Apple co-founder, Chairman Steve Jobs died

Steve Jobs had been suffering from various health issues after his surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer in August 2004. He had undergone a liver transplant in April 2009 after which he returned to work for a year and a half before his health issues didn't appear again. Apple's employees will remember his statement in August that if there ever came a day when he could no longer meet his duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, he would be the first to let them know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

Personal computing was invented with the launch of the Apple II in 1977. Legal digital music recordings were brought into the mainstream with the iPod and iTunes in the early 2000s, and mobile phones were never the same after the 2007 debut of the iPhone. Jobs played an instrumental role in the development of all three, and managed to find time to transform the art of computer-generated movie-making on the side.

The invention of the iPad in 2010, a touch-screen tablet computer his competitors flocked to reproduce, was the capstone of his career as a technologist. A conceptual hybrid of a touch-screen iPod and a slate computer, the 10-inch mobile device was Jobs' vision for a more personal computing device.

Apple Computer was founded in 1976 in the usual Silicon Valley fashion: setting up shop in the garage of one of the founder's parents. Wozniak handled the technical end, creating the Apple I, while Jobs ran sales and distribution. The company sold a few hundred Apple Is, but found much greater success with the Apple II, which put the company on the map and is largely credited as having proven that regular people wanted computers.