SAN JOSE, Calif. – He was the visionary techie, the marketing genius, the choleric corporate leader who could never quite scrub the rebel out of his soul. But most of all, standing there in his black mock turtleneck at the intersection of passion and technology, Steve Jobs seemed to know intuitively what consumers needed in their lives, even before they themselves could put a finger on it.

Decades after co-creating one of the planet’s most storied companies, then leaving it behind, then returning to reinvent it and pump it full of high-voltage ideas until it became the world’s most valuable tech company, Jobs leaves a cultural landscape forever altered by his gadgetry and gusto.

“I consider Steve a god,” said Bob Metcalfe, a Silicon Valley pioneer who knew Jobs in the early days, turned down a job offer from him, then went on to found 3Com. “Today’s a sad day, because I assume he’s not doing well. But Steve’s the consummate entrepreneur, and he had this enormously persuasive ability to create this new world we all live in, thanks to his insanely great products. It has been an awesome thing to watch.”

Equal parts product designer, mischievous impresario, turnaround specialist and salesman without peer, Jobs helped revolutionize not just computing, but one industry after another. Just look at the jacket copy on the new Walter Isaacson biography about Jobs, whose release date just this week was moved up from March to November: “This book chronicles the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing and digital publishing.”

After being forced out of Apple in 1985, Jobs began a new phase of his life that would soon be riddled with blockbusters. His purchase of Pixar led to a series of hits, including “Toy Story.” When Jobs returned to Apple and became CEO in 2000, the hits continued with a series of products that revolutionized consumer electronics.

First, the iPod reinvented the personal music player and iTunes Store helped turn the music industry upside-down. Then came the iPhone, which sent the smartphone revolution into overdrive. Finally, in 2009, the iPad arrived, creating an entire new tech category and quickly becoming the go-to device for millions of consumers who couldn’t figure out how they could have ever lived without the thing.

A college dropout, a Buddhist and a son of adoptive parents, Jobs started Apple Computer with friend Steve Wozniak in the Jobs family garage in Silicon Valley in the late 1970s.

Despite his subsequent success with the Mac, Jobs’ relationship with internal management soured, and in 1985 the board removed most of his powers and he left the company, selling all but one share of his Apple holdings.

Apple’s fortunes waned after that. However, its purchase of NeXT – the computer company Jobs founded after leaving Apple – in 1997 brought Jobs back into the fold.

From the start, it’s been nearly impossible to find the line where Apple ends and Jobs begins. In many ways, his dynamic and at times brusque personality seemed to define the culture of the company he co-founded – scrappy, boldly imaginative, secretive and competitively cutthroat.

“The guy has been the face of the brand for years and the inspiration for many of the innovations Apple has brought to the world,” said New York-based branding expert Robert Passikoff. “But when you talk about his legacy, it isn’t just the products he helped launch. It’s also the magnificent group of people he hired and nurtured who will carry on in his absence. In a way, even after he resigns, the legend of the man lives on through these people.”

But as Apple’s chief, Jobs didn’t simply crank out fancy gadgets. His imagination and inflexibly high standards essentially changed the way millions of people around the world use and relate to technology, putting Apple at the pinnacle of the global digital culture as the new century dawned.

Wozniak said Wednesday that it is hard to overstate the impact Jobs has had on technology, business and on Wozniak’s own life.

“What he’s done carries on throughout the entire world,” Wozniak said. “Those who follow his example are the ones who are going to succeed, including Apple.”

He said his old friend, whom he met when Jobs was at Homestead High School, had an almost eerie knack for seeing where the herd was heading and then heading the other way.

Maybe, Wozniak said, Jobs’ resignation would be a positive turn for the man who with him delighted the world so many years ago with the launch of one of the first computers that regular people could actually use.

“He knows what he’s doing. I’m sure he knows that it’s for the best,” Wozniak said. “If anybody has ever earned the right to get away from kind of a full-time, day-to-day of running a company, it’s got to be him. He really had to sacrifice a lot.”

As a young man, Jobs displayed the sort of bucking-the-system attitude that would come to color his professional career at Apple. In a famous commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, he talked about why he dropped out of Reed College in Oregon.

“After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.”

It did, but in the process, Jobs had a way of making people uncomfortable.

In 1977, when Apple Computer was just five guys, Jerry Manock was brought in as a contractor to design the Apple II. He was the only designer who agreed in February to come up with something by the West Coast Computer Show in April.

“I’d be working at my drafting board making a lot of trade-off decisions on product design when Steve would, out of the blue, come up behind you and ask ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing that?’ “ Manock said. “Without having time to prepare that I’m trading this off for that, I’d stutter and stammer and he would turn around and walk away.”

Manock would take it as a show of interest, and then give Jobs a detailed explanation of his design.

With Jobs’ departure, speculation about how Apple might fare without him will play out in real time. Maybe not soon, but eventually Jobs’ absence could sap much of the magic he has created at Apple through the sheer force of his bigger-than-life personality. Or not.

In his recent book, “The Steve Jobs Way,” former Apple executive Jay Elliott writes, “I tell people that Steve is not replaceable as a charismatic, visionary leader of a consumer-product-centric company, but that he can be replaced by a triumvirate to carry on his legacy. Apple will have a new CEO but he, or she, will fill only one part of Steve’s role.”

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