least today, you touch steve jobs. that is unique. you just don t have that with any other products. rob, the flag is now flying at half-mast outside of the headquarters at apple. a loss like no other company has suffered in recent memory that we re seeing today. you ve study his life. he packed as much life as you possibly could into 56 years. how did his illness change him? well, to some extent it humanized him. you certainly saw him waste away. have to wrap his mind around the fact he was going to past and it weakened him, though. to be clear, he held on to the job as long as anybody possibly could. he was tied to the company as tightly as walt disney was tied to disney. as tightly as any executive i ve ever seen. they were two halves of a whole
liver. good news that he got a liver transplant, but guarded news in that any time you get an organ transplant, you have to go on medicines that suppress your immune system and that always raised the question of whether it would hurt his immune system and allow the cancer to grow back. most people with his cancer, maybe two or three years, but the survival rate overall is well below 10%. i just have to say, based on the conversation listening to you guys the last few minutes, i think the country tonight is going to take a very deep sigh and pause and frankly shed a tear. this is just profoundly sad. on a societal level, on a sint scientific level and medical level. dr. nancy snyderman. thanks for joining me tonight. you bet, lawrence. we ll be back with more on the life and death of steve jobs. the genius behind apple who died
liver transplant. five months later, back at the job at apple, he expressed his gratitude. i now have a liver of a mid 20s person who died in a car crash and was generous enough to donate their organs. and i wouldn t be here without such generosity. reporter: on august 24th of this year he stepped down as apple s ceo. back in 2005, he offered this bit of advice to the stanford university grads. your time is limited so don t waste it living someone else s life. don t let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. reporter: steve jobs, a man whose own inner voice led him to create some of the most visionary products of the internet era. jobs leaves behind a wife and four children. george lewis, nbc news, los angeles. i m rejoined now by rob enderle, a technology industry
incorporated these products into share litheir life. we feel like we know steve jobs. in some ways it s a passing that would rival that of an elected public figure in our country. janet, we now have a statement from steve jobs family that i m going to read. the statement says, steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family. in his public life steve was known as a visionary. in his private life he cherished his family. we re thankful to the many people who shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of steve s illness. a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories. we will be back with more. janet, we re going to break here. we will be back. we will be back with more on the life and death of steve jobs. the genius, the creative visionary behind apple. who has died today at the age of 56.
very cusp of radical change. and knowing that you have an idea, that it might be early, it might be a few minutes early, but it s innovators like steve jobs and bill gates and, you know, mark zuckerberg, quite frankly, all three of them, zuckerberg and gates, both dropped out of harvard. i think harvard produced as many successful dropouts as it has graduates by now. you see that opportunity. that narrow window in which you can rush and bring something brand new. and really excite a consumer base. and i think they all have an intuitive sense for that and, you know, in the case of most of the very, very successful businesspeople that i ve connected with including mr. jobs, there is a level of gran granularity that they get to in the understanding of the marketplace, of consumer behavior, of life generally that is truly amazing. if you had the opportunity to speak to some of these