“On a recent night at an elegant Beaux-Arts ballroom in San Francisco’s financial district, Laurene Powell Jobs received a computer with an unusually rich history,” Nick Wingfield reports for The New York Times. “Around 1980, Ms. Powell Jobs’s husband, Steven P. Jobs, donated the computer to a nonprofit organization, the Seva Foundation, to help the group manage data from its efforts to restore sight in the developing world. The nonprofit was now giving the computer — an Apple II that spent the last 33 years in Katmandu, Nepal, most of it packed away in a hospital basement there — back to Ms. Powell Jobs and her children from her marriage to Mr. Jobs.”
“The Apple II would be little more than an artifact in the history of a nonprofit if it was not also a rare symbol of the charity of Mr. Jobs, a man celebrated for his vision and leadership in the technology industry but who was routinely criticized before his death for his lack of giving,” Wingfield reports. “Mr. Jobs shied away from philanthropy, at least of the public variety. Although his wife has long been an active benefactor of various causes, Mr. Jobs was portrayed as somewhat disdainful of philanthropic endeavors by his authorized biographer, Walter Isaacson.”
“That perception of Mr. Jobs has troubled Larry Brilliant, a longtime friend of Mr. and Ms. Jobs who, as a young physician, co-founded Seva in 1978. ‘I do want to counter the meme that he was disinterested in philanthropy and things for the greater good,’ said Dr. Brilliant. ‘It wasn’t true,'” Wingfield reports. “Ms. Powell Jobs accepted the computer with her son, Reed, at a ceremony commemorating the organization’s 35th anniversary. Seva says it has helped restore sight to 3.5 million people in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Tibet, India and other countries since it was founded. ‘Steve was always very clear about his role in the genesis of Seva and it was his privilege to help support the heroic on-the-ground work of the doctors and health professionals involved in this courageous effort,’ Ms. Powell Jobs said in a statement. ‘It’s amazing Seva found the Apple II donated by Steve and our family is thrilled to have it returned.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
I love it. I hope more of the news media run this story!
Even though I have absolutely no proof, I am certain that SJ made massive contributions (not just dollars but advice also) to many charities.
People who shout about their philanthropy really turn my stomach.
You mean like Bill Gates?
Exactly like Bill Gates.
That’s not really fair. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is so large that it would almost be impossible NOT to know about. In addition, if they operated totally in secret, that would open the door to large scale tax fraud.
The good thing about the Gates Foundation is they use their large scale to leverage and multiply their effectiveness.
Now, I’m not a big fan of Windows or of Microsoft’s business practices that are a large source of Gate’s wealth but if the Gates foundation can be instrumental in the elimination of Polio from the face of the earth, that would be a major accomplishment of historic proportions.
Real proof that you can buy your way out of hell.
Not out of hell, but out of OUR bad graces.
Show me the money, and not the money he has put in the foundation but the money the foundation has used to help others. If you look at the foundations tax reports, I see a lot going to him and his family and friends as compensation, travel expenses ect. They could do a lot more IE help with the Haiti cholera outbreak.
Walter Isaacson’s biography is crooked for a more dramatic, contrast portrayal of Jobs. It is good approach for marketing, but it makes biography not really accurate in some major points.
Such as..?
Donating a computer, (in this context) to the Seva Foundation, to help the group manage data from its efforts to restore sight in the developing world is certainly a lovely action to make the world a better place.
Still lots more to do.
Reed: Great Mom! But who do we give it to now?
Isaacson’s book is not really a biography. The source material is mostly from Mr. Jobs interviews with Mr. Isaacson.
Technically, that would be a memoir. Since there is no real research or citing of sources, it is not a biography.
Still liked it though.
How many jobs and wealth did Steve Jobs generate for other people? That’s “philanthropy” enough.
I wish more people understood basic economics. If they did, we wouldn’t need so much “philanthropy.”
If you’re going to down-vote me, at least have the guts to tell why I’m wrong.
Certain kinds of people are pretty good deciding what other people should do with their money.
Besides all the jobs and wealth generated by SJ, how much did he and Apple pay in taxes all those years, and the taxes paid by his employees and 3rd party business who wouldn’t prosper without Apple — which tax money was then redistributed to parasitical 3rd world losers who do nothing but leech and commit crime and burden everyone else with their useless selves?
Just a sad ignorant comment.
There are too many sad ignorant comments in these posts.
I just Hurt when I think of the amount of ignorance in the world and wish that those who aren’t intelligent enough to think things through with simply go away once and for all so I don’t have to hurt Reading it.
The wealth you are proudly parodying was acquired off the backs of the 3rd world countries through slavery and thievery by stripping out and shipping all their natural resources to the West. The resources that if left well alone would have meant that the 3rd world countries would have been able to hold their own in their own home grown economies as opposed to exported capitalism that is heavily biased to the West through regulation originating from the West. Said resources are:- People, Gold, Silver, Diamonds, Oil, Uranium, Food crops, Cash crops and land to farm food that is then exported to West to rot on the supermarket shelves or in the fridges of homes whose occupants would rather eat highly processed foods than the fresh healthy fruit and vegetables that would have fed the people from whom land has been “leased from” in order to grow to order for the West.
borismcguffin, you are an harsehole of the worst variety, the variety that thinks that it is a feline orifice!
Now to make this the gift that keeps on giving the Jobs family could auction it off and give the money back to the same charity.
With a bonus added!! (but not publicised)