Apple fans mourn their ‘genius’ with hi-tech tributes

STEVE JOBS was mourned around the world through the devices he conceived: People held up pictures of candles on their iPads, reviewed his life on Macintosh computers and tapped out tributes on iPhones.

One day after his death, two days after Apple introduced the latest incarnation of a touch-screen phone that touched pop culture, sadness and admiration poured out — not for a rock star, not for a religious figure, but for an American corporate executive.

“He was a genius,” Rosario Hidalgo said outside an Apple Store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan while her daughter, 21-month-old Carlotta, used an iPhone to play an app that teaches children to match animal sounds to animal pictures.

In a world where iPod headphones are as ubiquitous as wristwatches were to a previous generation, Jobs was remembered by people as their Elvis Presley or John Lennon. Perhaps even their Thomas Edison. “It’s like the end of the innovators,” said Scott Robbins, 34, who described himself as an Apple fan of 20 years and who rushed to an Apple Store in San Francisco when he heard the news.

Apple remembered him as a “visionary and creative genius”. The company announced no cause of death, but Jobs had been diagnosed with a rare pancreatic cancer seven years ago and had a liver transplant in 2009. He was 56.

Yesterday, the Apple website, which usually features slick presentations of multicolored iPods and ever-thinner MacBook laptop computers, displayed a black-and-white photo of Jobs, thumb and finger to his beard in contemplation.

Around the world, tributes sprang up of the highest and lowest technology.

In the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo, people held up iPhones and iPads, their screens facing outward and displaying sharply defined, touchable graphics of flickering candles.

At an Apple Store in Hong Kong, old and new means of grief came together: People scribbled “RIP” and “We miss Steve” and longer notes of condolence on Post-It notes, and stuck them to an iPad display.

And at the 24-hour Apple Store in midtown Manhattan, the remembrances were more traditional. Passersby left flowers and candles. Even there, people snapped pictures of the memorial with their iPhones.

Philippe Meunier, a senior partner of a Canadian ad agency who was visiting New York from Montreal, reflected on how weird it was to receive the news on the phone Jobs invented.

Even in Syria, seven months into an uprising, people paused to take pride in Jobs, whose father was born in Homs, the third-largest city. “This shows that this country can produce geniuses, if only we had freedoms instead of a suffocating dictatorship,” said Sara, a 23-year-old Syrian student who refused to give her full name for fear of Syrian government reprisal.

Apple sold 129 million iPhones and 29m iPads. It sold 300m iPods in a decade.

Jobs’ death came two days after Tim Cook, who took over as Apple chief executive when Jobs stepped down in August, presided over the launch of the iPhone 4S. It was the first time in years Apple had launched a major product without Jobs to advertise it in his trademark jeans and black mock turtleneck.

Apple stock, which traded at about $5 a share when Jobs assumed the CEO job for the second time in 1997, passed $400 earlier this year. Investors have worried for years about what would happen to the company without him.

Because so many products that were graced by the Jobs touch are still in the sales pipeline, it will take years to measure the impact of his death. Yesterday, the stock fluctuated, but only by a couple of percentage points.

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, a company that Apple once treated as Goliath to its David, then blew past in market value, said it was “an insanely great honour” to have known Jobs. A statement of grief came from Sony, whose Walkman and Discman were buried by the iPod.

Google added a link to the Apple site on its famously minimalist search page. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, thanked him for changing the world. On Facebook, people posted revisions of the Apple logo, a stylized apple with a detached leaf and a half-moon bite taken out. One added a frown and tears to the apple. Another replaced the bite with a silhouette of Jobs himself.