Remembering Steve Jobs and the women who helped shape his life

Photo by: Lee Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle
Steve Jobs: the women behind the man
When Steve Jobs, one of the greatest innovators in modern history, died Wednesday at 56, he left behind a legacy of products that changed the way humans communicate. From shaping methods of personal computing to reformatting the music industry and the simple tools with which we talk to each other, the founder of Apple was an enigma as much in business as he was in life. He once told a reporter he worked on the belief that a company is only as good as the sum of its parts. In his personal life, the sum of his parts were largely women. For the past few years, wife Laurene Powell stood by his side nursing him through a treacherous battle with pancreatic cancer. Jobs was an intensely private person, long labeled a brilliant egoist, but Laurene got to see a side of him the rest of the world could only imagine. Who was the turtlenecked Buddhist who boasted of acid trips, called out his fellow tech titans for being "suits," and lived a spartan existence despite his billion-dollar fortune? A glimpse at the fascinating women who shaped the way he saw the world may offer some clues. less