It's always sad to see someone go before their time, and given the impact Jobs had--not only on personal computers and electronic devices but the music and film industries as well--the next week or two will feature reams of Jobsian-related prose. Apple showed the music industry how to sell digital music, and created an ecosystem for the process.

Hardly a surprise: Apple's model was all about vertically integrated ecosystems. As I told friends who complained that their systems wouldn't work because the software and hardware vendors were blaming each other, you could take an under-warranty Mac with a serious hardware problem to Apple's fix-it guys and say: "give it back to me in the state you sold it to me"--as long as you'd backed up your data, you were back in business. That was Apple: with a market share hovering around two or three percent, they couldn't afford a reputation for lousy service. Their numerous awards for design and well constructed gear kept them afloat, even during the years when John Sculley was CEO and Jobs was off running NeXt Computer.

In a classic case of the cart-before-the-horse, Apple's gadgets intrigued users in their core (and formerly only) market: Macintosh computers. Mac laptops are found in briefcases and backpacks alike, and their market share is in double-digits. Even in Windows-centric Hong Kong, you can now swing by your local electronic goods outlet and pick up a MacBook Air.