Steve Jobs: I wanted my kids to know me

SAN FRANCISCO—Steve Jobs, in pain and too weak to climb stairs a few weeks before his death, wanted his children to understand why he wasn’t always there for them, according to the author of his highly anticipated biography.

“I wanted my kids to know me,” Jobs was quoted as saying by Pulitzer Prize nominee Walter Isaacson, when he asked the Apple Inc. cofounder why he authorized a tell-all biography after living a private, almost ascetic life.

“I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did,” Jobs told Isaacson in their final interview at Jobs’ home in Palo Alto, California.

Isaacson said he visited Jobs for the last time a few weeks ago and found him curled up in some pain in a downstairs bedroom.

Jobs had moved there because he was too weak to go up and down stairs, “but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant,” Isaacson wrote in an essay on Time.com that will be published in the magazine’s Oct. 17 edition.

Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56 after a long battle with a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

Outpourings of sympathy swept across the globe as state leaders, business rivals and fans paid respect to the man who touched the daily lives of countless millions through the Macintosh computer, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Jobs had struggled with health issues but said very little about his battle with cancer since an operation in 2004. When he stepped down in August, handing the CEO reins to longtime operations chief Tim Cook, Jobs said simply that he could no longer fulfill his duties as chief executive.

Apple has been similarly guarded about the circumstances of his death, saying only that their chair was surrounded by his wife Laurene and immediate family. Jobs had four children from two relationships.

Funeral arrangements have not been disclosed and it is uncertain when the company will hold a planned “celebration” of Jobs’ life. Officials in Sacramento said there will be no state or public funeral.

From Tokyo and Paris to San Francisco and New York, mourners created impromptu memorials outside Apple stores, from flowers and candles to a dozen green and red apples on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.

Beyond death

With his passion for minimalist design and a genius for marketing, Jobs laid the groundwork for Apple to continue to flourish after his death, most analysts and investors say.

But Apple still faces challenges in the absence of the man who was its chief product designer, marketing guru and salesman nonpareil. Phones running Google’s Android software are gaining share in the smartphone market, and there are questions about what Apple’s next big product will be.

But Wall Street analysts said Cook’s new team-based approach and operational savvy will keep the company on track—at least for now.

Jobs’ estate

Jobs, in his trademark uniform of black mock-turtleneck and blue jeans, was deemed the heart and soul of a company that rivals Exxon Mobil as the most valuable in America.

With an estimated net worth of $7 billion—including a 7-percent stake in Walt Disney Co.—it was not known how Jobs’ estate would be handled.

His death revived speculation that some of his estate might be donated to cancer research groups or hospitals. California law requires a will to be filed in probate court within 30 days of death.

Rebel streak

Jobs was given up for adoption soon after his birth in San Francisco to an American mother, Joanne Carole Schieble, and a Syrian-born father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali.

A college dropout, Jobs started Apple Computer with friend Steve Wozniak in his parents’ garage in 1976.

Jobs changed the technology world in the late 1970s, when the Apple II became the first personal computer to gain a wide following. He did it again in 1984 with the Macintosh, which built on breakthrough technologies developed at Xerox Parc and elsewhere to create the personal computing experience as we know it today.

The rebel streak that was central to his persona got him tossed out of Apple in 1985, but he returned in 1997 and, after a few years, began the roll-out of a troika of products—the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad—that again upended the established order in major industries.

Awe for a wizard

Jobs was a conjurer, a modern magician who reached into tomorrow and came up with things that changed millions of lives.

As people gathered at Apple Stores from Sydney to San Francisco to mourn him, the feeling was more than grief for an executive or even an inventor. It was something closer to awe for a wizard.

Apple has sold 129 million iPhones and 29 million iPads. And in the decade since it revolutionized the music industry by offering “1,000 songs in your pocket,” it has sold 300 million iPods, or roughly enough to outfit every person in the United States.

Venerated by rivals

In a measure of his impact on personal technology, Jobs was venerated by his fiercest competitors in the hours after his death.

Bill Gates, the cofounder of Microsoft, a company that Apple once treated as Goliath to its David and then blew past in market value, said it was “an insanely great honor” to have known Jobs.

A statement of grief came from Sony, whose Walkman and Discman were buried by the iPod.

Heads of state around the world added their thoughts. President Barack Obama said Jobs exemplified American ingenuity. Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon bemoaned the loss of “one of the most visionary minds of our times.” India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was “deeply saddened.”

Former US President Bill Clinton said:  “His passion for his work and his courage in fighting his cancer were an inspiration to us all.”

Apple in tears

In the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo, people held up iPhones and iPads, their screens facing outward and displaying sharply defined, touchable graphics of flickering candles.

At an Apple Store in Hong Kong, old and new means of grief came together: People scribbled “RIP” and “We miss Steve” and longer notes of condolence on Post-It notes, and stuck them to an iPad display.

And at the 24-hour Apple Store in midtown Manhattan, passersby left flowers and candles, actual ones.

Even in Syria, seven months into an uprising, people paused to take pride in Jobs, whose father was born in Homs, the third-largest city.

“This shows that this country can produce geniuses, if only we had freedoms instead of a suffocating dictatorship,” said Sara, a 23-year-old Syrian student who refused to give her full name for fear of Syrian government reprisal.

On Facebook, people posted revisions of the Apple logo, a stylized apple with a detached leaf and a half-moon bite taken out. One added a frown and tears to the apple. Another replaced the bite with a silhouette of Jobs himself. With a report from Reuters