Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO: how the web reacted

The entrepreneur's entrepreneur, Steve Jobs has fascinated and mystified the tech business community for more than a decade steering Apple from near-bankruptcy to become the most valuable company in the world.

Under Jobs, Apple has become the exception to every business rule, expanding into markets that might have seemed outside Apple's core strengths – not least music, with the iPod and iTunes, and mobile phones, with the iPhone. Its expertise, though, was in understanding and creating consumer electronics in whatever form.

Co-founder Steve Wozniak, speaking to Bloomberg, last night defined Apple's success as being about the way products are developed as much as the products themselves. "Steve had been very disciplined and forthcoming in reasons for running things certain ways. At Apple great products are not the important thing – it's where those products come from and so much of that was down to the way of thinking of Steve Jobs," said Wozniak.

"The people around somebody who thinks in great ways like that and thinks ahead – they admire that and what to be like that … Apple is not going to change drastically or suddenly hit the tubes … I just hope that Steve is happy and feels that apple is in the best possible place for the future. His goal is not money. His personal goal is to be the implementer of technology that would improve people's lives – that's what he was born for, he told me once."

TechCrunch's Saul Hansell described Jobs as "the patron saint of perfectionists".

"We all know lots of people who are nice. We know many people who are smart. We've seen a bunch of corporate leaders who have the rare combination of skills to surf the waves spawned by Moore's Law," wrote Hansell.

"But it's hard to think of anyone besides Steve Jobs who through the sheer force of will, self-confidence, vision and perfectionism could upend the powerful forces of technology to make so many products that delighted so many people precisely because they were improbable."

For those wondering why so much attention has been paid to the departure of one chief executive, veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Walt Mossberg explains:

"Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology, media and lifestyles in multiple ways on multiple occasions," wrote Mossberg.

"He did it because he was willing to take big risks on new ideas, and not be satisfied with small innovations fed by market research. He also insisted on high quality and had the guts to leave out features others found essential and to kill technologies, like the floppy drive and the removable battery, he decided were no longer needed. And he has been a brilliant marketer, personally passionate about his products."

View the Original article