I OWE YOU ONE
Apple chief’s tearful deathbed apology to his daughter for subjecting her to a lifetime of cruelty
Steve Jobs finally apologised to his daughter on his deathbed for subjecting her to a lifetime of cruelty, she has revealed.
The Apple founder cried helplessly as he told Lisa Brennan- Jobs repeatedly: ‘I owe you one, I owe you one.’
Days before he died of cancer aged 56 in 2011, Jobs admitted: ‘I didn’t spend enough time with you when you were little.’ He also told his daughter he had not responded to her emails and calls, and ignored her birthdays for ten years, as he had not been invited to her introductory day as an undergraduate at Harvard.
When Miss Brennan-Jobs asked why he hadn’t told her this before, Jobs – who invented the iPhone – replied: ‘I’m not too good at communication.’
Miss Brennan- Jobs makes the revelations in her memoir Small Fry, which was released in the US yesterday.
It is unsparing in its portrayal of her father’s brutality towards her and her mother Chrisann Brennan.
With Jobs there was a ‘thin line between civility and cruelty’ which could be crossed in a second, she says.
On one occasion, when she was nine, Jobs tore into her friend Sarah simply for ordering a hamburger.
He asked why Sarah had such a ‘biting, high voice’ and said: ‘You can’t even talk. You can’t even eat. You’re eating s***.
‘Have you ever thought about how awful your voice is? Please stop talking in that awful voice.’
Miss Brennan told Jobs to stop it, to which he replied: ‘I wish I wasn’t here with you. I don’t want to spend another moment of my life with you.’
According Miss Brennan- Jobs, on another occasion the Apple founder flew into a rage in a restaurant because his carrot salad was not to his liking as the carrots were not cut to the correct size. She recounts in excruciating detail how Jobs had shown the waitress he wanted his carrots cut an inch wide.
When the waitress brought the salad, Jobs sent it back. The waitress brought another carrot salad but Jobs objected again and said: ‘Does anyone know how to do their job here? Seriously. You don’t. I asked for fresh carrots. I would like shaved carrot and lemon in a bowl.’
Jobs motioned with his hands how he wanted the carrots grated. The waitress began crying as she told Jobs that the kitchen pre-grated the carrots. enraged, Jobs ordered some steamed fish – but when that came out, he rejected it.
Small Fry recounts how Miss Brennan-Jobs, 40, was born in 1978 after her father had a five-year relationship with her mother. They lived together in Cupertino, California, but Jobs, then 23, ended it when Miss Brennan fell pregnant.
Acrimony and a court case followed, during which Jobs took a paternity test and still denied he was Lisa’s father. Jobs was ordered to pay $385 a month (about £170 at the time) in child support.
Miss Brennan- Jobs’ main interaction with her father during this time was seeing him in magazines. In a Time interview in 1983, Jobs discussed his daughter and claimed that ‘ 28 per cent of the male population of the United States could be her father’.
When she was eight, her father started dropping round once or twice a month.
She writes that she felt a strong bond with her father and describes
‘I had seen him cry only twice’
being with him as ‘electric and magical’. On her visits to his house, they watched classic films. Jobs took her skating in the California sun and on holiday to Hawaii. They played piano together and he sang songs such as Sixteen Going On Seventeen from The Sound Of Music.
When she moved in with her father, it was on his terms and she could not speak to her mother at all for six months.
Despite Jobs’ immense wealth, the heating did not work in the part of the house where her beda room was. Jobs refused to fix it until he renovated the kitchen, telling her: ‘And we’re not going to do that any time soon.’
When Miss Brennan- Jobs was older and studied at Harvard, her father came to visit once a year as their relationship had cooled.
On one visit, Jobs told her: ‘You need to lose some weight.’
Miss Brennan- Jobs repeatedly tried to get Jobs to tell her that the Apple Lisa, released in 1983, was named after her, but he refused to confirm it. It was only when she was 27 and on holiday at villa in the South of France owned by U2 singer Bono that Jobs finally came clean.
Over lunch, Bono asked Jobs whether the Lisa was named after his daughter. Jobs said: ‘Yeah, it was.’ Miss Brennan- Jobs was shocked and told Bono: ‘That’s the first time he’s said yes. Thank you for asking.’
She moved to New York and in 2011 went to her father’s side in California as he was dying from pancreatic cancer. She writes that he looked like a ‘pile of yellow bones’. He barely ate but was still incredible picky. If one type of mango touched another type of mango in the bowl, he wouldn’t eat any of them.
Describing his final days, she says her father, ‘propped up on pillows, his legs pale and thin’, said to her: ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’
Miss Brennan-Jobs writes: ‘Tears fell down his face. Before he was sick I’d seen him cry only twice, once at his father’s funeral and once in a movie theatre at the end of Cinema Paradiso.’
He told her: ‘I wish we’d had more time... now it’s too late.’