Summary

Jobs had promised the 2005 Stanford graduating class that he would tell three stories: the first about connecting the dots; the second about love and loss; and, the third about death. He told the students that he was warned to live each day as if it were his last because someday it would be his last. He felt that the specter of death, of it all being over, drove him to achieve and to do it quickly. He shared something very personal with the students. The year before, a tumor had been discovered on his pancreas. He at first was told he had only a few months to live. But the doctors discovered it was a rare form of pancreatic cancer that could be treated with surgery. He had the surgery, he told the stunned audience, and he was cured.

In the late 1990s...