To transform one industry in your lifetime is enough to be remembered by history. But what if you transform several industries, and change the way people think of and interact with technology several times?

Here’s some of the things that exist thanks to Steve’s unparalleled vision, drive, and leadership:

1. Macintosh
   Hard to remember just how primitive any computer before the Macintosh is.
2. iPod
   Not the first digital music player, but the first one with the right mix of features, size, capacity and ease of use – replacing Walkman as the default word for “portable music player”.
3. iTunes Music Store
   Completely changed the way music is distributed and sold, and thus the music industry. Per track purchases and instant gratification. The technology was there, but only Apple was able to put it all together in a successful manner.
4. iPhone
   No phone looked or acted like iPhone before it, and no phone is expected to look or act unlike iPhone after it. Only four years after its introduction people forget just what a massive change this was and just how primitive a pre-iPhone phone looks.
5. App Store
   One place to securely find, buy, install and uninstall software. Software distribution changed forever. Everybody (Google, RIM, Microsoft) have exactly copied this model.
6. iPad
   Not the first tablet computer by a long shot. But it was a completely new vision and the first (and still only) successful one. It takes a lot of guts and an uncompromising vision to distill a product down to the appliance-like minimality of the iPad. Again, no table was like an iPad before it, and pretty much every tablet after it is an iPad clone.

Thank you for always skating where the puck is going, and for taking us along for the ride.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” [Steve Jobs to The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993]