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Computerworld - Steve Jobs lived his life at the intersection of technology and art, adding excitement to new products like the iPhone and the iPad by borrowing from other devices and creating something brand-new and magical.

The question on many minds the day after his passing was: "Where will that excitement come from now?"

That same question was posed when Jobs stepped down as Apple's CEO in August after his long illness, but it took on renewed urgency when the impact of Jobs' death Wednesday began to be fully realized.

Pundits said that Apple, with a team of talented, creative employees that Jobs helped mold together, will carry on his tradition for ingenuity, if not all of his passion, perfectionism and energy.

"Steve's excitement for technology will still come from Apple and from the team that Jobs carefully built that worked with him to give us the iPhone and iPad and many other successful products," said Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst.

But some observers also admitted it will be hard to find another technology evangelist like Jobs, who combined the worlds of liberal arts and marketing with circuit boards and wireless transmitters. Even Steve Wozniak, a lifelong friend of Jobs and co-founder of Apple Computer, remarked Thursday on NBC's Today show after Jobs died: "It was almost like when John Lennon was killed."

What's missing from so many of the products that compete with the iPhone and iPad is the sense of artistry, personality and individuality that Jobs brought to them, Apple observers said. While the competitor brands are like prose, the Apple products are like poetry.

Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates, said that when Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007, he intrinsically understood the mobile phone user better than previous companies had. Much of that insight came from the iPod music player released earlier.

Other analysts argued that Research In Motion, with its then-successful BlackBerry devices, focused heavily on the companies that would use those products, giving IT shops security and manageability, sometimes at the expense of what the users and workers might want. It is a problem still facing RIM today.

"Jobs didn't just change mobile phones -- he reinvented them," said Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner. "That was typical Steve."

In a more recent example, Apple's iPad took user-centric values inherent in both the touch-screen iPhone and larger-screen laptops, and found a middle ground -- a classic manifestation of Jobs' ability to combine technology concepts, art and ideas and come up with a product later given the marketing moniker of "magical," analysts noted.