Steve Jobs never locked the front door of his Palo Alto house, which had an English-style cottage garden full of wildflowers and 'stuff you could eat,' U2's Bono says in memoir
- Steve Jobs never locked the front door of his modest Palo Alto house, Bono wrote in his memoir.
- The U2 frontman described the house as "low-key" and said Jobs grew food in his cottage garden.
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs never locked the front door of his "low-key" Tudor-style house in Palo Alto, Bono, the frontman of Irish rock band U2, wrote in his memoir.
Bono recounted a visit to Jobs in California in 2004 in his upcoming memoir, "Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono," an extract from which was published by The Guardian.
In October 2004, Bono, fellow band member the Edge, U2 manager Paul McGuinness, and producer and record executive Jimmy Iovine visited Jobs to discuss featuring the band in an Apple commercial.
"Steve lived with his wife, Laurene, and their three kids in a low-key Tudor-style house on a prosperous street in Palo Alto, California," Bono wrote. "Their Anglophilia also inspired a cottage garden full of wildflowers and stuff you could eat, with a gate opening yards from a front door he never locked."
Walter Isaacson, Jobs' autobiographer, similarly noted that he usually kept the back door unlocked and didn't have a security fence. Jobs also didn't have any security guards, live-in help, or drivers, according to Isaacson.
Guests dined on vegetables from the garden
Jobs bought the 5,768-square-foot, seven-bedroom house in the early 1990s. He lived in the property until his death from pancreatic cancer in 2011.
The property had been built in the 1930s and was made from brick and slate. A former neighbor called it a "lovely and soul-soothing cottage" in a piece for The Atlantic, while The Los Angeles Times reported that it "looks as if it were plucked from an English village in the Cotswolds."
In a 1997 article for Time Magazine, Cathy Booth described the property as an "English-style country house."
"The house is run with a distinct 1960s flavor," she continued. "Laurene has planted a garden of wildflowers, herbs and vegetables all around."
Booth wrote that when she dined with Steve and Laurene, who were both "strict vegans," they ate corn from the garden and had tea made from herbs grown at the property.
A former neighbor told Bloomberg that Jobs obsessed over the furniture, including spending tens of thousands of dollars on chairs and a custom-made dining table that he ended up returning.
"The rooms are sparsely decorated, the only extravagances being Ansel Adams photographs," Booth added,