Gadget Guru Steve Jobs dies at 56

Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause. He died peacefully, according to a statement from family members who said they were present.

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” Apple’s board said in a statement. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”

Mr Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems.

He took another leave of absence in January - his third since his health problems began - before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Mr Jobs became Apple’s chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.

It did not take long for the people who loved their iPhones, iPods, iPads and Macs to begin gathering to pay their respects to the man who made it all happen.

Scott Robbins, a barber and Apple fan for nearly 20 years, came to Apple’s San Francisco store as soon as he heard.

“To some people, this is like Elvis Presley or John Lennon - it’s a change in our times,” the 34-year-old said.

Outside Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, three flags - an American flag, a California state flag and an Apple flag - were flying at half-mast.

“Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor.” Mr Cook wrote in an email to Apple’s employees. “Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”

US president Barack Obama led the chorus of praise for the Apple co-founder. He said Jobs was brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world and talented enough to do it.

In a tweet, the President added: “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

Bitter commercial rivals also queued up to sing the praises of Jobs. Samsung, which is locked in an intensifying smartphone patent fight with Apple, said Jobs was an “innovative spirit” who will be remembered forever.

Sony’s president and chief executive Howard Stringer said: “The digital age has lost its leading light, but Steve’s innovation and creativity will inspire dreamers and thinkers for generations.”

The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest iPhone, a device that got a lukewarm reception. Perhaps, there would have been more excitement had Mr Jobs been well enough to show it off with his trademark theatrics.

Mr Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company.

Not every product was a success, but during his second stint, Apple grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of 351 billion US dollars (£228 billion). Almost all that wealth was created after his return.

Cultivating Apple’s countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, he rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health.

He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist’s obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the mobile phone and music industries.

Perhaps most influentially, Mr Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered “1,000 songs in your pocket”.

Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch.

In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple’s App Store, where developers could sell iPhone “apps” which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking.

In 2010, he introduced the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one.

By 2011, Apple had become the second-largest company of any kind in the United States by market value. In August, it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company.

Under Mr Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Mr Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand did not exist, he leveraged a cult-like following to create it.

When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, trainers and a black sweater, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word.

He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda - “one more thing” - before introducing its latest ambitious idea.

In later years, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues about his health.

Mr Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a very rare form of pancreatic cancer - an islet cell neuroendocrine tumour. He underwent surgery and said he had been cured.

In 2009, following weight loss he initially attributed to a hormonal imbalance, he abruptly took a six-month leave.

During that time, he received a liver transplant that became public two months after it was performed.

He went on another medical leave in January this year, this time for an unspecified duration. He never went back and resigned as CEO in August, though he stayed on as chairman.

Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, he did not refer to his illness in his resignation letter.

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria.

Ms Simpson gave him up for adoption, though she married Mr Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist.

Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, California, a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at Nasa’s Ames Research Centre when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school.

He enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, in 1972 but dropped out after six months.

“All of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it,” he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005.

“I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.”

When he returned to California in 1974, Mr Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club - a group of computer hobbyists - with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older.

Mr Wozniak’s homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Mr Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time.

The pair started Apple Computer Inc in Mr Jobs’s parents’ garage in 1976. According to Mr Wozniak, Mr Jobs suggested the name after visiting an “apple orchard” that Mr Wozniak said was actually a commune.

Their first creation was the Apple I - essentially the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor.

The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Mr Jobs was worth 100 million dollars by the age of 25.

During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre, he again spotted mass potential in a niche invention: a computer that allowed people to control computers with the click of a mouse, not typed commands.

He returned to Apple and ordered his engineering team to copy what he had seen.

It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people’s concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products.

Under Mr Jobs, Apple did not invent computers, digital music players or smartphones - it reinvented them for people who did not want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working.

“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas,” he said in an interview in 1996.

The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier Lisa - the same name as his daughter - launched to a cool reception in 1983. The less-expensive Macintosh, named for an employee’s favourite apple, exploded on to the scene in 1984.

There were early stumbles at Apple. Mr Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial surge, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programmes had been written for it.

With Apple’s stock price sinking, conflicts between Mr Jobs and Mr Sculley mounted. Mr Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Mr Jobs out of his day-to-day role leading the Macintosh team. He resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months.

“What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating,” he said in his Stanford speech.

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

He got into two other companies: Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer-animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for 10 million dollars.

Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then in 1995 came Toy Story, the first computer-animated full-length feature.

Mr Jobs sold Pixar to the Walt Disney Co for 7.4 billion dollars in stock in a deal that got him a seat on Disney’s board and 138 million shares of stock that accounted for most of his fortune.

Forbes magazine estimated Jobs was worth 7 billion dollars in a survey last month.

By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits.

Mr Jobs stepped in as interim chief. He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company’s focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to “Think different”.

Apple’s popularity exploded in the 2000s. Mr Jobs’ command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone’s launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on pavements outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one.

Three years later, at the iPad’s debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through car parks, even though people had the option to order one in advance.

Mr Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered.

In the early 1980s, he apparently dated the folk singer Joan Baez.

In 1989, he spoke at Stanford’s graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student.

When she became pregnant, Mr Jobs at first refused to marry her, but eventually relented.

He started looking for his biological family in his teens, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997.

He found his biological sister when he was 27. They became friends, and through her Mr Jobs met his biological mother. Few details of those relationships have been made public.

But the extent of Apple secrecy did not become clear until he revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with - and “cured” of - a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumour. The company had sat on the news of his diagnosis for nine months while he tried beating the disease with a special diet.

In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Mr Jobs delivered Stanford University’s commencement speech.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said.

“Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”