Apple CEO and co-founder Steven Paul Jobs passed away on Wednesday, October 5 at the age of 56 after a serious illness.

A black-and-white portrait of Jobs with the years of his life hangs on the main page of the Apple website.

“Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world an amazing person,” the company said in a statement posted on its website. “His brilliance, energy and passion have been the source of countless innovations that have enriched and improved the lives of all of us. The world has become immeasurably better thanks to Steve. His greatest love was his wife Lauren and his family. Our hearts go out to him and to all who have been touched by his extraordinary talents."

Millions of people around the world have already expressed their regret over the death of Jobs.

US President Barack Obama said on Thursday October 6 that he and his wife Michelle were saddened to learn of Jobs' death.

“Steve was one of America's greatest innovators - very brave to think differently, very confident that he could change the world, and he had the gift to make it happen. Steve liked to say that he lived every day like it was the last day of his life. And because he really acted like that, he transformed our lives and the work of entire industries and in the end was able to achieve what many could only dream of: he changed the way we see the world, ”says the website of the US White House.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, one of the few Russians who had the opportunity to personally communicate with Jobs during his lifetime, expressed his condolences on his Twitter account.

“People like Steve Jobs are changing our world. My sincere condolences to those close to him and to everyone who appreciated his mind and talent,” Medvedev said in a statement.

Mark Zuckerberg spoke about Jobs' death in a short post on his Facebook page: “Steve, thank you for being my teacher and friend. Thank you for showing me how what you do can change the world. I will miss you".

Google co-founder Sergey Brin expressed condolences on his page in social network Google Plus: “From the very early days of Google, Larry [Page] and I didn't have to look beyond Cupertino for inspiration and example. Steve, your passion for excellence has been felt by anyone who has ever held any of the Apple products in their hands (including the MacBook on which I am writing this right now). And I have personally witnessed this every one of the few times we've met. Everyone at Google and more than that, every IT professional will miss you so much. My condolences to the family, friends and colleagues at Apple."

Artemy Lebedev, a well-known Russian Internet designer and son of the writer Tatiana Tolstaya, wrote in his LiveJournal diary that the Macintosh computer from Apple had the most “strong influence with the most far-reaching consequences” on his life.

Lebedev writes that in 1989 he and his friend published on the Macintosh the first and only school wall newspaper in the USSR with a subscription for money.

“After many years, I found out that Steve Jobs exists, read a bunch of books about Apple, survived the decline and rise of the company, while remaining a fan of the Mac. The computer determined my interests and my profession,” said Artemy Lebedev. In his post, he quotes an excerpt from Jobs' famous 2005 speech to the graduates of Stanford University. It was in this speech that Jobs first revealed that he had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor.

Russian Internet expert Anton Nosik wrote in his post on LiveJournal that "most of us would not have had ten lives" for what Jobs managed to accomplish.

Euroset President Alexander Malis believes that it is difficult to overestimate the contribution Jobs made to the modern world.

“I think that the number of people who today mourn for him is many more than they would mourn for any world leader. Jobs left with dignity, and this is an example for many,” Alexander Malis told the Voice of America Russian Service. - It is believed that Jobs laid the direction of Apple development for 3-5 years ahead. The company has devices that have not yet been released, but their ideology was developed by Jobs. I think that in the coming years we will not notice any change.”

The founder of Restore, the largest official representative of Apple in Russia, Evgeny Butman said that after Jobs there will be “hundreds of millions of grateful fans and users” in the world, which, thanks to the efforts of the founder of Apple, has become “more beautiful, more convenient and more interesting.”

Mikhail Karpov, editor of the Russian site Computerra about IT technologies, is sure that Steve Jobs was a great person - and not at all because Apple, under his leadership, produced revolutionary consumer products that were convenient and interesting to use.

“And not even because of his great presentations, which were watched with bated breath by all Apple lovers. It's just that Steve Jobs believed so much that the impossible does not exist that he infected everyone around with this idea. If he had founded a private space company, perhaps its manned spacecraft would already be flying to Mars. If he owned a chocolate factory, he would be Willy Wonka,” Mikhail Karpov told the Voice of America Russian Service. “But he founded Apple, and that's why we have great computers and gadgets that are so easy and so fun to use. Moreover, Steve Jobs is a special type of celebrity: he is a legend. And the death of a legend is always perceived as the death of a cartoon character: "How did Winnie the Pooh die?"

According to Karpov, by Apple nothing will happen in the coming years.

“Surely, the company's development paths have long been determined for several years to come. However, another question arises here - Jobs was known as a person who followed all the nuances of product development, down to the color and smoothed corners of the icon, the expert says. - Undoubtedly, Apple products are developed by the company's design team, but so far all the most important developments have passed through the hands of Jobs. Maybe there are plans for 3-5 years ahead, but, alas, he will no longer work in the field. He has gathered a good leadership team around him, so there is no need to worry that Apple products will become "like everyone else". At least right away. The most important thing is that the company does not stop believing that the impossible is possible.”

co-founder Russian portal"Theories and Practices" Askar Ramazanov believes that Apple has finally become a legendary company, like the Beatles without John Lennon.

“When you wake up and learn about what happened, you understand that someone very close has died, that’s how he was for us. He gave all of us the opportunity to live in the future and made it a common thing. Every New Product his team was out of reach and became the standard around which new businesses and industries were formed. We still have to live in the world of his working ideas, devices and their new capabilities for a long time, isn't this life extension! Askar Ramazanov told the Voice of America Russian Service.

"As the father of the first personal computers Steve could be absolutely happy for them. However, the charm of their success did not prevent him from moving on all the time and building his own technological universe, in which everything is brought to the absolute, thought out and there is not a single superfluous element, says Ramazanov. - Such awareness of actions, the ability to make promises and keep them made Jobs more popular than any president, such people do not unite nations, they unite the world. This world, the world of Steve Jobs is huge and connects more than one generation. Thanks to his incredible energy, computers have evolved into even more convenient devices (iPhone, iPad), and today a three-year-old child teaches an old man how to use them.”

According to him, people employed in the technology business, Jobs gave a dream, inspiration and a sense of comradeship.

“The last incredibly rare feeling gives birth to healthy competition, creates incredible dynamics in the technological world. It was thanks to Jobs that this world acquired its unique magic that will live in us and work wonders,” Ramazanov summed up.

Steve Jobs fans around the world gather at the company's branded stores, Reuters reports. People go to Apple stores in New York, Washington DC, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney and other cities. They bring flowers, candles, photos of Jobs, and Apple products. The Jobs home in Palo Alto also draws people around.

Steve Jobs is gone. A person who at least occasionally looks at the Internet does not need to be told who he is. A favorite of the public and a brilliant speaker, he built his "power vertical" in Apple and went to a better world.

Steve Jobs was born in 1955 in San Francisco. He became the adopted son of Paul and Clara Jobs, who named him Stephen Paul. Back in school, which was located in Cupertino (now the center of Silicon Valley), Jobs was interested in computing, was a student of computer lectures conducted by Hewlett-Packard, and, together with his future business partner Steve Wozniak, even worked for some time on this company as a "seasonal employee". He later took a job as a technician at Atari, which developed computer games to earn money for a trip to India. Jobs returned from this country as a convinced Hare Krishna and for some time experimented with psychedelic substances.

Apple Corporation was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak (who will be referred to as "the second Steve" to avoid confusion) and Ronald Wayne. At that time, Jobs was 21 years old, Wozniak - 26 years old.

The first computer that brought fame and notable income to Apple was the Apple II. It was followed by other series of computing devices that ensured the corporation's success - for example, the Macintosh line, which includes both desktop computers and laptops. It was at one of the first presentations of the Macintosh that Steve Jobs revealed himself as a brilliant and emotional speaker, able to manage a large audience.

Due to disagreements with top management, Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985, founding new company called NeXT Computer. More than ten years later, Apple announced the acquisition of NeXT for $429 million, and Steve made a triumphant return to the corporation.

In place of the new leader (at first he was called the "interim CEO"), he acted decisively and tough - closed a number of unpromising projects, and also announced that Apple would not engage in charity. In addition, he transferred his technological developments created at NeXT to a new environment. Thus, in particular, on the basis of operating system NeXTSTEP was created by Mac OS.

Apple's further development was rapid - the company entered the music market with a line of iPod players, and then announced its own iPhone touchscreen smartphone. Pin market success The corporation succeeded with the announcement of the iPad tablet computer. Became the favorites of the public and ultra-thin laptops MacBook Air, the design and functionality of which are unsuccessfully trying to copy other companies.

A bet on attractive design and usability allowed Apple to break the bank. It was with the release of the iPhone smartphone that other manufacturers, who made timid attempts to rid mobile phones of keys and styluses, began to explore a new niche.

A similar story repeated itself with the iPad - the corporation essentially created new market tablet computers. Shortly after the announcement of the iPad, tablets from other developers began to appear like mushrooms after the rain.

The media wrote that Jobs knew how to "distort reality" - he manipulated the audience during the presentation of new devices and services, hiding flaws and sticking out advantages. Spectators admitted that they felt as if hypnotized and were ready to purchase a new phone or player right at the event.

Even despite the fatal diagnosis made to Jobs back in 2003, the head of Apple tried to appear in public as often as possible, which gladly listened to the words of his idol. Thin and awkward, he nevertheless kept information about his own health a secret, and only pictures taken by the paparazzi indicated that Jobs's condition had clearly not improved.

At the presentation of the new iPhone 4S model (they say that its name stands for "4 Steve", that is, "for Steve") Jobs was no longer present. Instead, the announcement of new products was carried out by the new CEO of the corporation, Tim Cook. At this time, Apple shares collapsed by 5 percent, and viewers of online broadcasts and journalists present in the hall admitted: the new iPhone is just an improved old version, but if Jobs was doing the presentation...

Steve's death provoked an "information explosion": news feeds were overflowing with new messages, and bloggers vying with each other demonstrated both complete indifference to what was happening and genuine feelings. Neither politicians, nor colleagues in the shop, nor competitors remained indifferent.

Even Apple's worst competitor, Samsung Electronics, expressed condolences to Jobs' family and friends, calling him a great entrepreneur. Responded to tragedy Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who wrote on his Twitter: "People like Steve Jobs are changing our world. My sincere condolences to those close to him and to everyone who appreciated his intelligence and talent." Microsoft founder Bill Gates, US President Barack Obama, representatives of Google Corporation brought their condolences.

Better to be a pirate than to be in the Navy

We offer readers quotes from the speeches of Steve Jobs different years and by different occasion: from Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward, in front of Stanford graduates, at the Smithsonian Institution, at the presentations of the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, from the message Apple employees dated August 24, 2011, in newspapers and magazines.

• I didn’t have my own room, I slept on the floor with friends, I rented 5-cent cola bottles to buy food, and every Sunday I walked 7 miles to have a good dinner at the Hare Krishna temple once a week. It was wonderful!
• main reason why people will buy a computer for their home will be the ability to be connected to the national communications network. We are at the very beginning of this stage, but it will be a real breakthrough. About like a phone.
• Better to be a pirate than to be in the Navy.
• If for some reason we stumble, let's say we make a few fatal mistakes and lose the competition to IBM and Microsoft ... Then dark days will come for the entire computer industry.
• He (computer) performs very simple instructions- take a number, add it to another number, compare the result with the third one, but he does them at a speed of 1,000,000 per second. And at a speed of 1,000,000 per second, the result already seems like magic.
• Do you want to sell sweetened water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and try to change the world?
• Looking back, I can say that my dismissal from Apple was the best event in my life. I got rid of the burden successful person and regained the ease and doubts of a novice. It liberated me and marked the beginning of my most creative period.
• The desktop market is dead. Microsoft completely dominates without bringing any innovation to the industry. This is the end. Apple lost, and the history of personal computers entered the Middle Ages. And this will continue for about ten years.
• Creativity is just making connections between things. When creative people ask how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't actually do anything, they just noticed. This becomes clear to them over time. They were able to connect different pieces of their experience and synthesize something new. This is because they have experienced and seen more than others, or because they think about it more.
• We've made the icons on the screen look so pretty you'll want to lick them.
• Some sneakers cost more than an iPod.
• If building great products was as easy as writing checks, then Microsoft would have great products.
• "Don't be mean" is complete nonsense.
• I've said this before, but I'll say it again: It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. Only technology in alliance with the humanities produces results that make our hearts sing. Now many people are entering the tablet market and looking at them as new PCs. Hardware and software are made by different companies. They talk about speeds like they're PCs. And all our experience and every bone in our body says that this is the wrong approach.
• For the past 33 years, I've looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today is the last day of my life, will I be doing what I've planned for today?"
• I don't want to be the richest man in the graveyard.
• The problem is that I got older and realized that technological innovations are not able to really change the world. Sorry, but it's true. This understanding comes with the advent of children. You are born, you grow old, and then you die. And this has been happening for many years now. And nothing will change that.
• I am sure that the brightest days and innovative inventions of Apple are yet to come.
• There is no point in hiring smart people and then telling them what to do. We hire people to tell us what to do.

Much more important now, if you look a little wider, is not the figure of Steve Jobs, but the scale and significance of that engineering miracle that almost everyone can possess today, largely thanks to Jobs.

This is not about the Macintosh, but about the personal computer as such. About a small box, with the help of which the whole world fits in the pocket of almost every person today. Often brilliant things are born, as they say, "on the knee", or appear in a dream. And even from a blow to the head with an apple. The creative union of classmates Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak generated a brilliant idea, first at Jobs's home. And when the first prototypes of a personal computer took up all the free space, they moved to the garage. Wikipedia teaches us that it was Steve Jobs who had the idea to sell the computer. Wozniak was initially skeptical of his friend's proposal.

Steve Jobs convinced him that if they didn't succeed, they could at least tell their grandchildren that they owned their own company. What came of it, now the whole world knows. In 1977, Apple's first personal computer appeared on the market.

Today, the fact that Steve Jobs is gone is buzzing all over the Internet, picked up by newspaper headlines and TV shows. And especially on the Internet, the division into Apple fans and adherents of the so-called PC - Personal Computer, personal computers that all other companies put on the market, is clearly visible. Someone considers Jobs a genius, someone - an engineering guru, and there are those who are sure that he is just a prudent businessman. All are right. Twenty-odd years ago, my mother periodically took me from kindergarten to her design bureau - to wait for the end of her working day. I remember huge halls harsh women in dark blue robes and a huge wall-length panel with a million buttons, levers and arrows. It was a computer - an electronic computer, which today's schoolchildren, most likely, know only from books or stories of their parents, or even grandparents. The computer was terrifying in size, buzzed and could read punched cards. At home, on these already unnecessary punched cards, I drew the sun, the forest and the little men. I can’t say in which design bureau my mother worked - the place was secret and probably performed a very important state task. The computer was also in the service of the state. There was no question of personalizing computers for a very long time. Until this idea came to the mind of two Americans in the garage.

A personal computer is a personal thing. But connecting with the world. PC and the Internet - this is the network that, contrary to the initial understanding of the word, does not entangle, but frees a person from borders: houses, cities, countries. Gives a person a choice - where to go and with whom to talk, at what time and about what. Not thinking about how many books to keep in your library, how many photo albums to put on the shelves, how to show a friend from Argentina a freshly blossomed cactus. Yes, there is a cactus. With a PC at home, anyone who needs it can get the education they need. And without leaving home. An example of this is the recent action of "RG" and MGPI. We brought computers to the Karelian island, where the Loginov family with many children lives and there is no school. Now children will be able to learn by receiving assignments by e-mail and communicating with teachers via skype.

There are no more borders. There is a choice that everyone can make. Just like Steve Jobs did.

Laria Page , Google CEO:

I am very saddened by the news of Steve's death. He was a great, amazingly bright person who achieved the incredible. In conversations with him, it always seemed that he could always state in a few words what you had to, but had not yet had time to think about.

Dmitry Grishin, CEO of Mail.ru Group:

It seems to me that it will be quite difficult to come up with something else new for Apple without Jobs. In principle, they have only one niche left where they can do something - TV. It will happen if they have some kind of innovation, some end device that they haven't announced yet.

Mikhail Gurevich, Deputy CEO RBC:

The company has assembled a very powerful development team. I'm sure Apple has a large number of new promising developments, so systematic progressive development has a good chance. The main thing is that the company's management should not panic.

Prepared by Roman Dvoryaninov, Elmira Ashirova and Alexander Kovalevsky

And could be ahead of the rest

There lived in Leningrad a man by the name of Josef Veniaminovich Berg, but in reality - Joel Barr. At one time, I flew to him in St. Petersburg quite often, because during the Second World War and after it, Barr-Berg was a Soviet agent. A talented American engineer got a lot of industrial secrets for the USSR. In order not to share the fate of friends and associates in one communist cell, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in the electric chair, he had to flee first to Czechoslovakia, and then to the USSR.

I knew Barr well, I made a film about him, but his colleague in the Soviet agents, Alfred Sarant, who received the name of Philip Georgievich Staros from us, did not catch an even more talented American scientist alive.

Who could not be trusted if not these Americans who received Soviet citizenship. For almost 40 years they have been hard at work on our science. They were even accepted into the secret Leningrad Design Bureau. At first, things unfolded, according to Barr, slowly. But then it suddenly went off and on, because a couple of Soviet Americans met Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev at one of the exhibitions, and the unpredictable Nikita ordered his personal assistant to help capable Leningrad scientists.

And, according to Joel Barr, written down and endorsed, he and Sarant "managed to reduce the potentiometers hundreds of times and design the base for the onboard computer aircraft machine. Then they took the first decisive step - they set about elements for future analog computers. They took up computer technology. And on the then existing scientific base created a control machine with a prophetic name - UM-1. For the development of the first in the country computer they were awarded the title of laureates of the State Prize of the USSR.

The couple looked into the computer future. She spoke about the manufacture of chips, firmly understood: the key to success in microcomputers, that is, in computers. Barr, through Khrushchev's aide, got the green light to receive additional funds. The leader was delighted with their gift - a tiny, pea-sized microreceiver, with which he walked around the LKB, putting it in his ear. Frankly, such activity irritated many. Their move to Zelenograd near Moscow, sanctioned by Nikita, was delayed. Barr called his assistant, and he invariably answered: soon, very soon, Nikita Sergeevich would return from vacation. And he returned to be immediately retired.

Two days later Sarant and Barr were summoned to the ministerial board. They were accused of anti-state activities and embezzlement of public money. Barr, speaking at the conference, swore that one closed factory will soon produce a million desktop computers a year. His fate was sealed. From Chief Engineer own will"They were transferred to the head of the laboratories. And the irreconcilable genius Staros left on his own, went to seek his fortune in a scientific town in Novosibirsk. He was going somewhere once again to prove his scientific correctness to someone and died right in the car from a heart attack.

So with computers we had to wait until better times. True, they did not come very soon. Barr didn't live up to them either.