Steve Jobs 'may never be equaled'

Apple CEO Steve Jobs smiles during the Macworld Convention and Expo in San Francisco, California in this January 15, 2008 file photo. [Photo / Agencies]

Jobs created Apple twice - once when he founded it and the second time after a return credited with saving the company.

Every day to him was "a new adventure in the company", said Jay Elliot, a former senior vice-president at Apple who worked very closely with Jobs in the '80s, adding that he was "almost like a child" when it came to his inquisitiveness.

He was highly intolerant of company politics and bureaucracy, Elliot noted.

But the inspiring Jobs came with a lot of hard edges, often alienating colleagues and investors with his my-way-or-the-highway dictums and plans that were generally ahead of their time.

Elliot was a witness to the acrimony between Jobs and former Apple Chief Executive John Sculley who often clashed on ideas, products and company direction.

The dispute came to a head in 1985 and Jobs left soon after, saying he was fired.

"It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's gonna hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith," Jobs told a Stanford graduating class in 2005.

He returned to Apple about a decade later, working as a consultant. Soon he was running it, in what has been called Jobs' second act.

Jobs reinvented the technology world four or five times, first with the Apple II in the 1970s; then in the 1980s with the Macintosh, the ubiquitous iPod debuted in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and in 2010 the iPad, which a year after it was introduced outsold the Mac.

"He put white earbuds in the ears of everyone on the planet, and shut us all in to our own little pods of experience," recalled Ed Niehaus, who was hired by Jobs to do public relations for a resurgent Apple.