jobs leaves behind a wife and four children. george lewis, nbc news, los angeles. i m rejned now by rob enderle, a technology industry analyst. rob, i don t think there is a company out there that produces a product where the consumer feels a more direct connection to the founder of the company, to the guiding creative genius of all the products that apple has released. that experience of opening apple packaging, whether it be for the ipod, whether it be for a mac, the phone, it feels as if steve jobs has designed every moment of that. every moment of the unpacking before you even turn on the machine. well, he did. i mean, at apple he was the super-user. he was their focus group. the products were built to his specifications and had to meet
oh, absolutely. i think you re right to identify edison as one and henry ford being another. as was just said, walt disney. milton hershey. companies where the individual s legacy lived on through the business entity they created. and also changed culture, processes as mr. jobs did while he was at apple, when he was gone and more importantly when he came back. he has done so many ground breaking things. don t forget, he also started pixar, the animation company that s now owned by walt disney. he s been on the forefront of technological changes. interestingly enough, lawrence, when he came back to apple, the company was effectively believe to be going out of business and it also, when he came back to apple, he was really turning the company around at a time after the internet bubble burst.
the mac. the apps. and so all of this, the creative genius of steve jobs, there s a powerful sense of just sadness here. even though that many people felt like this was coming. apple has been very quick to respond. go to apple.com and there is simply a picture of steve jobs in black and white with the dates of his birth and death. and apple within the last few minutes has issued a statement just expressing their sadness and what he has done for the world saying he has made it an immeasurably better place. and, of course, millions of his fans around the world, lawrence, would agree with that. but this campus where he had day-to-day contact with so many people for so many years, people who built this company with him, over a period of decades, there s very much a sense of sadness, lawrence. janet, we ve watched him publicly decline physically over time. so there is not a shock about this from that perspective, but
use them infinitely. there wasn t an advanced macintosh for smarter people or techier people. that s right. the ground level was accessible to everybody and the furthest you could go was the furthest anybody could go. i feel like that was different about apple and jobs than anybody else. do you feel that way? it certainly was a radical idea at the time that apple formed, at the time that this part of the computer revolution took form. the idea that you didn t have to be a fancy person with a computer engineering degree in a suit to operate a highly powerful computer with incredible capabilities. the idea that you could be just a regular person. this idea that when technology becomes really, really revolutionary, it s the moment that our parents, that our children, that grandma and grandpa can do simple tasks on a device, that same device that
jobs kept reporters at bay saying his health was nobody s business. guys reporter: but jobs was losing weight. something revealed in these photos taken in 2007 and 2008. in april 2009, he underwent a liver transplant. five months later, back at the job at apple, he expressed his gratitude. i now have a liver of a mid 20s person who died in a car crash and was generous enough to donate their organs. and i wouldn t be here without such generosity. reporter: on august 24th of this year he stepped down as apple s ceo. back in 2005, he offered this bit of advice to the stanford university grads. your time is limited so don t waste it living someone else s life. don t let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. reporter: steve jobs, a man whose own inner voice led him to create some of the most visionary products of the internet era.