
Not that I am an Apple fanboy...but I met him in 1975, before any of that, and I have always admired the enthusiasm and the sense that what he was striving for even back then was not material achievement, but to change the world. Not suprising at 20, when I met him...but he never lost that!
He was not a technical genius by any measure, but he was my generation’s Thomas Edison. So many innovations in the last 35 years would not be part of our daily lives without the vision he brought, without the passion he used to inspire and drive others to create the technologies that added up to Apple’s ground-breaking products. Apple II. Macintosh…and iMac. iPod. iPhone. iPad. Then there is the awesome that was Pixar, and to a lesser extent, NeXt.
He spent the last several years battling pancreatic cancer. With his resources and inner strength, he lasted longer than is typical for that disease…but few completely beat that.