Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Steve Jobs changed the world. He was born in 1955 to a Syrian father and an American mother but was put up for adoption. He was raised by the Jobs family who worked near Silicon Valley.

He formed Apple with Steve Wozniak and together they launched in 1976 the Apple I. In 1977 they launched Apple II which was the first home computer.

Famously Steve Jobs visited Xerox and saw their icon driven systems which inspired him to created the Macintosh in 1984, which also featured an iconic advert filmed by Ridley Scott in the style of an Orwellian nightmare.

Jobs left Apple in 1985 under a cloud and then formed NeXT (which was used by Tim Berners-Lee to create the World Wide Web) and he also found time to buy out George Lucas' stake in an animation company called Pixar.

Jobs returned in 1997 to Apple and in 1999 had helped launch colour versions of the Apple Mac.

However it was in 2001 that Steve Jobs and Apple really started to fulfill their potential and promise. The iPod was launched, revolutionising modern portable music, followed by iTunes in 2003, the online store to download music. An incredible achievement in an era where many used the internet to download mp3 files for free!

How could he top this? In 2007 he launched the smartphone to end all smartphones: the iPhone. This was a portable PC in your pocket. And then in 2010 he went into the market they said couldn't be done... the Tablet PC. Apple's version was called the iPad and has already sold millions of units.

Steve Job's untimely passing will have a profound effect on Apple, which for a brief time this year became the world's top company, eclpising Exxon Mobil.

Steve Jobs was a visionary who always cared for aesthetics as much as performance. Style over content, perhaps, but that was and is Apple.

It has been remarked that he will be remembered alongside Thomas Edison and Henry Ford as genuine American legendary entrepreneurs.