CUPERTINO, Calif.—A little over a month after stepping down as Apple CEO, Steve Jobs has died. The company posted a photo of the creative visionary on Apple.com along with the bracketed dates of his life, 1955-2011. The cause of his death was not stated, but he had been battling pancreatic cancer for years. He was 56.
Jobs died the day after the latest iteration of one of his greatest acheivements—the iPhone—was announced. The iPhone 4S has not been greeted with same sense of wonder as previous versions of the revolutionary smartphone, but that momentary disappointment will quickly fade as the scale of this loss is realized by millions of people around the world.
As noted in a previous article, Jobs was notoriously opposed to pornography, even going so far as to ban anything remotely associated with adult content from the Apple App Store (with the singular exception of Playboy apps, of course), but that did not stop the industry from appreciating all that he had given it. Not least among those inestimable gifts was the iPhone itself, which arguably forced the industry to take the mobile marketplace seriously.
But that is just one small footnote to the great man’s amazing life and career, which came to an all too abbreviated end October 5, 2011.
