Apple closes for staff to say last goodbye to Jobs

The employee-only memorial service for the late Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs, at the company's Californian headquarters featured performances by Coldplay and Norah Jones but it was a recording of Jobs that brought the house down. Apple played a recording of its former chief executive reciting the lines to its famous ''Think Different'' commercial, created soon after he returned to head the company in 1997. Advertisement: Story continues below Jobs, who died on October 5 aged 56, is said to have written the commercial's famous lines, which began, ''Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers,'' accompanied by pictures of famous luminaries such as Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan and Martin Luther King. ''Suddenly you could hear everyone in the place trying to hold back tears,'' one employee who attended the ceremony said. The event marked a chance for Apple's workers to remember Jobs, who, with Steve Wozniak, founded the company in 1976 and then led its resurrection after returning to the company in 1997 after a 12-year absence. The event was broadcast to employees at remote offices and Apple stores. Speakers at the ceremony included the former vice-president Al Gore, who is an Apple board member, Bill Campbell, the chairman of Intuit and also a board member, and Jony Ive, Apple's senior vice-president of industrial design. Jobs's wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, attended but did not speak. Thousands of workers lined up early to attend the memorial service at the company's campus at 1 Infinite Loop. The 90-minute ceremony marked the life of Jobs, who died from pancreatic cancer. During the ceremony, Apple's stores across the US closed or delayed opening.