If Jobs’ work life was one marked by almost unparalleled success, his personal life was often far rockier. In a study of his psyche, it would be remiss not to spend a little time looking at how his choices affected those closest to him, both for good and bad.

The abrasiveness that filtered through in his professional life was there in his personal life, too, not least in his youth. In his later years, for instance, he would speak of his profound regret at the cold and, frankly, ungrateful farewell he paid to his parents when he embarked on his studies at Reed. Even though he knew of the sacrifices they had made for him to go there, he barely spared them a moment as he rushed through the college gates, itching to reinvent himself independent of them.

Of course, such brashness is common among the young and few of us can be too judgemental. More problematic, though, was his initial reluctance to acknowledge his first child, Lisa, born in 1978. While Lisa’s mother, Chrisann Brennan, was forced to rely on social benefits in Lisa’s early years, Jobs simply refused to engage as a parent. Indeed, Brennan was eventually forced to resort to DNA testing to prove her daughter’s parentage.

While Jobs’ treatment of his parents on his arrival at Reed may be credibly put down to the frailty of youth, such an argument stands up less well when it comes to reneging on one’s duties to a child. Even after the DNA test returned a 94 per cent probability that Jobs was the father, he continued to tell reporters that there was statistical uncertainty over the paternity. Ultimately, it took a legal judgement before he started making regular payments for the child’s upbringing. Jobs’ reaction was particularly harsh given the rejection he himself received in early childhood, first from his natural parents and then from what were to have been his adoptive parents. Bear in mind, too, that by 1978 the Apple II had been on sale for a year and Jobs was by no means on the breadline. Thankfully, he would eventually build a relationship with Lisa.

At other phases of his life, he appeared to have a much better balance between his professional and private lives. This is most clearly illustrated by the circumstances surrounding the start of his relationship with his second wife, Laurene Powell. It was 1989 and Jobs, a self-confessed romantic, was giving an address to students at Stanford University. In the audience was Powell, an MBA student. When Jobs had finished his talk, he made his way to the car park ahead of a further function that evening. Powell saw him and came over to speak. After a short chat, he got into his car and prepared to leave but, as he later reported: ‘I thought to myself, if this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a meeting or with this woman?’ Deciding on the latter, he got out of his car and asked her to dinner. The two married in 1991 and went on to have three children. They strove to create as normal a family life as they realistically could, though Jobs’ commitments with Apple decreed that he worked extraordinarily long hours. He was perhaps not always as attentive a parent as he might have been but his children have subsequently spoken of how they realized the importance of his work.

Jobs spoke often of the need for single-mindedness, perhaps even tunnel vision, in order to achieve really major work. He was certainly wedded to Apple and to his ambitions to change the world, sometimes at the expense of his loved ones. But with age came at least a mellowing. At the time of his death, he had navigated a ten-year marriage and left a family who clearly held him in deep affection. Perhaps one of the lessons of his life is that, however hard you try, it is impossible to have it all. But after a shaky start, he came decently close.

‘You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me.’

STEVE JOBS