[rcthompson]

Yes. Any major operating system or computing device from the last decade or so (give or take a few decades) has been in stiff competition with the operating systems and computing devices that Apple produced under Steve Jobs, and they have all been strongly influenced by (modeled after?) those Apple products with which they competed. Even something as basic as his insistence that things should be easy to use forced everyone else to improve their products' usability, even change the way they think about designing software in order to make usability a priority, in order to catch up.

[geoka9]

How do you know?

EDIT: oh, I really don't know about that. I spend my days using GNU/Linux, Emacs, C/C++ (GCC) and related free libraries/tools. Even my window manager is emacs-user friendly. If anybody, the most influential person wrt my computing is Richard Stallman.

[hrabago]

It trickles down, particularly when it comes to someone as influential as Steve Jobs. You may not have used any of his products directly, but as shown by this snapshot, he has influenced an entire generation of great number of people, going beyond technology.

Some of these people take bits and pieces of the design principles and apply it to their work. Some of them take lessons shared by Mr. Jobs in his speeches or interviews because they look up to him, and apply those in their work. Mr. Page and Mr. Brin says they looked up to Jobs as model. Windows improved by paying attention to what Mac comes up with. Steve Jobs helped propel the industry forward, so even if you never used any of his products directly, it's a good bet you still benefited from his innovations.