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In late August Steve Jobs announced his resignation as Apple Computer’s CEO just on the heels of shaking up the Apple world last January when he revealed he would be taking medical leave for an unspecified health issue. Jobs had only been back on the job less than two years after receiving a liver transplant that resulted from complication from a rare type of pancreatic cancer called islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. So what’s the big deal about Steve Jobs and why does his health and career turns make big news? Is this just techno hype about another ‘genius’ from Silicon Valley, or is he a modern day Thomas Edison? You decide.

Jobs’ image of the eccentric, individualistic Silicon Valley entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of design and the insight to recognize the crucial role aesthetics play in public appeal. His work driving forward the development of products that are both functional and elegant has earned him a devoted almost evangelic following. Steve Jobs, and as a result Apple, understands that it’s about the experience not the nuts and bolts of hardware and software.

In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula and others, designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface which led to the creation of the Macintosh. After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1984, Jobs resigned from Apple. Apple’s 1996 buyout of NeXT,  a computer platform development company that Jobs founded specializing in the higher education and business markets, brought him back to Apple, and he served as its CEO from 1997 until 2011.

While all this was happening in the computer world, In 1986, Jobs acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios. He remained CEO and majority shareholder until its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company in 2006. Consequently Jobs became Disney’s largest individual shareholder and a member of Disney’s Board of Directors. He was even credited in the 1995 movie Toy Story as an executive producer

In the last ten years, the company has made arguably the largest contributions to pop culture and most American’s lives by introducing and improving upon other digital appliances such as the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, which collectively changed the way that licensed music distribution is done.

In 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a touch screen cell phone, which also included the features of an iPod and, with its own revolutionary mobile browser, and the ability to run apps.

Apple announced the iPad in April of 2010 and immediately the tablet computer market literally caught fire after lying dormant for nearly ten years. Now after selling millions of iPads and owning the vast majority of market share for tablets, the iPad is now turning the PC industry on its collective ear, and shattering the norms of PC ownership and demand. As a result, HP just recently announced they are selling or spinning off their entire PC business and completely discontinuing their two month old tablet lineup. Experts have cited slow growth in PC sales over the past year as evidence of a paradym shift toward cloud computing and tablet PCs. Finally, Google and Amazon are introducing products and buying other businesses to compete with Apple to try to duplicate Apple’s end-to-end control of the mobile device experience.

It’s fair to say that love him or hate him, Steve Jobs has changed our lives in some way, and the ripples will be felt long past his lifetime.