Jobs, love him or hate him, had a vision, and the cojones to shove it in the throat of the tech industry. And I am among those who believe that this grit of his did, in fact, change the tech industry.

Now, compare his attitude to that of guys like Apotheker or Elop. Yes, it would be ridiculous to demand every CEO to have such a personal way of reigning as Jobs, but all those guys strike me as drones without any kind of vision save what the shareholders say in the short term. Apotheker fumbled webOS and dropped the towel within six months, without having really released anything. Elop killed two OSes in the eyes of devs and buyers while still paying to upkeep them, and it's maddening to see symbian being killed just as it looks like having a fighting chance and the N9 commiting suicide by selective market deployment.

Jobs gave me, in short, the impression of playing a chess match in the long term, while the other guys... dunno, solitaire?