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 FT notes that the iPad is an affront to Microsoft's Bill Gates who was first to champion the tablet PC format many years ago. To make matters worse the newspaper reports that "sales of cheaper Windows notebook computers are already suffering".

"Steve's the last of the great builders," Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley financier who led a recent, failed attempt to rebuild Palm in Apple's image, told the FT.

"What makes him different is that he's creating jobs and economic activity out of thin air while just about every other CEO in America is working out ways to cut costs and lay people off."

The FT also quoted an anonymous, recently departed executive on the level of Steve Jobs' control at Apple: "You have to make one guy like what you're doing. He's the customer, and he's the marketing department too."