My own experiences with the man and the company he ran covered that whole range. Whatever people think of him, I believe they can all agree he is fierce: fiercely loyal to his principles and to his friends and close colleagues, fiercely competitive, fierce in his ambitions, fiercely dismissive and belittling to those he does not respect or who he believes are in his way, fiercely stubborn, with a bulldog-like habit of not letting go but instead continuing to persevere for as long as it took (the was a decade-long project, for example).
Famous for the Mac and , Jobs's influence has been much deeper than anyone else I can think of in the technology industry -- an industry with no shortage of larger-than-life figures who also have made big differences (good and bad), such as Larry Ellison, Philippe Kahn, Scott McNealy, Marc Benioff, Bill Gates, and Carly Fiorina.
Jobs changed the music industry with the iPod, the cellular phone industry with the iPhone, the movie industry with his Pixar Animation Studios films, and the computing industry with the original Mac and then again with and just last year with the . He has been in the middle of doing the same transformation to the publishing industry with his iBooks and media subscription services, and with the software industry with his App Store. Many of the iconic products created under his leadership have become the models for everyone else, creating a demand for high quality, good design, and user-centric products. That's why when you think smartphone, you think iPhone; when you think tablet, you think iPad; when you think ease of use you think Mac OS X; when you think digital music you think iPod and iTunes; and when you think of family movies you think of "Toy Story" and the rest.
That's the public face of Jobs's accomplishments. The story of Jobs goes deeper, with some major low points along the way. His amazingly strong personality also shaped the personality of Apple, for both good and ill. It saw the Mac community through very dark times, and has roused a broader community in Apple's last decade of near-constant glory.