Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, died Oct. 5 at the age of 56. His passing was marked with the sort of outpouring usually reserved for celebrities or world leaders, but perhaps no group of people felt his death quite so keenly as youth—the tweens, teens and 20-somethings who’ve never known a world without Apple. “What he did for me and my generation is he turned technology into fashion,” says Natan Edelsburg, 23, vice president of Sawhorse Media in New York. “Just walking into the subway with those white earbuds was the essence of cool.” Jobs’ iPod revolutionized the way youth listen to music. The iPhone was a game-changing device and an instant status symbol. The iPad has become the latest must-have gadget from Apple, and let’s not forget that many of today’s high school and college students were raised watching animated movies from Pixar, which Jobs bought and turned it into one of the world’s most successful studios. “Coming out of college, Steve’s success gave us the courage to pursue what we were passionate about,” says 23-year-old Ricky Yean, who founded the social networking site Crowdbooster. “His products, of course, touched us all. We don’t know an i-less world, but mainly it was the man’s drive that inspired me.” (USA Today)