Mourners shower rose petals outside Jobs' home

Police barricades outside the Palo Alto home of Steve Jobs were put in place to help keep order as a steady stream of fans braved the wet weather on Thursday to pay homage to the late tech visionary. Jobs, who touched the daily lives of countless millions of people through hisApple designs, died on Wednesday (October 5) at age 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Many of those arriving at the home came armed with signature Apple items including iPods, iPhones and iPads. Others felt the need to just be there and in some way thank Jobs for the way he changed their world.A college drop-out and the son of adoptive parents, Jobs changed the technology world in the late 1970s, when the Apple II became the first personal computer to gain a wide following. He did it again in 1984 with the Macintosh, which built on breakthrough technologies developed at Xerox Parc and elsewhere to create the personal computing experience as we know it today.The rebel streak that was central to his persona got him tossed out of Apple in 1985, but he returned in 1997 and after a few years began the roll-out of a troika of products -- the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad -- that again upended the established order in major industries.A diagnosis of a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004 initially cast only a mild shadow over Jobs and Apple, with the CEO asserting that the disease was treatable. But his health deteriorated rapidly over the past several years, and after two temporary leaves of absence he stepped down as CEO and became Apples.Apple paid homage to its visionary leader by changing its web site to a big black-and-white photograph of him with the caption Steve Jobs: 1955-2011.