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Mona Simpson, an author and biological sister of Steve Jobs, said her brother’s final words were “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow,” in an Oct. 16 eulogy she delivered that was published Sunday in The New York Times. Simpson remembered the man she first learned about when she was 25, living in New York and working at a small literary magazine. A lawyer had informed her that she had a rich and famous long-lost brother.

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people. Related Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for...

The multitude of mysteries revealed following the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' death now includes one that puzzled car enthusiasts for years: How did Jobs get away with driving without a license plate? It was common knowledge that Jobs would park his Mercedes SL55 AMG in a handicapped spot at Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, with nothing to identify his vehicle other than the tiny barcode that usually rests behind the rear license plate. According to Walter Isaacson's new biography, Jobs wanted to avoid having a plate for privacy reasons; and yet when having a license-less silver Mercedes became a...

Rupert Murdoch must have imagined Steve Jobs would be a feisty dinner guest. Even still, the News Corp. chairman couldn't have foreseen that, in one night at the mogul's Carmel, California ranch, Jobs would call his tech people incompetent, get a guy fired, and say that Fox News was literally destroying the world. Walter Isaacson's new biography of the Apple co-founder says Jobs railed against the conservative news channel and tried to convince Murdoch to shut it down. His comments came at the 2010 iteration of News Corp.'s annual management retreat. Isaacson writes: In return for speaking at the retreat,...

San Francisco - Steve Jobs told his biographer that he had cracked the problem of creating an effective interactive television, fueling rumours that Apple will release such a device next year. Jobs made the comments to author Walter Isaacson, whose portrait of the technology visionary was released Monday. Titled simply Steve Jobs, the book is the only biography authorized by the Apple co-founder, who granted Isaacson some 40 interviews to outline the parameters of his life from his early years as an adopted child to his last months, as he raced to finish the development of products when he knew...

Steve Jobs called long-time rival and Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates as "unimaginative" and not really a product person, according to a biography of the deceased Apple Inc chief executive. "Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology," Jobs told author Walter Isaacson. "He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas." Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO who invented and masterfully marketed ever-sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology, from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, has died at age 56. Read more...

Steve Jobs talks on tape about biological dad October 21, 2011 11:53 AM In his own words, Apple CEO Steve Jobs tells biographer Walter Isaacson he "didn't like what I learned" about his biological father and asked at the time that they never meet. Hear these and many other revelations about Jobs' complex life and personality on "60 Minutes," Sunday, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

The no-holds barred biography of Steve Jobs has revealed that former president Bill Clinton consulted the Apple boss on what to do about his affair with Monica Lewinsky during a late night tete-a-tete. Jobs reportedly replied: 'I don't know if you did it, but if so, you've got to tell the country.' According to his biographer Walter Isaacson, after Jobs delivered his advice: 'There was silence on the other end of the line.' Shortly after Jobs' death, Clinton spoke about his friendship with the Apple co-founder during an interview with Time's Managing Editor Richard Stengel. Clinton said: 'When my daughter...

(CBS News) Apple CEO Steve Jobs refused to allow surgeons to perform what could have been life-saving surgery on his pancreatic cancer, says his biographer Walter Isaacson... "I've asked [Jobs why he didn't get an operation then] and he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened...I didn't want to be violated in that way,'" Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, "I think that he...

EXCERPT According to author Walter Isaacson, Jobs told the President in the fall of 2010, "You're headed for a one-term presidency": Jobs, who was known for his prickly, stubborn personality, almost missed meeting President Obama in the fall of 2010 because he insisted that the president personally ask him for a meeting. Though his wife told him that Obama "was really psyched to meet with you," Jobs insisted on the personal invitation, and the standoff lasted for five days. When he finally relented and they met at the Westin San Francisco Airport, Jobs was characteristically blunt. He seemed to have...

The blogosphere has been rife with remembrances of Steve Jobs over the last couple of weeks. I don’t have anything bad to say about him, but now that some time has passed, I’m just going to say it: I think the hoopla over him is over the top. A few things to consider: 1. People write about Steve to write about themselves. 2. Individuals do not make history. Populations do. 3. You can tell a lot about a society by the people they honor. 4. Steve Jobs sheds more light on the nature vs. nurture debate than he does on...

Dennis M. Ritchie, co-creator of UNIX and father of the C programming language, died this past weekend after a long illness. It's no exaggeration to say that without Ritchie, modern computing would not be what it is today. Often known as "dmr," Ritchie was born in Bronxville, NY in 1941. He studied at Harvard University, initially focusing on physics. Ritchie said that he entered computing because "my undergraduate experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be a physicist, and that computers were quite neat." "As a result, C became in effect a universal assembler: close enough to...

Discovery has ordered a documentary on the life of the late Steve Jobs, with the Mythbusters duo on board to host. The network is teaming with NBC’s Peacock Productions for iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World, a one-hour special. Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, who celebrate the spirit of innovation on Discovery’s hit Mythbusters, will host the show.“Someone once said that to follow the path that others have laid before you is a very reasonable course of action, therefore all progress is made by unreasonable men,” Savage said. “Steve Jobs was an unreasonable man. He didn’t simply give...

I heard a Commentator say that Steve Jobs created a Trust before his liver transfer to avoid Estate Taxes to his children. He wasn't sure that he had to pay a Gift tax on the transfer of 3 homes, 30 Million Shares of Apple and 120 Million shares of Disney.

On a daily basis, I sit in awe at the amount of nonsense that pervades the world’s media. The latest is the preoccupation with the ethnicity of Steve Jobs’s biological father. Steve Jobs was adopted at birth. And until his untimely death last week, as far as almost anyone in the world knew, he was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Jobs. In fact, as far as Steve Jobs himself was concerned, his only parents were Paul and Clara Jobs. As the New York Times reported nearly 15 years ago (“Creating Jobs,” Jan. 12, 1997): “Jobs holds a firm...

“We are the 99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.” — Occupy Wall Street Web site. In the struggle between “Occupation” and “Jobs,” I’m firmly on the side of “Jobs.” Steve Jobs. God’s sense of irony was on full display last week when the death of the world’s most famous college dropout pushed America’s ungrateful grads off the front page. And the best part? Nearly every one of those BU boneheads and Northeastern nutjobs owns an iPhone. By any measure Steve Jobs was part of the evil, greedy “1 percent” the Occupods...

I met my (now) husband the same year Frank Sinatra died. (I know it was “before 9/11” but always have to look up “Sinatra” in Wikipedia to get the exact year: 1998.) (I can’t remember our wedding anniversary, either, except the month starts with a “J.”) We’ve had unnaturally few fights in all this time, but the first, nastiest, and most persistent is “Mac vs. PC.” Those ads are our relationship (from my P.O.V.)

As Apple shareholders mourn the passing of Steve Jobs, they are forced to ask themselves a tough question: Will the passing of the company’s iconic founder and driving creative force mark the top in its shares? Investors have had plenty of time to evaluate Apple without Jobs at the official helm and his successor Tim Cook. After all, two medical leaves by the founder in the last two years did not stop the company from briefly surpassing Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable company in the world this year. But the timing of Jobs’ death comes at a time...

Steve Jobs turned Eve's apple, the symbol of fallen humankind, into a religious icon for true believers in technology. But can salvation be downloaded? For every magical thing Steve Jobs revealed in his Apple keynote addresses, there were many other things he concealed. Like the devices he created, his life was more and more opaque even while becoming more and more celebrated. So his death this week came as a shock for nearly all of us, even though we knew that only grave illness could be keeping him from the company he co-founded and loved. He told us almost nothing...