Steve Jobs worked actively on future product plans for Apple right up until the day he died, new reports show. According to business partner Masayoshi Son, he had “one more thing” in store for us before he was ready for the end.”
The product he worked on was likely the iPhone 5, which could come out sometime in 2012. He devoted much of his remaining time this year to developing Apple’s next-generation smartphone, according to reports and a story from Son.
“I visited Apple for the announcement of the iPhone 4S [at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California],” Son told PC Magazine. “When I was having a meeting with Tim Cook, he said, ‘Oh Masa, sorry I have to quit our meeting.’ I said, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘My boss [Steve Jobs] is calling me.’ That was the day of the announcement of the iPhone 4S. He said that Steve is calling me because he wants to talk about their next product. And the next day, he died.”
If it’s true that the iPhone 5 is the last Apple product Steve Jobs worked on, it will be one of the most highly anticipated and in-demand products the company has ever put out. And that is a major statement, considering Apple’s place in the tech world. The idea of his imprint being on the product, right up until his untimely passing, is already the stuff of legend.
Photo: By Matt Buchanan (originally posted to Flickr as Apple iPad Event) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons