Jobs - a good 'un?

I just thought I'd add my twopenneth worth on the untimely death last night of Setve Jobs, co-founder of the world's wealthiest tech company, Apple Inc. One of my favourite Steve Jobs quotes is:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there."

Earlier this year it was pointed out that Apple had cash reserves exceeding those of the United States Government. Now that's a lot of money. Whether or not Jobs himself loved money for its own sake is a debatable point. As a student in the early 70s he certainly lived the hippy lifestyle; dropping out of college, sleeping on friends' floors, claiming the deposit on empty bottles for cash and eating free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.  On the other hand, his friend and co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, famoulsy calims that in the early days Jobs cheated him out of the bulk of a bonus paid by Atari for Wozniak's innovative circuirty design for the video game Breakout.

As CEO of Apple, Jobs took a salary of just one dollar a year (though his share options supplemented that income a wee bit), yet the fact that he is not known to have made any significant donations to charity out of his reported 8.3 billion dollar personal fortune has drawn a "wealth" of criticism his way - especially as fellow self-made American billionaires Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have been doing their best to give away the bulk of their own money to worthy causes for some years now.

So it's hard to tell. Was he a miser or a philanthropist at heart? Just because he chose not to publicise any charitable donations does not necessarily mean those donations did not happen. He was known to give his time and (some) money to certain causes he believed in, such as legitimising same sex marriage and promoting organ donation. He was also well known for being intensely protective about the details of his personal life. For myself I shall choose to believe that Steve Jobs did support worthy causes, but that he saw this as a matter between himself and the recipients, not as a vehicle for self publicity.

One thing's for sure. By the time we get to heaven, I bet all the angels will be the proud owners of beautifully engineered iHarps that synchronise wirelessly with their hi-tech iHalos. You don't seriously expect someone like Steve Jobs to take over the world and be content to leave it at that do you?