Steve Jobs working on Apple’s next product day before his death

Steve Jobs was never known to be a man who sat still and, even while being away from the company for nearly 1/3 of its history, still lived and breathed Apple. That’s why this account isn’t incredibly surprising, even as it reaffirms how dedicated he was to making the company’s products the best they could be.

Apparently, according to PC Mag, the day of the announcement of the iPhone 4S, Masayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank was talking to Apple CEO Tim Cook, when Cook got a call:

I visited Apple for the announcement of the iPhone 4S [at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California]. When I was having a meeting with Tim Cook, he said, ‘Oh Masa, sorry I have to quit our meeting.’ I said, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘My boss is calling me.’ That was the day of the announcement of the iPhone 4S. He said that Steve is calling me because he wants to talk about their next product. And the next day, he died.

Since this was after the announcement of the iPhone 4S, it is likely that Cook was referring to another product in Apple’s pipeline, although it’s unclear whether that was a new iPhone or another upcoming product.

I personally find it very telling that Cook refers to Jobs as ‘my boss’. As the CEO of the biggest company in the world, Cook arguably had no direct boss (besides maybe the shareholders) and certainly not the Chairman of the Board. Regardless, Cook clearly knew that Jobs would always be the boss, no matter what his title.

Son was touched  by what he saw as Steve’s unflinching drive and his desire to make the best products he could, saying that, even just before his death “his passion, his love for his own company and dream, about the next products, that made him energized.”