A funeral service was held yesterday in Palo Alto for Steve Jobs, one described as having “ultra-tight security” like that of a UN general assembly meeting or something. And perhaps for good reason: the church where it took place — Stanford’s Memorial Church — was filled with some of the most powerful and influential people in the world, not surprisingly.
Reports the New York Times:
Bill Clinton; Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chief executive; Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder; and Michael Dell, Dell’s chief executive, were among the guests who attended a private service at Stanford’s Memorial Church, according to a person with knowledge of the event. Bono, the U2 lead singer, and the folk singer Joan Baez, who once dated Mr. Jobs, were also there, as was John Lasseter, who worked with Mr. Jobs at Pixar, the animation studio that Mr. Jobs developed and later sold to Walt Disney.
While there were few details available about who spoke at the memorial, the British actor and technophile Stephen Fry, who knew Mr. Jobs, posted a note to Twitter Sunday evening describing his reaction to a memorial, though he didn’t say explicitly that it was the event to honor Mr. Jobs. “I don’t know that there was ever a more beautiful memorial service,” Mr. Fry wrote. “Everyone who spoke did so with such passion and love and simplicity.”
The service was, according to the Times, an “Apple-hosted event” and it won’t be the last: the company plans to hold an Apple-employees-only memorial service for Jobs at the company’s outdoor amphitheater in Cupertino, California on Wednesday.
As for the rest of us, we’ll all remember Jobs forever whenever Siri orders a pizza for us and/or when an Apple product battery flames out prematurely.