☛ Ryan Anson: “Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., listens to several of the company’s application partners speak after announcing the new iPhone 3G and 2.0 software update during the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA, Monday, June 9, 2008.”, caption from the National Post. © 2001, Ryan Anson/AFP/Getty Images

Steven P. Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple who helped usher in the era of personal computers and then led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age, died Wednesday. He was 56. The death was announced by Apple, the company Mr. Jobs and his high school friend Stephen Wozniak started in 1976 in a suburban California garage. (The New York Times: “Apple’s Visionary Redefined Digital Age” by John Markoff, October 5, 2011)

From the White House Blog, President Obama on the Passing of Steve Jobs:

And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.

Below are screen captures of Apple.com and Wired.com homepage (as of today) as well as a comic tribute by XKCD (no. 961).

[UPDATE – October 10, 2011] The photo displayed on Apple.com was taken by photographer Albert Watson. See PDN Pulse for more about the story behind it: “Steve Jobs: Visionary, Inventor, and Very Challenging Photo Subject” (by David Walker, October 6, 2011). See also Albert Watson official website (Flash is required)

Finally, I didn’t know that the text featured on the TextEdit icon in OS X is an excerpt from “The Crazy Ones” text, which was part of the “Think Different” ad campaign (more on Wikipedia). One can listen to Steve Jobs’s narration of the text on YouTube.