I believe he built his reputation by being a global pioneer, then leaving Aple to see it close to collapse and return to rebuild it with basically his creativity as biggest asset to see it grow to one of the biggest companies in the world. That's quite something regardless if you like Aple products or not.
Your statement is foolish. Steve Jobs was a visionary and changed the world. Surprising how industry titans, who have revolutionized the way the world works, i.e., eric schimdt, larry page, bill gates, jeff bezos, mark zuckerberg, michael dell, bloomberg and countless others seem to think contrary. I may have not known Jobs, but I recognize his accomplishments. And apparently you don't know that VisiCalc on the Apple II is the predecessor to the modern day spreadsheet. Not to mention that the creator of the ethernet, Bob Metcalfe, also founder of 3Com is grateful for Jobs help http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20116378-37/bob-metcalfe-recalls-steve-jobs-cold-call/
It's also ironic that a board of daytraders will bash a man who created tangible assets for the world through innovation. Oh yea, I forgot. The day trader's greatest gift to society is liquidity.
It was, no doubt, successful. However, Jobs had nothing to do with inventing it. The design was entirely Steve Wozniak's baby. BTW, the history of the personal computer goes back to before Jobs was even born: http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml
Jobs had nothing to do with Visicalc, Dan Bricklin did. It also may have come out first on the Apple II, but it was also available for the Commodore, Atari, TRS-80 and the PC very shortly afterwards. It definately was the first killer application though.
u make him sound like an opportunist or worse a parasite but i suspect there's some truth to it b/c most excellent work produced in a company is not the hard work or brilliance of the ceo but some other lowly paid employee
I never had any interest in buying a Mac. Windows PCs and notebooks work fine for me. I bought an iPod some years back because I love music, and this was a practical way to have all my songs in 1 portable place. I bought an iPhone 3GS purely because of an app that allows me to manage open stock positions. I still prefer to use a cheap little Nokia for calls and SMS, but along the way I have come to appreciate the iPhone more and more. A phone, browser, email, PDA, calculator, camera, GPS unit, compass, world clock, portable music player and stock trading platform (not even thinking about other apps), all fitting nicely in the palm of my hand, working so intuitively that there is no need for an owners manual. What would my parents have made of this had they lived long enough to see and use it? Had I told my father that one day we would have such a gadget, he would surely have laughed and told me that was only possible in Star Trek. An elegant summation - http://www.economist.com/node/21531529?fsrc=nlw R.I.P. Steve
Actually, he didn't leave, he was fired. He came back to Apple when they bought the remains of his failed NeXT computer company, the core of which went on to become what we know today as OS X. Personally, the world is poorer now with him gone. But, let's be real, he was mostly a marketer, not an inventor.