After stepping down from the helm of Apple Inc. six weeks ago today, Steve Jobs has died.
He was 56 years old.
“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” said Apple in an official news release about the death of the company’s cofounder. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”
The college dropout founded Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak and transformed it into the most valuable company in the world.
Under Jobs’ reign, the company transformed the music world in 2001 with its iPod and the telecom world with the iPhone in 2007. More than 180 million of these devices have been sold.
In recent years, Jobs has been plagued with illness, including cancerous tumors in his pancreas and a hormone imbalance. In April 2009 he underwent a liver transplant.
The news of Jobs’s death has inundated Twitter with mentions. In less than 30 minutes, Jobs has been mentioned more than 100,000 times, according to Topsy, a social media search engine.
On Reddit, news of Jobs’ death rocketed to the top of the front page in less than 15 minutes after the news broke.
Apple’s website features a photo of the tech giant, wearing his iconic turtleneck.
Boing Boing, a popular Web-culture blog, has transformed its site into an homage to the original Mac interface.
Here’s how the Web is reacting to the news.
