Photo: James Merithew/Wired.com

While I was researching Inside Steve’s Brain, I read everything I could lay my hands on about Steve Jobs, including just about every book and magazine article published in the last couple of decades. One of the most striking things was how many times Jobs mentioned death as the driving force in his life.

Over and over Jobs said he was driven to make an impact before his time ran out.

It was such a recurrent theme, I thought of devoting an entire chapter to the subject in the book. Jobs had an obsession with death to rival Emily Dickinson’s.

Even in his twenties, Jobs obsessed about death. He told former Apple CEO John Sculley he was convinced he would live a very short life and urgently needed to have an impact before he died. Sculley thought this was why he was so driven and ambitious, according to Sculley’s autobiography. Of course, Jobs lived much longer than he suspected.

Best known perhaps, are Jobs comments during his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said. “Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

It’s comments like this that makes me pessimistic about today’s news that Jobs is stepping aside, even if he claims it is only temporary.

For the last four decades, since Jobs cofounded Apple in his bedroom, he’s worked like a horse — rising early, taking short vacations, avoiding parties and sacrificing holidays to prepare for Macworld.

Work and family — that’s all he does.

I think he’s now focusing on his family.

I hope it’s not the case, but I suspect Jobs will not return to Apple.

Today’s announcement makes me think he’s focusing on “what’s truly important” — his family.

The ad targeting algorithm they use over at the Washington Post has either got a sick sense of humor baked-in, or perhaps the instance of the ad running with the story above is a stone cold coincidence. Either way, it’s a chance to seek levity in a bit of a heavy moment for the Apple community.

Godspeed, Mr. Jobs.

Via TechCrunch

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced he will take a medical leave of absence until June in an email letter sent Wednesday to all Apple employees.

Citing continued distractions stemming from curiosity over his personal health that have affected him, his family and “everyone else at Apple,” Jobs admitted his health issues are “more complex than [he] originally thought” and has asked Tim Cook, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations until Jobs’ intended return to the company in June.

Jobs said that he plans to remain involved in major strategic decisions while he is away and said the company’s board of directors fully supports this plan.

The full text of Jobs’ email is after the jump.

Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab has an interesting series on changing journalism, both in terms of what the digital backpack journalist uses and how they use it.

NBC news journalist Mara Schiavocampo opened up her 30-pound reporter’s backpack (a custom job with wheels) for them in a two-part interview about her work.

In addition to the newsroom standard issue Sony HVR-V1U HDV camcorder and a bunch of other expensive stuff, she uses an Apple MacBook Pro (in the image above), edits with Final Cut Pro and totes an extra MacBook battery for staying power.

Ian Betteridge is a brave man. Not only is he a Mac user who has switched to Ubuntu running on Dell hardware, he’s also decided to say so in public.

Some of you may recognize his name: for some years, he was a writer for, and then editor of, the UK version of MacUser magazine.

Why did he do it? Partly because of price, partly because he cares about open software running on open platforms. Apple, he says, is a long way from open and seems to be closing things ever tighter as time goes on. (See also his follow-up post detailing the apps he’s chosen to use on Linux.)

What really caught my eye, though, was one of Ian’s asides. Half way through his post, he predicts that “sooner or later”, the “development ecosystem will increasingly come to resemble that of the iPhone, and for much the same reasons”.

In other words, there will be an App Store for OS X software. An App Store that Apple will keep just as tight control over. Only apps that met with Apple’s approval would be cleared for distribution, and only apps distributed in that manner would actually run.

A bold prediction indeed. A fair one, though? And does the Better World of free software tempt you to switch to Ubuntu (or any other *nix variant)? What do you think?

(Disclaimers: I sometimes contribute articles to MacUser UK; and I know Ian Betteridge personally, have enjoyed a chat and a pint with him, and consider him a lovely chap.)

Psystar has raised another desperate, if novel claim in its ongoing legal battle with Apple, arguing before a federal judge that since the Mac clone-maker legally purchased its copies of Mac OS X from Apple and resellers, it has the right to do basically whatever it wants with that software under the first-sale doctrine.

In court filings described by Computerworld, Psystar told the court: “Once a copyright owner consents to the sale of particular copies of a work, the owner may not thereafter exercise distribution rights with respect to those copies. See, e.g., Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339, 350-51 (1908) (recognizing more than 100 years ago the concept of first sale and the limitations imposed upon a copyright owner in light thereof). Psystar acquired lawful copies of the Mac OS from Apple; those copies were lawfully acquired from authorized distributors including some directly from Apple; Psystar paid good and valuable consideration for those copies; Psystar disposed of those lawfully acquired copies to third-parties.”

Unfortunately for Psystar, courts have rarely held the first sale doctrine applies to software, considering it a product that is licensed, not sold, and can therefore be distributed with restrictions on further distribution. Psystar’s thin hopes likely hang on the precedent of a case involving Adobe, in which a court upheld the first sale doctrine’s application to software.

Via Cnet

Comedian Amy Sedaris narrates a three-part PBS series called “Make ’em Laugh” that debuts Jan. 14.

Her companion web video about online comedy provides more than a few chuckles and a nice Apple reference:

“I got a computer maybe four years ago because I have a rabbit and the rabbit got sick. It was too late to call the House Rabbit Society, so I thought I better get a computer because the next time she gets sick, I’ll be able to go on Ether Bunny and find out what’s going on.”

“Then I got iChat because I can just hold my rabbit up, call the House Rabbit Society and say, “Do you see this scab? What does it mean?” And then they can see it. See, I’m getting there.”

You can catch her 30-minute video on “Teh Internets” (sic) online, but put your headphones on — it rightly warns, “The following video contains mature content. Or immature content, depending on how you look at it. But it is not for kids.”

Via After Ellen

News Monday that CES attendance figures for 2009 are down 22% comes as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the big picture in the past six months..

In the wake of Apple’s decision to abandon Macworld, and despite rumors the Cupertino computer maker will join the big consumer electronics circus in Las Vegas next year, the fact remains the global economy is in a tailspin.

It says here expecting corporations to continue sinking major investment into expensive trade show PR going forward is a bad bet.

Which is not to say that innovation will come to a halt, or that producers of technology and electronic gadgetry are about to vanish from the landscape.

In the spirit of the relative dispersal of brick and mortar distribution outlets for any number of goods among an increasing web of online marketing vehicles, this writer believes it only makes sense that in a contracting economy, chances are the standard-bearers of communication and computing and entertainment will soon focus marketing budgets less on trying to woo live bodies to vast acreages of real-time exhibition space and more on leveraging the enticements of Web 2.0 and unified communications capabilities to rely on drawing eyeballs and attention to virtual marketing platforms.

In the coming year, look for fewer big-time confabs and more small-town events. Fewer shows at the Garden and more online specials.

It’s a brave new marketing world. Think different.

A lot of leading lights in popular music went to public schools in the windy city: Kanye West, Jennifer Hudson, Chaka Khan, Lou Rawls, Bo Diddley, Curtis Mayfield, Quincy Jones and Nat “King” Cole.

54 of these Chicago-themed tracks are on an iMix playlist on iTunes. The playlist was the brainchild of Brad Harbaugh, who runs the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) alumni website.  Struck by the number of famous musicians when he was going through the alumni’s honor roll,  he drew up a list of Chicago’s best.

CPS doesn’t profit directly from the sale of the $0.99USD tracks, but it is a nice way to promote schools and a cool idea for Chicago lovers in general. You can also see a list of the tracks, as well as exactly where the artists went to school in Chicago and when, on the alumni site.

There are a few unexpected tracks on the Chicago playlist like “A Boy Named Sue”  by Shel Silverstein, “City of New Orleans” by Steve Goodman and “Rawhide” by Frankie Laine alongside the Jones’ theme to TV show “Sanford and Son,” “Change Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke and “Chuck E’s in Love”  by Rickie Lee Jones.

On the downside, some alums whose lyrics were too deemed too explicit like Rhymefest and DaBrat  were kept off the playlist.

More than just hot air, the idea is that music is an important part of the curriculum at Chicago public schools. Students from 50 high schools perform in a solo and ensemble concerts every spring at various high schools and elementary schools. The program, in its 84th year, is said to be the longest-running public-school concert series in the country.

The Chicago playlist is also a work in progress — if you know for sure what school Lupe Fiasco went to, let them know.

Via Chitown Daily News

In this Monday night CBS sitcom about what happens when a pair of physics geeks meet the beauty next door, Apple products crop up first, as far as I can tell, for use by the distressed.

In the third episode of the first season (Big Bang is now in its second season) roommates Leonard and Sheldon are playing a MMORPG with friends. Though all the computers are covered with stickers, it looks like the only Mac user is Raj, another university researcher who is so flustered by Penny, the blond neighbor, that he is always mute in her presence.