Steven Paul Jobs, Apple CEO and co-founder, the 43rd richest man in America and largest individual Disney shareholder, is according to Fortune named ‘CEO of the Decade‘ for his role in turning Apple into a groundbreaking technology leader.

Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.

One reason why Jobs is named as CEO of the decade is that he, after his return to Apple, introduced the iMac that became a breakthrough with its all-in-one computer system, and it reestablished Apple’s economy, and in 2001 he and Apple launched iTunes as a music software and later the same year Apple released the first iPod, but those events didn’t seemed to help in an established market, and takeovers were rumored.

At this time, Macintosh computers were mainly used by students and artists, but Steve Jobs had a plan and he convinced the rest of Apple’s board that it would be a great idea to build retail stores, and at the same time it was realized that Apple had to become different on designs compared to the successful blandness of Microsoft, Dell and Intel. That difference proved to be a breakthrough and after a short while, people came to Apple begging for the next iPod.

In 2002 Apple made iTunes Windows compatible, and it became another huge step forward for Apple and just a year after, iTunes Store was opened and became pioneer in digital music. 5 years later another brilliant idea was realized: the App Store. But wait, isn’t something missing? Of course. The iPod became an astonishing success, and in 2007 Apple reinvented the phone. In other words, they introduced the iPhone – an iPod and a phone in one single device.

In January 2009, Steve Jobs took a 5 months leave of absence from Apple to undergo a liver transplant, and fans of Apple didn’t saw him until September 9th, when he returned as first keynote speaker and presented among other a new iPod Nano lineup.

At AppleLunch we couldn’t agree more to Fortunes decision of naming Steve Jobs as ‘CEO of the Decade’ and without him, Apple news and rumors wouldn’t be that interesting to follow.