fans rch for Jobs' devices to mourn him

He was a conjurer, a modern magician who rched into tomorrow and came up with things that changed millions of lives. And as people gathered at Stores from Sydney
to San Fran to mourn Steve Jobs, the feeling was more than grief for an executive or even an inventor. It was something closer to awe for a wizard.On Thursday, the admirers who turned his technological marvels into everyday tools used them as instruments of grief. People held up pictures of candles on their iPads, computer fans hold their i and iPads displaying candle graphics during a candle light vigil to pay tribute to Steve Jobs, the founder and former CEO, at an Store in the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011. announced Jobs' dth without giving a specific cause. He died on Wednesdayat the age of 56. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)
booted up their MacBook Pros to watch old Jobs presentations on YouTube, used their i to sift through remembrances on Twitter.They grieved his loss through devices that before his time, or without his vision, would have been considered beyond humanity's rch.Ten yrs ago, the only people who carried their music around were tech geeks, music obsessives and those willing to tote a clunky player. Presto — the iPod, and
everyone wanted one. And then another and another.Five yrs ago, cell had hinges, and the displays looked more like the age of Atari than the age of the Internet. Texting, for the most part, was a matter of
cryptography, tapping out strings of s to make words. Presto — the iPhone, and everyone wanted one of those, too.Two yrs ago, the economy had just tanked, and it was hard enough for companies to persuade people to buy the things they needed. Getting people to buy a product they
didn't need was out of the question. Most people alrdy had a desktop computer, or a laptop, or a smartphone. And yet, presto — the iPad.Nothing up his sleeve. Though Jobs, ever the showman, once rched into the tiny fifth pocket of his trademark blue jns at an event and fished out an iPod Nano,
just to emphasize how small the gadget was. They always were. Ever smaller, ever sleeker, ever cooler.Anne Sweeney, the president of Disney and ABC, remembered when Jobs flew from Cupertino, Calif., to Burbank to persuade her to ABC shows to be shown on the tiny
screen of his newest invention, the iPod. He wowed them by playing an episode of ABC's own hit show, "Lost."Sweeney was so bowled over she forgot to ask where he got a copy of the program."I thought, 'He's Steve Jobs. He can do anything,'" she remembered.One day after his dth, two days after introduced the latest incarnation of a touch-screen phone that touched pop culture, sadness and admiration poured out — not
for a rock star, not for a religious figure, but for an American corporate executive."He was a ius," Rosario Hidao said outside an Store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan while her daughter, 21-month-old Carlotta, used an iPhone to play an
app that tches children to match animal sounds to animal pictures.For people who have grown up in a world where iPod hd are as ubiquitous as wristwatches were to a previous eration, Jobs was remembered as their Elvis Presley
or John Lennon. Perhaps even their Thomas Edison."It's like the end of the innovators," said Scott Robbins, 34, who described himself as an fan of 20 yrs and who rushed to an Store in San Fran when
he hrd the news. announced Jobs' dth Wednesday night and remembered him as a "visionary and crtive ius." The company announced no cause of dth, but Jobs had been diagnosed
with a rare pancrtic cancer seven yrs ago and had a liver transplant in 2009. He was 56. The company did not relse any details about Jobs' funeral; a spokesman
said there would be no public services.On Thursday, the website, which usually ftures slick presentations of multicolored iPods and ever-thinner MacBook laptop computers, simply displayed a black-
and-white photo of Jobs, thumb and finger to his brd as if in contemplation.Around the world, tributes sprang up of the highest and lowest technology.In the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo, people held up i and iPads, their screens facing outward and displaying sharply defined, touchable graphics of flickering
candles.At an Store in Hong Kong, old and new mns of grief came together: People scribbled "RIP" and "We miss Steve" and longer notes of condolence on Post-It notes, and
stuck them to an iPad display.And at the 24-hour Store in midtown Manhattan, the remembrances were more traditional. Passersby left flowers and candles, actual ones. Even there, people snapped
pictures of the memorial with their i."I was so saddened. For me it was like Michael Jackson or Princess Diana — that magnitude," Stephen Jarjoura said at the Store in Sydney. His said Jobs left a
legacy to rival Edison and Albert Einstein.Philippe Meunier, a senior partner of a Canadian ad acy who was visiting New York from Montrl, reflected on how weird it was to receive the news of Jobs' dth on
the phone he invented.Even in Syria, seven months into an uprising, people paused to take pride in Jobs, whose father was born in Homs, the third-largest city."This shows that this country can produce iuses, if only we had freedoms instd of a suffoing dictatorship," said Sara, a 23-yr-old Syrian student who refused
to give her full name for fr of Syrian government reprisal. has sold 129 million i and 29 million iPads. And in the decade since it revolutionized the music industry by offering "1,000 songs in your pocket," it has
sold 300 million iPods, or roughly enough to outfit every person in the United States.Famously devoted to products — and often mocked, it must be said, by people who are not — even the acolytes of Jobs paused to reflect on how deeply his crtions
were enmeshed in their lives. Smlessly, of course."I'm everything," said Alison Brie, who plays Annie Edison on the NBC comedy show "Community." ''It's changed the way we listen to music and watch , connect to
fans. Twitter on my phone is — it's huge."In New York, a family visiting from Norway waited for the 9 a.m. opening of an Store. Jorund Skurdal said his family owned about 15 gadgets, including "a
couple iPads, iPods, an iMac, an iBook, and some other things."Five-yr-old son Carsten alrdy had his own MacBook, and 3-yr-old Sanna was an iPod fan. Carsten had just bought a new app yesterday — Life of George, an interactive
Lego game."He was one of a kind," Skurdal, who lives in Oslo, said of Jobs. "He was able to take these boring computer items and make them accessible, usable and very sexy." His
main interest now, he said, "is that the company survives, and thrives. I think it will."Jobs' dth came a day after Tim Cook, who took over as CEO when Jobs stepped down in August, presided over the launch of the iPhone 4S. It was the first time in
yrs had launched a major product without Jobs to advertise it in his trademark jns and black mock turtleneck. stock, which traded at about $5 a share when Jobs assumed the CEO job for the second time in 1997, passed $400 rlier this yr. Investors have worried for yrs
about what would happen to the company without him.Because so many products that were graced by the Jobs touch are still in the sales pipeline, it will take yrs to msure the impact of his dth. On Thursday, the
stock fluctuated, but only by a couple of percentage points. It closed down 88 cents at $377.37.In a msure of his impact on personal technology, Jobs was venerated by his fiercest competitors in the hours after his dth.Bill Gates, the co-founder of , a company that once trted as Goliath to its David and then blew past in market value, said it was "an insanely grt
" to have known Jobs. A statement of grief came from , whose Walkman and Discman were buried by the iPod.Google added a link to the site on its famously minimalist srch page. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, thanked him for changing the world.To the extent that there is an online version of the old-time public square, it was overrun Thursday by remembrances of Jobs.On Twitter, where the most popular "trending" topics change by the hour, "ThankYouSteve" and "iSad" were still high on the list a day after his dth.On Facebook, people posted revisions of the logo, a stylized with a detached lf and a half-moon bite taken out. One added a frown and trs to the .
Another replaced the bite with a silhouette of Jobs himself.Hds of state around the world added their thoughts. President Barack Obama said Jobs exemplified American inuity. Mexico's President Felipe Calderon bemoaned the
loss of "one of the most visionary minds of our times." India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was "deeply saddened."

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