“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. 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. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs, at a Stanford University commencement ceremony in 2005.

Time and time again, Jobs lived up to these words. He was an innovator, a phenomenon of the personal computing revolution. Jobs was a driving force behind bringing the PC into the home, and became the man to shrink it down and make it portable.

A true purist at his core, Jobs endlessly strove for product perfection in order to deliver exactly what consumers wanted. And as he once famously said, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

To try and understand what made Steve Jobs a visionary, Wired.com takes a look back at the life of Steve Jobs, the man.