He paid attention, just the wrong kind of attention -- crackpot cuckoo crazy alternative medicine attention. If he had received the recommended surgery immediately upon the initial diagnosis, he very likely would still have been alive.

Didn't he have pancreatic cancer? That's not the kind a little chemo can fix. It has a very high rate of mortality. Patrick Swayze died from it not too long before Jobs.

I'm not defending the new age medicine he opted for first. But I don't think it's what caused his death. Might have hastened it a little is all.

Steve Jobs had a neuroendocrine tumor.

These are generally fair better behaved than the more common and far more deadly type of cancer you are probably familiar with, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. While pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas have a dismal prognosis, most neuroendocrine tumors have a good survivability index.

Yeah, a hacker artist friend passed just last year from a pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.