Steve Jobs’ biological sister Mona Simpson has revealed that the Apple founder’s last words were, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow,” before he died on October 5, aged 56.
The novelist, who met Jobs for the first time when she was 25 after he tracked down his birth mother, gave the eulogy at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
In the eulogy, reprinted in the New York Times, Simpson said: “Steve’s final words were monosyllables, repeated three times.
“Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them, before saying his final words.”
She also revealed how Jobs had telephoned her the day before and asked her to “hurry up to Palo Alto”, adding that he was “sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us”.
When Simpson first met Jobs, she told him that she had been considering buying her first computer, a Cromemco.
She told the congregation: “Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.”
Simpson also revealed that when Jobs died, “His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.”
Meanwhile, Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson told US TV that Jobs “regretted” his decision to delay an operation and try out alternative therapies when first diagnosed.
A Harvard Medical School cancer researcher also told US gossip website Gawker that the tumours Jobs is believed to have contracted were “relatively mild” and survivable if detected early.
Ramzi Amri claimed that in delaying surgery for nine months, it is “sound to assume that Mr. Jobs’ choice for alternative medicine has eventually led to an unnecessarily early death.”
