Steve

It’s exceptionally rare for the founder of a garage shop operation to build a company that employs tens of thousands and has evolved into one of the most respected brands in the world. It’s rarer still for the founder to take risks—repeatedly—and insist that his company innovate rather than copy. It’s even rarer for the founder to have the vision to conceive of transformation products, even when others told him there was no market, that those products wouldn’t sell. But that was Steve Jobs—the founder of Apple.

Steve Jobs died today.

Apple released the following statement: "Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

Indeed.

One hundred years from now, the transformative products that were created under Jobs’ leadership will be seen as the true harbingers of the inextricable integration of computing into our lives. That integration is just beginning. But Jobs, more than any other person on the planet, created the products that defined the beginning. He was, in his own way, something that is very rare in this era—Steve Jobs was a great man.

He will be missed.