Steve Jobs Passed away

Steve Jobs, the person responsible for iPad, iPhone, iMac, iTunes, and iPod, has died, Apple announced.

Visit Apple's home page and you'll see the image of Steve Jobs with the line Steve Jobs 1955-2011.  When you click on his picture, it will show you additional lines which will not fail to induce you to tears.

Steve Jobs co-founded the Apple Computer in the year 1976 along with Steve Wozniak, his friend, produced the Apple II -- considered the world's 1st PC.

He fought pancreatic cancer in 2004, and by 2009, Jobs was forced to have a transplant.  After years of bad health, he announced his resignation as the chief executive of Apple on the 24th of August, 2011.

He remained private regarding his life, refusing private interviews and taking his wife and children away from the public. Industry analyst said "He's granted interviews in the context of product launches, when it benefits Apple, but you never see him talk about himself."

Jobs' career path is well-known: he was a College dropout prodigy in Oregon and by the age of 21, started the famous company--Apple with his childhood friend Wozniak back in the garage of his parents.  By the age of 25, he became a multimillionaire, appeared as the cover of the famous Time magazine at 26 years old, and was booted out of Apple by the age of 30, in the year 1984.

After a few years, he founded NeXT computers.  In 1986, Jobs bought a part of Lucasfilm, Ltd., that later became the popular --  Pixar Animation.

Some described him as a demanding and sometimes intimidating leader, orders and rejects several versions of products until the last version was just perfect.  He said the aesthetics and design of a certain device was important as the software and hardware inside.

Apple took him back by purchasing NeXt in the year 1996.  Later in 1997, he rose to become CEO and put apple on an upward path.

It became unecessary for a lot of peole to buy CDs because of digital recordings which were freely copied and shared over the internet back in 2001.

He created the iPod, a pocketable PC hard drive with simple controls plus a pair of earbuds so that hours of mp3s can be enjoyed once saved into its memory.  iTunes was set up and he convinced recording companies to sell 99 cents per song.  The need for buying CD's is no longer existent.

The launch of the iPhone posed a threat to phone manufacturers like Nokia , Motorola, and BlackBerry.  The iPhone was a pocketable PC, mp3 player, digital wallet, messaging device, and -- apparently -- a phone.

The iPad became a competitor of Apple's original business, which is the personal computer.  It was a very sleek tablet PC with touch screen.  This gizmo can be used for a wide variety of programs that software engineers could think of, from viewing movies to reading ebooks to taking photos.

Steve Jobs spoke little about his health.  But then, he was forced to announced about his pancreatic cancer back in 2004.  Later, sources say he had gone to a hospital in Memphis for a transplant (liver).

Members of the board of directors from Apple persuaded him to reveal more about his failing health as a "fudiciary issue" back in 2009.

Steve Jobs was listed as 109th of the billionaires of the world in Forbes list.  He became the main shareholder and a board member of Disney, after Pixar animation was sold to The Walt Disney Company back in 2006.

Apple did well even without Steve Jobs, but partly because of his availability for major decisions and also partly because of Tim Cook (his chief lieutenant) was there even when Jobs was around.

Apple is known to have a history of recuperating.  After announcing his 2nd leave, stocks of Apple dropped to 78.20 USD per share. It recovered quickly and became 1 of Wall Street's stocks which was most succesful.  Last summer, Apple passed ExxonMobil as most valuable company in the world.