Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976, has paid tribute to his former colleague, calling him "the most important technical leader we've seen in our lifetime at least."
"He thinks very much about getting technology out of the picture," Wozniak said of Jobs in an interview with Bloomberg. "From the very start until today, it's about how you make something seem like it's not a piece of technology in the way that you don't have to learn all these geeky, techie steps to get something done."
The following is a timeline of key moments in Jobs' career that marked historic moments in the development of modern technology. He stepped down as head of Apple late Wednesday due to long-simmeriong health problems.
1974 - Jobs and Wozniak collaborate on the development of the landmark video game Breakout at Atari. "If he had never done anything else in life I would've said, "you are the greatest genius of the past 100 years," columnist James Altucher said on AOL Money.
1976 - Jobs and Wozniak start Apple in a Silicon Valley garage to build and sell a computer designed by Woz. Within a few months Jobs sells 50 units to a local electronics store and Apple is on its way to selling one of the first popular computers.
1984 - After visiting the famed Xerox-Parc labs where he saw prototypes of a graphic user interface that used a mouse and a point and click system, Jobs refines the concept for use in the Macintosh - the first computer to dispense with the command line interface.
1985 - Jobs is fired from Apple after a boardroom power struggle. He later calls it "the best thing that could have ever happened to me" as he goes on to found NeXT, a new computer company that would later form the basis of Apple's modern operating systems.
1986 - Jobs buys the graphics division of Lucas Films to develop computer animation techniques. He later renames it Pixar and it produces the first computer animated feature film, Toy Story in 1995.
1996 - Jobs returns to an ailing Apple which is close to bankruptcy. He outlines a strategy based on the development of products for an integrated digital lifestyle in which media, communications and data will be accessible over networked devices.
1998 - Apple introduces the iMac, an influential all-in one computer.
2001 - Apple introduces the iPod portable media player that is closely integrated with iTunes software and which quickly comes to dominate the online music market thanks to its intuitive controls. Within seven years Apple had sold more than 10 billion songs through the iTunes store.
2007 - Apple introduces the iPhone, the first mass market portable device to use touch screen controls and gestures. It revolutionises the smartphone industry and makes billions of dollars in profits for the company, which has reportedly sold an estimated 127 million units around the world.
2010 - Apple announces the iPad, an innovative tablet computer that uses the same touch screen controls as the iPhone and becomes an overnight success as it redefines the PC market. Apple sells 500,000 iPads in the first week and in the most recent quarter sold some 10 million of the devices.
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