By having the conviction to push through his vision, Jobs once again single-handedly created a market -- and proved those companies wrong. Hit the right marks, and the audience will find you. It wasn't that consumers weren't interested in thin, lightweight laptops; they weren't interested in them at the outrageous business-centric premiums manufacturers used to charge for ultralight systems. Meanwhile, as the MacBook Air  got better with age,  the pricing got more attractive, too, particularly as Apple commandeered component supply to achieve more favorable market pricing. Now, three years after the first MacBook Air appeared, look what we have: An entire PC (as Intel calls them), and based on ARM processors coming next year.

The iPad is a third -- and perhaps Jobs' crowning -- contribution to changing our definition of what was possible in mobile. "Tablet" and "slate" PCs had been in the market for years, but no one had ever pushed through the vision of how to scale it in a way that made the concept of the tablet the mass-market product consumers craved.

Jobs did that with in 2010. And yes, Jobs really meant it when he said the iPad was magical and revolutionary. The operating system may have been the same as on iPhone, but the iPad stands out for its physical design; it is curved, not a boxy brick, and it has a responsive touchscreen that works. And it had the power to replace a laptop for all but the most processor intensive tasks ( used his iPad 2 as his only computing device while in Tokyo, for example). All of this is available at a starting price that mere mortals can afford.

In these ways, and so many more, we have Steve Jobs to thank for the extreme mobility we enjoy today. The void he leaves behind is a big one; it's now up to someone else to push beyond where Jobs left off. The question is, who in tech is a leader with the vision and direction to reinvent how we do things once more?