Father Christmas, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse are often described as the three most recognisable icons in the Western world. You tinker with them at your peril. But perhaps the day when Walt Disney's progeny is seen with white earplugs and wires flowing from his conspicuous ears is not far off. For the new big noise at the Disney corporation is the genius who gave us the Apple iPod.
Steve Jobs has become the biggest single shareholder in the Disney media and theme park empire after its £4.1bn acquisition of Pixar, the computer-generated animation film studio which produced the Toy Story films, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Jobs's holdings in Pixar alone are now worth £2bn; then there are his shares in the profit-swollen Apple. Put them together and he is now one of the most influential figures in entertainment history - and one of the least known.
There is a paradox about the Jobs phenomenon. To technology freaks and geeks, he is a 'demigod', whose product launches are adulatory affairs regularly likened to religious revivalist meetings. The Jobs life story - humble birth, rise and fall, then miraculous comeback - has even been likened by Apple fanatics to the heroic myths of Odysseus, Jason, Krishna and Christ. Yet outside this very particular circle, Jobs would hardly qualify for the A-list or even Celebrity Big Brother. A likely comment is: 'I've heard of Bill Gates, but Steve who...?'
That's the way the 50-year-old likes it. He is prickly with the media and protective of a private life that has included Buddhism, a rumoured affair with Joan Baez and a struggle with cancer. Like certain politicians who feel the less said about their policies the better, Jobs's low profile, black pullover included, has helped to create a mystique which fits the aspirational Apple brand well.
His role at Pixar did nothing to alter this, but a seat on the Disney board, hardly one of life's underdogs, might turn up the heat. Already a polemic has appeared on the respected Wired News website, castigating Jobs as 'nothing more than a greedy capitalist who's amassed an obscene fortune. It's shameful. In almost every way, [Bill] Gates is much more deserving of Jobs's rock star exaltation.'
Predictably, the article has produced a firestorm of protest from Jobs worshippers. In this inescapably religious vernacular, any criticism of Jobs is blasphemy. The essential reason, perhaps, is that his trajectory speaks to the sacred heart of America: from college drop-out to self-made billionaire. Whereas Britain tends to regard its businessmen with indifference or scorn, and can do no better than Richard Branson for an icon, America finds in Jobs the sum of all its dreams.
The first unlikely player in the story is Abdulfattah John Jandali, from Syria, a political science professor who went to San Francisco. In 1955, his relationship with student Joanne Carole Schieble produced a son, whom she put up for adoption on condition that he be adopted by college graduates. A lawyer and his wife were selected, but decided at the last minute they actually wanted a girl. So, in the middle of the night, a call was made to would-be adopters Paul and Clara Jobs: 'We have an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?' Yes, they did. Only later did it emerge that Clara never graduated from college and Paul never graduated from high school. Schieble refused to sign the adoption papers but gave in a few months later when the working-class couple promised that the boy would one day go to college.
They kept their promise, at the cost of their life savings, only for 17-year-old Jobs to drop out after six months. He slept on friends' floors, returned Coke bottles to earn five cents so he could buy food and walked seven miles to town every Sunday to get one decent meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. 'However,' Jobs says, 'I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life.'
At 20, he and a friend, Stephen Wozniak, took over his parents' garage and started Apple, copying the name of the record label of his beloved Beatles (though Bob Dylan is his favourite). Using their expertise from spells at Hewlett-Packard and Atari, the duo designed the Apple I computer and, in 1977, the Apple II which became a huge success in the fledgling market. In 1984 came the Macintosh, the landmark user-friendly computer and design classic.
As the world woke up to the computer age, Apple grew into a £1.1bn company with more than 4,000 employees. Then, at the age of 30, Jobs was fired from his own company. The man he had lured to become Apple's chief executive, former Pepsi-Cola boss John Sculley, gradually exiled him to an office in a remote building he dubbed 'Siberia'. When their differences reached crisis point, the board of directors backed Sculley. Thus began Jobs's wilderness years, in which he made himself useful by founding NeXT, another computer company, and Pixar, after buying Star Wars creator George Lucas's computer graphics division.
Pixar's Toy Story, the world's first fully computer-animated feature film in 1995, was the first of six hits, which, in grossing £1.7bn worldwide, eclipsed Disney's animations, leading to last week's buy-out. Jobs, in the meantime, had an even sweeter triumph. In 1997, Apple, ailing in his absence, bought NeXT and brought him back as chief executive. Within a year, the company was again posting handsome profits. This is the moment described by Jobs acolytes as the resurrection. And his biggest and best idea, the iPod digital music player, is the boon that restores the world.
By now, there were those who believed Jobs could walk with the immortals and what happened next did little to dispel that view. In 2004, a scan revealed that he had cancer of the pancreas and his doctor told him that it would almost certainly kill him in three to six months, so he should get his affairs in order. Jobs recalls: 'It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.'
Jobs had a biopsy, in which doctors studied some cells from the tumour. They realised it was a very rare form of pancreatic cancer which could be cured with surgery. Having stared into the chasm of mortality, Jobs drew this lesson, which he passed on to Stanford University graduates in an unusually personal address last summer: 'Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.'
It's hard to square this benevolent philosophy from the Buddhist, vegetarian Jobs with the harsher accounts of his violent tempers and tantrums. John Sculley, his old rival at Apple, wrote: 'Steve wouldn't hesitate to call people's work a piece of shit and throw it back at them in a rage. I was amazed at his behaviour.'
A British journalist who was invited to interview Jobs in Paris reported being forced to wait for more than three hours before he was allowed to see him: 'Instead of apologising, Jobs pulled the tackiest trick in the book for humiliating people. He stood at the table, reading a pile of papers, not even looking up when I said hello, a shallow exercise of power that is as crass as it is unimaginative.'
A candid assessment comes from Andy Hertzfeld, who worked with Jobs on the original Macintosh 20 years ago, and is the author of Revolution in the Valley about the Silicon Valley boom. 'He's an extremely charming bully who shouts at people,' Hertzfeld told The Observer last week. As for comparisons with Gates, Hertzfeld, who now works for Google, said simply: 'Bill Gates deserves more credit than Steve for being a philanthropist, but Steve deserves more credit than Bill for innovating in the personal computer industry. Steve works on the leading edge while Bill is essentially a follower. Steve cares more about doing something insanely great, while Bill cares more about making money.'
As a technician producing beautiful objects, Jobs is no slouch, but his true genius may lie in his ability to inspire both love and fear with his relentless pursuit of perfection, binning other people's ideas with Darwinian pitilessness so that only the fittest survive. One former employee claimed that Jobs would often reject anyone's work the first time it was shown to him, irrespective of its quality.
But when Jonathan Ive delivered the iPod, Jobs saw a winner. Leander Kahney, author of The Cult of Mac, said: 'Apple do produce groundbreaking stuff and effectively invented a new market in digital music. Jobs is very good at it, but he's also very good at soaking up the credit.'
Jobs has lived the American dream and stayed Democrat. He is seen as philanthropic not to the wider world but to his customers, who repay the loyalty with interest, and now Disney will be hoping he can restore its old magic. But Jobs being Jobs, he's unlikely to become a larger-than-life Hollywood mogul if he can help it. That just wouldn't be cool.
The jobs lowdown
Born Steven Paul Jobs, 24 February 1955, San Francisco. Adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, California. Married Laurene Powell in 1991, with whom he has three children. He has a daughter from another relationship. revolution. Jobs's landscape-changing insight was that people had an appetite for downloading music. Apple's iTunes software made it possible and the stylish iPod made it fly.
Best of times The digital music revolution. Jobs's landscape-changing insight was that people had an appetite for downloading music. Apple's iTunes software made it possible and the stylish iPod made it fly.
Worst of times A diagnosis of cancer of the pancreas in 2004, apparently giving him between three and six months to live. He prepared to say goodbye to his wife and children, but then the doctors realised the cancer was operable.
What he says 'Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. There is no reason not to follow your heart.'
What others say 'Steve Jobs has changed the world. He did it with the introduction of the Macintosh personal computer. Two decades and a few grey hairs later, he revolutionised the consumer electronics and music industries with the iPod and iTunes.' Kasper Jade, editor-in-chief, AppleInsider.com