Jobs invented and masterfully marketed ever-sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology, in the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone. Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility along with a minimalist design ethic, he rolled out one sensational product after another, even when confronted with the late-2000s recession and his own failing health.
Jobs helped change computers from the geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work as well as home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology however the cellphone and music industries.
Perhaps most influentially, he launched the iPod within 2001, which offered ``1, 000 songs in your pocket. '' Over the following 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become as ubiquitous since the wristwatch.
In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, and later its miniature ``apps, '' which made the telephone a device not just for making calls but for managing money, keeping photos, playing games and browsing the Web. And in 2010, Jobs launched the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said nobody really needed one.
Earlier this month, Apple briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil since the most valuable company in America, with Apple stock on the open market worth a lot more than other company's.
Under Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for every of its new products. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of exactly what his customers wanted, and where demand didn't exist, he leveraged a cult-like following to produce it.
When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded azure jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes paid attention to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added the coda, ``One more thing'', before introducing its latest ambitious idea.
In modern times, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues to his health. Within 2004, Jobs revealed that he had been diagnosed with, and ``cured'' associated with, a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine growth. In early 2009, it became clear he was again ill.
Jobs required a half-year medical leave of absence starting in January 2009, during which he'd a liver transplant. Last January, he announced another medical leave, his 3rd, with no set duration. He returned to the spotlight briefly in 03 to personally unveil a second-generation iPad.