That Steve Jobs was a genius, a giant influence on multiple industries and billions of lives, has been written many times since he retired as Apple's chief executive in August. He was a historical figure on the scale of a Thomas Edison or Henry Ford.

He did what a CEO should. He hired and inspired great people; managed for the long term, not the quarter or the short-term stock price; made big bets and took big risks. He insisted on the highest product quality and on building things to delight and empoweractual users, not intermediaries like corporate IT directors. As he liked to say, he lived at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.

And he could sell. Man, he could sell.

But there was a more personal side of Steve Jobs, of course, and I was fortunate enough to see a bit of it, because I spent hours in conversation with him, over the 14 years he ran Apple. Here are a few stories that illustrate the man as I knew him.

I never knew Steve when he was first at Apple. I wasn't covering technology then. And I only met him once between his stints at the company. Within days of his return in 1997 he began calling my house, on Sunday nights, for four or five straight weekends. As a veteranreporter, I knew he wanted to flatter me, to get me on the side of a teetering company whose products I had once recommended, but had recently advised readers to avoid.

Yet there was more to the calls than that. They turned into marathon, 90-minute, wide-ranging, off-the-record discussions that revealed to me the stunning breadth of the man. One minute he'd be talking about sweeping ideas for the digital revolution. The next about why Apple's current products were awful, and how a color, or angle, or curve, or icon was embarrassing.

After the second such call, my wife became annoyed at the intrusion he was making in our weekend. I wasn't.

Later, he'd sometimes call to complain about some reviews, or parts of reviews -- though, in truth, I felt very comfortable recommending most of his products for the average, non-techie consumers.

I knew he would be complaining because he'd start every call by saying 'Hi, Walt. I'm not calling to complain about today's column, but I have some comments, if that's okay.'

I have no way of knowing how Steve talked to his team during Apple's darkest days in 1997 and 1998, when the company was on the brink and he was forced to turn to archrival Microsoft for a rescue. He certainly had a nasty, mercurial side to him, and I expect that, then and later, it emerged inside and outside the company

But I can honestly say that, in my many conversations with him, the dominant tone he struck was optimism and certainty, both for Apple and for the digital revolution as a whole. Even when he was telling me about his struggles to get the music industry to let him sell digital songs, or griping about competitors, at least in my presence, his tone was always marked by patience and a long-term view.

This quality was on display when Apple opened its first retail store. He conducted a press tour for journalists, as proud of the store as a father is of his first child. I commented that, surely, there'd only be a few stores, and asked what Apple knew about retailing. He looked at me like I was crazy, said there'd be many, many stores, and that the company had spent a year tweaking the layout of the stores, using a mockup at a secret location.***I teased him by asking if he, personally, despite his hard duties as CEO, had approved tiny details like the translucency of the glass and the color of the wood. He said he had, of course.

Sometimes, not always, he'd invite me in to see certain big products before he unveiled them to the world. He may have done the same with other journalists. We'd meet in a giant boardroom, with just a few of his aides present, and he'd insist