Although Mark Zuckerberg clutched Time Magazine’s person of the year thanks to his brilliant social site, it was the Apple CEO who was awarded with the Financial Times’ accolade. Steve Jobs has been rather ‘the man’ when it launches the iPad and the iPhone 4, though the ‘antennagate’ was also a very dramatic one. But nevertheless, the achievements by the company have convinced the Financial Times to name the Apple CEO as its person of the year.

A rebuttal of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s much-quoted aphorism that there are no second acts in American life does not come more decisively than this. When Steven Paul Jobs first hit the headlines, he was younger even than Mark Zuckerberg is now. Long before it was cool to be a nerd, his formative role in popularising the personal computer, and Apple’s initial public offering on Wall Street – which came when Mr Jobs was still only 25 – made him the tech industry’s first rock star.

Now, three decades on, he has secured his place in the foremost ranks of the West Coast tech titans who have done so much to shape the world around the turn of the millennium.

The iPad is the culmination of an approach that he has seemingly been perfecting for his entire career. Those who have laboured under him describe him as a stern taskmaster who understands the art of the possible, rather than a long-range visionary. That means pushing relentlessly forward rather than milking old successes – even ones as significant as the iPod.

SOURCE via macrumors