Apple will close its retail stores for several hours Wednesday so that employees can watch a webcast of a company-wide memorial service to celebrate the life of co-founder Steve Jobs, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the closings and spoke on condition of anonymity. The store closings were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal and Reuters.
The memorial will be held at 10 a.m. at Apple's Cupertino headquarters and was announced last week in an email to employees from CEO Tim Cook. Apple says it is a private event.
A private memorial for Jobs was held Sunday at Stanford University's Memorial Church. Jobs, who died Oct. 5 at age 56 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, was buried in Palo Alto on Oct. 7. Apple isn't holding any public services for him.
Jobs battled pancreatic cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January - his third since his health problems began - and resigned in August, handing the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Cook.
Jobs was a tech visionary who started Apple in his parents' Silicon Valley garage with friend Steve Wozniak in 1976. Both men left the company in 1985, Jobs after a clash with then-CEO John Sculley.
Jobs returned as interim CEO in 1997 after Apple, then in financial dire straits, purchased a computer company he created called Next. He led the company through a remarkable upswing that included the launch of such popular products as the iPhone, iPad and iPod. His death came a day after Apple Inc. announced its latest iPhone, the 4S, which began selling last week.