'Steve Jobs: He thinks different' profile in BusinessWeek is well worth reading. Here is an excerpt:

« He got his first job at 12 after calling Hewlett-Packard Co. President Bill Hewlett and landing an internship. Using HP as their model, he and "Woz" focused only on breakthrough products. Apple's blockbuster initial public offering in 1980 made Jobs tech's first celebrity CEO. Then came the Mac in 1984. The first to pack new-fangled ideas such as icons, the mouse, and computer graphics into one easy-to-use machine, the Mac cemented Jobs's standing as a prodigy.

His youthful perfectionism nearly killed his career. When the original Mac fell short of expectations, he refused to alter its features and was booted from Apple in 1985. At his next company, NeXT Inc., he created a $10,000 PC that was packed with innovations, but too pricey for the market. More worrisome, Jobs poured $50 million of his own money into the struggling Pixar.

His reversal of fortune began in 1995. Pixar's Toy Story became a box-office smash. Then, just months after Apple bought NeXT for $400 million in 1996, Jobs took the helm of the foundering company. He quickly breathed life back into it, with the lovable iMac. Then came the iPod in 2001, and iTunes in 2003 -- the first time anyone had convinced all the major record labels to sell their songs online. »

A genuine world-changing visionary.