In a speech to students at Stanford University this summer, Steve Jobs gave a rare insight into what drives his decision-making and risk-taking at Apple Computer.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said.

“Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Millions of consumers — among them music-lovers, computer-users and cinema-goers — have reason to thank Jobs’s determination to follow his heart.

His perfectionism, his hippyish belief in karma, his desire for a balance between form and function informs much of what Apple does. He is the reason that Apple has produced the iPod, the iMac, the PowerBook — and many other stylishly designed and beautifully engineered products, right back to the Apple II computer in 1977.

Apple’s innovation has raised the bar for personal computing, even if the company itself has often failed to capitalise on it. And Jobs has pursued a similar level of excellence at his “other” company, Pixar Animation Studios, the maker of an unbroken run of hits, including Toy Story and The Incredibles.

At Stanford, Jobs told the students he had lived by this code, that death “is life’s change agent”, since he was 17. Last year the theory was put to the test. Jobs was told he had pancreatic cancer, and had no more than six months left to live.

“My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months . . . it means to say your goodbyes.”

By sheer good luck, Jobs was spared. After a horrible 24 hours, doctors found he had a very rare form of the disease that was treatable by surgery.

Jobs had been given a second chance. But the experience reinforced his belief that you should take risks to achieve what you want and push for more — not play safe.

That helps to explain why Apple has just withdrawn its best-selling product, the iPod mini, and replaced it with the iPod nano — thinner than a pencil, lighter than a handful of change, but with a sharp colour screen and the ability to store photos as well as music.

Thanks to the iPod, Apple has also been given a second chance. In the 1970s and 1980s it was a PC pioneer. But Jobs’s determination to retain control of his technology meant he missed out when Microsoft licensed its software to all and sundry, eventually coming to dominate a huge new industry. As Apple’s share of the PC market shrunk to only 3%, it looked as if Jobs had blown it.

THE iPod has transformed Apple. Two years ago, the business was turning over about $6 billion (£3.4 billion) a year. In the financial year just ending, Apple’s sales will be close to $14 billion. The market value of its shares has quintupled, to nearly $45 billion.

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