An anonymous reader shares this report from the Washington Post: Steve Jobs never lived to be an old wise man. But running Apple and Pixar, tumbling and thriving, earned him a lot of wisdom in his 56 years. Now, a small group of his family, friends and former colleagues have collected it into "Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words," available free to the public online starting on April 11. Somewhere between a posthumous memoir and a scrapbook album, it is told through notes and drafts Jobs emailed to himself, excerpts of letters and speeches, oral histories and interviews, photos and mementos. (Some physical copies are being produced for Apple and Disney employees, but that format won't be for sale to the general public.) "Imagine yourself as an old person looking back on your life," Jobs wrote in a June 2005 email to himself as he was preparing to give the Stanford commencement speech. "Your life will be a story. It will be your story, with its highs and lows, its heros and villains, its forks in the road that mean everything." The book, published by the Steve Jobs Archive, will be released on Apple Books and the Steve Jobs Archive website. The fact that it aesthetically resembles an Apple product — mostly gray and white, minimalist — is no coincidence: It was designed by LoveFrom, the firm founded by Jony Ive, Apple's former chief design officer.

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