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For the seventh time, Time Magazine will be appearing on this week’s cover of Time Magazine in a special issue that features a photo essay by Diana Walker, an Apple retrospective by Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman, and a six-page essay by Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson.

It’s Isaacson’s essay that really got our eyes misting, because in it, Isaacson talks a lot about the walk he once took with Steve in which he was asked to be Jobs’ biographer. Amazingly, Isaacson turned Steve down.

At first, the two companies seem as different as possible. IBM was part of the personal computer’s birth, while Apple has promoted the post-PC era. However, the young tech giant can take a lesson from the veteran computer company in how to survive the departure of a corporate icon. At the front of the class is Apple CEO Tim Cook, once an IBM exec.

Following this morning’s new that the authorized biography of Steve Jobs had rocketed up the Amazon book charts, its publishers, Simon & Schuster, have announced that the title’s release date has been brought forward to October 24.

Hardware researchers say Apple’s just-released iPhone 4S costs $203 to build, providing similar ‘evolutionary’ advances seen when the tech giant jumped from the iPhone 3G to 3GS. The 32GB iPhone 4S will cost $749 before customer subsidy.

Despite his battle with illness during the years the led to his death, Steve Jobs never stopped inventing products and systems that would do their little bit to change the world. This patent, published just over a year ago, details a concept invented by Steve that could prevent users from inadvertently performing actions on a computer.

Reader H.P. Hansen wrote in with this shots he took outside of Apple’s Cupertino HQ last night. He says: “This picture was taken at the Cupertino Apple campus tonight. It was pretty amazing seeing all the people coming to pay respects. A white iPad 2 remained illuminated with Apple’s homepage of Steve.”

A couple more shots after the jump.

We all knew this was coming, and as journalists, we all knew we had to prepare for the worst. Even so, Cult of Mac never prepared an obituary for Steve Jobs, standard practice in the news game. He was too close to us, too much of a father figure. We tried to start one a dozen times over the years, but something always stopped us from being able to finish it: respect, love, a secret belief that as much of a personality as Jobs was could never really die, you name it. Putting our pens to paper to contemplate his death before it happened, it hurt too much.

Now he’s gone, and our hearts are too heavy to write a proper obituary. We miss Steve, and we just don’t have the distance yet. Instead, we’ve decided to put together the best pieces of all the obituaries out there to give our readers an overview of Steve’s incredible life. We hope it will be a jumping off point for you in a day best spent reading about Steve’s life, remembering the visionary he was and contemplating how we all can fill the void he has left.

If you need any more proof of how many lives Steve touched in his 56 years on this world, look no further than any newspaper frontpage in any country or city on Earth. The entire planet is mourning today.

Reaction on Wall Street and elsewhere to the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs Wednesday night is mixed. Analysts appear to be walking a fine line between reassuring worried investors and discounting the contribution Jobs made to the tech giant.

One of the most memorable ads of the Think Different campaign was Crazy Ones, Apple’s tribute to the rebels, the troublemakers, the ones who see things differently. And the ones who change the world. Back in August when Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO, AdWeek released a revision to this heroes tribute, adding Jobs to the end of the sequence. With Steve’s passing we decided to run this video again.

Steve Jobs, the iconic co-founder of Apple and perhaps the most influential American CEO of his generation, died Wednesday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Jobs may or may not have graced more magazine covers than any CEO of the last century (eight times on the cover of TIME magazine, alone), may or may not have been responsible for more changes to the consumer electronics landscape than any other businessman, and may or may not have single-handedly saved the music industry with Apple’s iTunes.

What is certain, however, is that in the coming days more ink and more pixels will be dedicated to his life, his career, and his influence on modern culture than that usually reserved for heads of state and the most popular figures of stage and screen.

Here then, is a Cult of Mac round-up of some of our favorite images of Steve Jobs, from his early days until some of those toward the end of his all-too-brief journey with us in this life.

Enjoy.

He may have ushered in the personal computer; the iPod; the iPhone; the iPad; the modern operating system; the animated movie; but I bet this is the Steve his kids & family will forever remember and miss.

Steve certainly had a reputation for being a tyrant, but for me, these images put aside Steve Jobs the legend, the myth, and giving us rare glimpse into Steve Jobs the man. The normal, quite human, man.

These priceless images were captured in the office of former Apple employee (and Delicious Library creator) Mike Matas. See the whole series below.

Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend and the guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one thing he always said was to simply ‘make it great.’ He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be a part of Pixar’s DNA. Our hearts go out to his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time.

– John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer & Ed Catmull, President, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios

Following Apple’s unveiling of the iPhone 4S on Tuesday, Sprint has finally updated its website to notify customers that it will be carrying the iPhone. Pre-orders for the iPhone 4S begin on October 7, but pre-orders for the iPhone 4 on Sprint are now being taken.

As we continue to mourn the tragic loss of one of the world’s most prolific geniuses today, fans of Steve Jobs continue to turn to social networking sites to pay their respects, and some are even leaving notes on their local Apple store. Others are flocking to pre-order Steve’s biography, written by Walter Isaacson, which has seen orders soar a staggering 41,800% since Apple announced the news yesterday.

Tributes to Steve Jobs are coming in from everywhere. Here’s a handful of the ones we’ve noticed this morning…

Google CEO Larry Page:

I am very, very sad to hear the news about Steve. He was a great man with incredible achievements and amazing brilliance. He always seemed to be able to say in very few words what you actually should have been thinking before you thought it. His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me. He was very kind to reach out to me as I became CEO of Google and spend time offering his advice and knowledge even though he was not at all well. My thoughts and Google’s are with his family and the whole Apple family.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

More than any other, this is the Steve Jobs quote I keep seeing all over Twitter and the rest of the internet today.

This is what the San Francisco Apple Store looks like tonight. Fans have plastered the windows in sticky-note tributes. Here’s a Twitter search listing some of the other store memorials popping up all over the world.

Photo by patr1ck.

That picture pretty much says it all. During the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event on Tuesday, I kept noticing that seat. “Reserved.” It was weird that the camera kept panning to that shot of the front row in Town Hall.

The room was packed tight with journalists, but there was that one seat left empty in the front row next to all of the other Apple executives. Steve’s seat.

Bloomberg just announced that it will publish a 64-page, ad-free Steve Jobs tribute issue of BusinessWeek. The articles will be available online on Thursday, the issue will be sent out to magazine and iPad subscribers Friday, and it will hit newsstands the same day. Since the buyout, Bloomberg has done some gorgeous graphic design work with BusinessWeek, so I’m anxious to see the result.  The contributor list is impressive:

Pieces will be written by Steve Jurvetson, John Sculley, Sean Wilsey and William Gibson, as well as Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek reporters and editors Jim Aley, Brad Stone and Peter Burrows.

Many thanks to one of my other early inspirations (and now a friend), Gary Wolf of Wired and Quantified Self, for Tweeting it earlier tonight. Just astounding how much clarity Steve already had about what could and needed to be fixed in the tech industry. All of it and more has now come true. Though iCloud is only starting to match what Steve had with networked storage way back then.

Steve Jobs has passed away, and many around the world are mourning his death. Apple stores are packed with people, and some are even making the trek to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino with flowers in honor of Steve and his legacy.

We’ve already seen tons of tribute pics for Steve on Twitter, but we want more to create a reader-submitted gallery in Steve’s honor. If you’ve got a picture that you’d like to submit for the gallery email us at [email protected] with the subject line “Steve Jobs tribute.”

You can’t truly understand the life and career of Steve Jobs without understanding the culture and history of Silicon Valley.

Steve Jobs was a child of the valley. And the spirit and energy of Silicon Valley coursed through his veins and was imprinted on his DNA.

Steven Paul Jobs was born in the city of San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted by a couple who lived, and who raised their children, in the idyllic Silicon Valley town of Mountain View, California.

If you were forced to choose an absolute geographic and cultural center of Silicon Valley, it’s possible that Steve Jobs’ childhood home might be the exact location.

“Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve’s wife Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him.”