October 31, 2011
The last technology Steve Jobs used: a sketchpad
by Melville House
The New York Times has reprinted author Mona Simpson‘s eulogy to her brother Steve Jobs. She describes how Jobs invented new technologies, even until the end. The “technology” he used to record his ideas, however, was not an iPad. It was a sketchpad.
Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit….For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad.