giving away lots of money". Doing that would be easy, for somebody who has so much money (though Steve Jobs never bothered!).
I've heard Bill speak about global health issues in large plenary sessions and in small poster sessions. Speaking as somebody who has spent two decades working in this area...Bill's command of the issues is stunning and far ahead of most of the scientists I work with on a daily basis. He has the kind of knowledge that comes only with a huge investment of /personal time and energy/ spent flying all over the world, speaking with scientists, politicians, educators, and people affected by these various conditions. Frankly, I have the impression that global health is now an 80-hour-a-week job for Bill Gates. He has that kind of knowledge and passion about the issues when he speaks.
Bill's investment of personal time and energy is what really impresses me. If I had $50B or so, I'd probably give most of it away, but I'd probably do that while lying on a beach somewhere. Not Bill. He's working hard to give his money away in the right way, while taking time away from his family to do it.
>I have real problems with declaring Bill Gates 'amazingly chartitable'.
He's given away billions and billions of his personal fortune. If he literally stole the money (which he did not), the giving away of it would still be amazing. He's also giving away his substantial creative energy and his time.
Wasn't the central reason for the US anti-trust action over bundling and distributing IE for free to undercut the paid stand-alone Netscape? Today this is Google's basic strategy for everything.
I was very much "against" MS in those days, but looking back on it now, I feel like it was the beginning of a big part the modern web/software business model.
It's not "stolen," just because we don't like how he earned it. Committing to give away one's entire fortune - and actually doing it - is hugely generous, our feelings about MS aside. It is very much charity.
It seems the collective wisdom of HN disagrees with me, but....
Microsoft were barred from compulsory bundling with Windows after bundling that essentially gave away MS-DOS with Windows to try to undermine DR-DOS. There were recorded cases of them developing software specifically to sense a competitor title and induce incompatibilities that weren't necessarily there. Back when Microsoft Office still had significant commercial competition it was noted that it had substantially weaker copy protection than other Microsoft software, suggested to be on the basis that an illegal copy of Office was better for Microsoft than a legal copy of competitor software.
Microsoft were recorded as saying they were giving away Internet Explorer to 'cut off Netscape's air supply'. Netscape were marketing their web server as a superior product running on NT Workstation to IIS on NT Server, so Microsoft bundled IIS with NT Server and changed the terms on NT Workstation to prevent its use as a server.
Microsoft were specifically challenged that their line on IE being inextricably integrated with Windows was incorrect and produced false videos in testimony to back up their case. When they were ordered to produce an edition of Windows without IE they insisted they could then only produce either an obsolete or non-functional edition. Bill Gates' giving of his testimony was described as 'evasive and non-responsive' and many of his denials were directly undermined by his own emails. Bluntly, in trying to defend the case they committed repeated perjury.
From this, findings of fact were issued (which still stand) which stated that Microsoft's standing in the x86 operating system market constituted a monopoly and that they had taken actions to crush threats to this monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, Real Networks, Linux, and others.
Microsoft's behaviour was illegal under US anti-trust law and had abused market positions to the detriment of competitors. Microsoft's business tactics were illegally stifling their new entrepreneurial challengers.
Which is why, still, I consider Bill Gates' money to be tainted. He may well be doing a fantastic, dedicated job of his philanthropy at present. He may well have been somewhat similarly wealthy regardless. But, regardless, he still worked to obtain a dominant position for his company, at the expense of competitor software that could have promoted a more dynamic, diverse ecosystem, by means that were found to be illegal and anti-competitive.
Berkshire Hathaway has outperformed that vast majority of stocks over that time period. Saying he could have used leverage and some good stocks to turn 140 million to 140 billion is also true, but when you don't know how companies are going to preform your not given the choice of a safe 19+% ROI for 20 years.
I gave Berkshire just as an example of returns that are possible in the market.
When you've got 140 million to invest you don't buy stocks like the little people. You put it in a hedge fund like Blackstone that has returned an average of 20% per year over the last two decades.
The average hedge fund averages something closer to 11% (Wikipedia_. It is easy to pick the winners after the fact. And, when you have too much money it is harder to get greater returns on it. It's a lot easier to find 10 million dollar opportunities than 1 billion dollar opportunities.
Your confusing historical returns with expected returns. There are types of investments only available to people or institutions with a lot of capital, but plenty of companies invest in them and you can buy a piece of them on the public stock market. Unfortunately, most of these investments carry a high risk of returning nothing. It's like noticing your friend went to Vegas and made 5,000$ in a few hours, the problem is he only did that by risking losses and your just happen to see the upside.
PS: Or as my grandfather who made plenty of money in the stock market said, "Don't invest in banks they can look like their doing well and then die at any time."
Please, altruism as defined your way does not exist. Altruism is at its core self-serving: We desire to feel better about ourselves, to feel we are good human beings. People admire different things, so their vision of how best to behave leads to different forms of self-satisfaction.
Rather than focus on whether Steve did great things because of his passion for excellence, or because he wanted to have legions of fans, or for whatever other supposedly saintlike or selfish reason, focus on what he accomplished: bringing computing to the masses. That is an amazing thing.
Altruism seems to mean different things for different people, and it has been a recurring topic on HN too -- and usually become a bit of a toxic topic.
I don't behave altruistically in order to feel better about myself. If I want to do that, I'll go out with friends and have a good time or something.
When I behave altruistically, it is driven almost entirely by my ego: I believe that I am capable of making a difference (huge ego & hubris there), and I want to make a difference because it is the only form of immortality that exists so far.
I think the biggest difference between people like me, and Jobs, in this regard is that he actually pulled it off.
The masses in the West. You don't see to many Mac's running around Africa, India, China, or Russia.
I'm not trying to belittle Steve Jobs at all. He was a visionary who had a stunning ability to spot and develop good products. It made him, and others VERY wealthy. And powerful.
But don't think for a minute Mr Jobs did it out of the goodness of his heart. Profit and his vision motivated him. He wanted to push the industry he loved in a certain direction. And he succeded brilliantly.
Oh and I admire him for doing what he loved to the bitter end. I can tell you, from personal experience (I lived though AIDS/Cancer) that was not easy for him. At all. I admire him a great deal for never giving in.
//edited. changed the 1st line and added the last paragraph.
The way you define altruism, would be the correct way to describe what Jobs did. Even though he was ousted from Apple he continued to work on his passion. His actions were at its core self-serving. The side-effects were the good things he added to humanity.
You have a common misconception about altruism, that it is defined as some sort of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, but through using a twisted interpretation of psychological models, claim that any voluntary action, no matter how detrimental, is intended to improve one's state and therefore altruism can't exist. Seriously, it's like a phase people go through.
Regardless of whether you feel better about yourself or not, intentionally self-sacrificing for the benefit of others is altruism (time, effort, or money are the usual) - there's nothing in the definition saying you must endure some sort of pain or end up less of a person as a result.
I'm not sure what you are saying. I think you are saying that altruism requires self-sacrifice, and that self-sacrifice is not self-serving. But this is silly.
Altruism doesn't have anything to do with self-sacrifice. It is about doing an act that benefits others. Saying, as the person I was responding to said, that someone is not altruistic if they do something "just because" that was their passion, and not because it would help others, is myopic.
Then there's the evolutionary biological sense of altruism, or the philosophical variant of "Pure Altruism", requiring that you suffer for a gift to be truly selfless. People who get really bogged down in this kind of nit-picking would do well to go outside and breath deeply. (points at self)
The concept of altruism doesn't mean "hey, as a side effect, people are better off". The inventor of Teflon isn't altruistic because people have better frying pans these days.
Altruism is doing something where the balance is for the betterment of others, and costs you in some form, such as time (and it is also not atruistic to donate someone else's resources). But that cost does not have to be suffering.
Ultimately, the core of altruism is really whether you're primarily doing -foo- for yourself, or for the benefit of others.
It doesn't matter if he worked for our express benefit or because he simply wanted to. Intent is nearly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The bottom line is that he contributed an enormous amount and he inspired a generation of technical people. Maybe it doesn't deserve the label "charitable" but it most certainly is hugely beneficial to mankind.
Not to criticize, though, but the underlying premise that industrial scale "charity" is necessarily good deserves a critical reassessment.
Investment works and turns countries and companies into net producers. That's the story of countless Asian Tigers. At the largest scale, aid did not fix China and India, capitalism did.
This is because charity/aid doesn't scale. It's zero sum, it does not teach the guy on the other side of the transaction to catch a fish, to determine what they can produce which is worthy of trading in the global market.
I understand that Gates, Buffet, and now Zuckerberg had to throw their money away to buy respectability, in the same way people in olden times gave money to the church for various mumbo jumbo rituals. But I often wonder what could have happened had more of those billions been channeled into genuine positive sum activities like Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus' Grameen Bank.[1] Entities not necessarily focused on absolutely maximum profit, but which are at least self sustaining like Craigslist and hence not infinitely dependent on yet more infusions of cash from third parties.
[1] I'm sure that with all the billions spent, at least some has gone into real social entrepreneurship, meaning profitable standalone organizations. But it's hard to escape the fact that Gates, by his own admission, wasted literally billions on education with little to show for it.
The goal instead should be to identify the next Craig Newmark, Jimmy Wales, Salman Khan, or Mohammed Yunus and back them. Have them create a few billion in value and capture enough to remain afloat, and maybe dial up the next few efforts of this kind.
Touched billions of people ? Massive Human good ?
I love Apple, but cmon. Steve built awesome products for the industrial countries to solve luxury problems, shaped the computer industry and thats awesome, but saying he made billions peoples lives better is some steps too far.
In fact, Bill Gates probably did alot more good to humanity by being one of the most generous philanthropists on the planet.
Except he did make the lives of a few hundred of million people a little better. It's an immense accomplishment. Did he singlehandledly solve all the problems in the world? Nope. But he easily did a billion times more than you and me. The impact a single person can have on society is absolutely mind-blowing.
Note that you're comparing him to Bill Gates, one of the (if not the) most effective philanthropists on the planet. By comparing him to Bill Gates you've effectively conceded the argument.
>He could have even blown some of it on US festivals with Wozniak and still lived well.
Woz had a near-death plane crash and lost his memory for several weeks prior to the festival stuff. Kind of hard to judge him comparatively like this, maybe he wasn't capable of the type of work he did at Apple prior to the crash anymore.
I actually wanted to know what he was really doing, since the article just says he wanted to talk to Cook about the next product. Had I known a simple question was grounds for reproof here I wouldn't have asked.
