[ctdonath]

Wozniak: "Steve needs now to just have some 'Steve time'. He deserves it."

I worry about this. Brilliant minds wholly obsessed with their work often do not take retirement well, or long. As in:

- A week before "Eyes Wide Shut" completed post-production, Stanley Kubric died.

- A week after ending 50 years of "Peanuts", Charles Schultz died.

Other examples exist.

Better indeed he remain on the BoD of Apple in a controlling role, and/or have some other deep involvement suitable for his health. Berkley Breathed has ended Opus' forum (under whatever name) at least four times; restarting has been good for him. May jobs continue to live and breathe Apple for a long time to come, as it is his air.

[bh42222]

Brilliant minds wholly obsessed with their work often do not take retirement well, or long.

Or more probably, brilliant minds wholly obsessed with their work only retire when their health forces them to. This most often means the end is near.

I am not saddened by Steve resigning the CEO role at Apple. I am saddened by what I fear the reason for his resignation is.

[gnufied]

There are countless counter examples for this. Steve like everyone else may die (he just got operated twice for critical illness!), but I think you are reading too much in those examples.

Steve, does deserve "Steve time". I like how graceful Wozniak is, in his response.

[scott_s]

The other way to look at it is these people continued working as long as humanly possible. They quit not because they wanted to move on, but because they couldn't continue.

[eavc]

You might be confusing cause with effect. Charles Schultz may well have lost something essential which caused him to quit the strip and subsequently die.

[JacobAldridge]

Actually that example occured to me when I read the news. Schultz announced his plans to retire a period in advance, and yet died the day the last strip was published.

[jamesrom]

I'd like to see a case where someone didn't stop what they were doing after they died.

[Maakuth]

Deep in the field of off topic, but person that was doing nothing probably could keep up with it after passing.

[philwelch]

In Kubrick's case, he took over a decade off before making Eyes Wide Shut and would undoubtedly had wanted to make some final edits after post-production or even after release, as was his habit. I don't think he intended to retire.

[Gring]

Really? Working on Aryan Papers and A.I. is "taking a decade off"?

[philwelch]

Well, you can't say he was working at the same pace then as he was in earlier years. His attempt to make a film about Napoleon involved a lot more work, yet occupied a much smaller gap between successful film releases. My point is that if Kubrick were to die due to not taking retirement well, a decade long period of writing and exploring ideas seems closer to retirement than his typical hands-on approach to post-production and release.

[kongqiu]

Kubrick had worked quite a while on "Aryan Papers," even casting the female lead: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/03/kubrick-holocaust...

[philwelch]

Fine. The point is, Kubrick wasn't done with Eyes Wide Shut when he died, at least by his standards. The film was cut and digitally altered after his death to keep it down to an R rating. Kubrick's cuts routinely occurred as late as after the film was released.

[sp332]

My uncle had a heart attack 2 weeks after retiring. my family explained it as, "Some people just can't handle retirement" :) He's OK now. One actual explanation I've heard is that the stress can keep your body from healing properly. So as soon as the stress stops holding you together, everything just falls apart.

[jedberg]

My wife is a teacher, and she tends to get sick at the start of pretty much every vacation. It's like her body knows that she doesn't have time to be sick until vacation.

[keithpeter]

+1

I am a teacher. You keep going for the students, then suddenly there is silence, no work, the background noise comes up like a compressed audio channel. Strange embodied meat things we are.

[daemin]

I can't remember from what article this was, might have even been from a book, but I read that in the chinese (probably) community there was an important festival for which the oldest woman of the family played an important role. The researchers found that for some weeks before the festival the death rate was significantly decreased, and for the same period after it was significantly increased. Meaning that people hang on for important events.

With respect to this the good news is that Steve Jobs is still the Chairman of Apple, and thus would still have significant input if he so chooses.

[yuhong]

Well, Steve Jobs is remaining on the BoD as chairman.