I knew both Jobs and Wozniak way back when. I worked at HP with Wozniak at the Cupertino facility.
Jobs was one hell of a salesman and the complete butt-hole that has been previously noted. When they started Apple and they offered me a job, my wife said that one shouldn't work for any company named after a fruit. I tended to agree.
At the time we felt that a whimsical name was indicative of their seriousness did not bode well. Moreover everyone and their dog was making their version pf a PC, the odds were against them.
The fact is that their computers were never mainstream, they infested the market by giving them to schools and universities so that shiny new faces graduating from these institutions came forth thinking that Apple and Adobe was all that there was. Just like the legions of naive computer science graduates of the 1990's that came forth thinking that the abomination known as Pascal was the gold standard for a programming language. Shudder. All the result of Job's marketing acumen.
Nonetheless, Jobs managed to shepherd some really nice innovations into the market place. He invented nothing, he and his subordinates merely synthesized existing technology. No small feat but not on the same plane as inventing the light bulb where nothing of the sort existed before.
Regardless of he was, genius or huckster, whichever suits your prejudices, the world will be less without him. He was a force to be reckoned with.
This is one the most balanced and right on descriptions of Jobs and Apple that I have read anywhere, and I get here in little ole Signs 101.
Someday I want to hear the whole Bob story.
As for Jobs I am still perplexed why he means so much to people who know him so little. His products, basically gadgets, do allow a somewhat personal level to exist from those who use them to those that made them but really doesn't explain it all.
People wandering around staring into their cell phones, typing on internet blogs (whoops), connecting through facebook, twitter and texting while foregoing the more traditional personal contact might elevate someone like Jobs into an area usually reserved for more traditional heroes and men of accomplishment.
Is he a face of a new social paradigm? Why not others?
In Brave New World, Huxley had set way in the future a new engineered society based much on Henry Fords automation and management techniques. The Ford name was used religiously and with reverence. Sometimes I see a bit of that in this Jobs/Apple phenomenon.