Steve Jobs Took the Armenian Genocide Personally

Friday is the date of the Apple Watch launch—but also the anniversary of a terrible genocide that sent Steve Jobs’s adoptive grandparents fleeing to safety in America.

On Friday, wrists around the world will welcome the most anticipated gadget since the iPad came to our fingertips five years ago.

But the date chosen for its release has caused a too-bizarre-to-be-true historic collision that Apple’s founder would likely never have allowed to happen.

And activists are worried that Apple’s latest masterpiece will distract an audience from an anniversary that they hope will finally force the Turkish government—which has long refused to call the slaughter a genocide—into accepting its bloody past.

Steve Jobs’s birth parents weren’t Armenian, but he was raised in the shadow of that heritage by an adoptive mother whose family escaped the killings for safety in America in the 1910s. And Jobs, though he never spoke publicly about his ties, appeared to feel a deep connection with his family’s heritage and the historic bloodshed they experienced. He even spoke conversational Armenian.

Apple did not respond to request for comment for this article.