Seoul (eNomad) - The icon of post-PC era has passed away, shattering to dusts public enthusiasm for ‘next big things’. Less than one day after his successor wrapped the curtain off new line of budget-priced iPhone 4S, legendary marketing and design guru Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer Wednesday on Oct. 5, 2011. He was 56.

Numbered was not only his love and dedication to consumers and technology innovations, but also his followers’ aspirations for what to come next. Flowering eulogies erupted into torrents. “The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come,“ his long-time rival Bill Gates said in a statement.

“Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius and the world has lost an amazing human being,” Apple’s de facto CEO Tim Cook said in a letter to employees, “We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.”

No word can describe what good he had done to consumers, however. The co-founder of Apple Inc. blazed a trail in the dramatic shift of PC UI, or user interface from command-and text-based OS system to graphics-and Windows-based one, making it far easier and friendlier to use PCs. He also pioneered the adoption of HDDs into computers, replacing bulky and heavy magnetic tape-based storage system.

Banging open the door to a brave new world 

Equally amazing was his creation of ‘iTunes’ on-line music albums and movie titles marketplace, which revolutionized the way people buy music and movie titles and then listen or watch them, bringing almost dying MP3 music players back to life.

His final Midas touch was a multi-finger touch system that was built in his great inventions iPhone and iPad. By allowing people to just tap into the icons on a screen with a stroke of fingers to open files, or play videos, and then zoom in, or out and rotate objects with multi-fingers, he really transformed the way people interact with mobile devices.

Yet, that’s just part of what said farewell to the PC era. Banging open the door to a brave new world, Jobs created a new breed of mobile device in 2007 –iPhone - and then two years later in 2010 wowed the world with iPad.

The two magic mobile devices are not all about what made Apple the most valuable brand in the world. In a sharp contrast to rival Microsoft that has built every suite of applications software around its Windows OS software on its way, or done a hostile takeover bid for prospective rivals, Apple gave software developers great freedom to build applications software on their own using iOS’s API. Then, they were allowed to sell theirs on Apple’s Appstore, or release for nothing.

That has really inspired software developers’ creativity and entrepreneurship across the world, bringing new life and excitements back to global IT markets that have lost growth momentum.

As he put it, Steve Jobs seemed to stay hungry to the finish, but was foolish enough to dare risking his life for what makes differences from others.