The choice of Steve Jobs as Barbara Walters' Most Fascinating Person of the Year was an unusual one; the program has never featured a person who is not alive. 
 
 In fact, the Apple founder was selected much earlier in the year, when he first retired. After Jobs died, the rule was broken for him. After all, he broke so many rules during his extraordinary life. 
 
 A businessman and a visionary, a marketing genius and a romantic, a billionaire and a Zen Buddhist, Jobs was one of a kind. His energy and vision changed the world and made him the choice for Most Fascinating Person of the Year. 
 
 PHOTOS: The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2011. 
 
 Steve Jobs died in October at just 56, after an eight-year battle with cancer. His death was mourned by millions around the world. 
 
 "He wanted things insanely great and would take or accept nothing less than that," said Disney president and CEO Bob Iger, Jobs' colleague and close friend. 
 
 A college dropout, Jobs co-founded Apple Computer with his friend Steve Wozniak in his parents' basement in 1976. Almost a decade later, he was ousted from the company and embarked on a new path: He purchased and grew Pixar Animation Studios, married, and had three children. 
 
 Jobs' triumphant return to Apple in 1996 launched a period of tremendous success for the company, which revolutionized digital music with the iPod and later transformed the cell phone with the iPhone. 
 
 Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs was the top selling book of 2011, and you could read it on another one of Jobs' creations, the iPad. 
 
 "His enthusiasm was unbelievably evident, visceral," Iger said. "You could see it from his toes to his head, he was so enthusiastic. He also was inspirational in that he demanded excellence from his people. He demanded that they think big. Big ideas really got Steve moving." 
 
 Jobs often said he had "the best job in the world." Driven and idealistic, he expected greatness from himself and those around him. 
 
 "The greatest people are self managing; they don't need to be managed; once they know what to do, they'll figure out how to do it," he once said. "What they need is a common vision." 
 
 "There were really only two things in Steve's life. There was Apple and there was his family, and he zealously protected both of those," Iger said. "He avoided making commitments to anything else because he knew that the commitment to something else would detract from his time at Apple or his time at home. And he simply was not going to do that. He cared so much about his family. And he cared so much about his company." 
 
 Always forward looking, Jobs fought cancer for eight years. Up until nearly the end, he was dreaming big, planning a new Apple headquarters. 
 
 "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life," he told the graduates as the commencement speaker at Stanford University in 2005. "Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." 
 
 His last words, his sister said, were "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow." 
 
 Apple's 1997 Think Different campaign was launched not long after Jobs' return to the company he created. It began with these words, emblematic of Jobs' own fascinating life: 
 
 "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. ... They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do." ||||| New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stopped by “The View” on Monday and praised ABC’s Barbara Walters for making “a difference in how journalism - and particularly TV journalism - is done today” after she announced she will retire next summer. 
 
 Walters confirmed on Monday’s show that she will retire in 2014 from “appearing on television at all,” telling viewers “it has been an absolutely joyful, rewarding, challenging, fascinating and occasionally bumpy ride.” ABC News officially announced her retirement Sunday night. 
 
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 “I’m perfectly healthy, this is my decision,” Walters, 83, said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and this is what I want to do. I will, however, continue as co-executive producer on ‘The View’ with Bill Geddie as long as the program is aired. There will be special occasions, and I will come back, I’m not walking into the sunset. But I don’t want to appear on another program, I don’t want to climb another mountain. I want instead to sit in a sunny field and admire the very gifted women, and, okay, some men, too, who will be taking my place.” 
 
 “I’ve had an amazing career — beyond anything I could have imagined,” she added. 
 
 Shortly after Walters’ announcement, her co-host Whoopi Goldberg jumped in to share that a special guest had stopped by the studio. 
 
 “Barbara, you know, somebody else, some guy, you know, you know how men always are after you,” Goldberg said. “Well this guy fought his way into the building, we couldn’t find any other way not to let him come out and say a few things. So if you don’t mind, you know, I hope you can handle it. Let’s welcome the mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg.” 
 
 Bloomberg — who Walters called “the greatest mayor” — said he “was in the neighborhood” and wanted to visit the show since the TV legend has “always been my idol.” 
 
 “Think about it, you have made an enormous difference,” he said. “You always — it always annoyed me, you talk about you want to interview the people that really made a difference, and you are one of those that did make a difference, everybody should be interviewing you.” 
 
 “I love you,” Walters replied. “Even if you don’t like very tall soft drinks.” 
 
 Bloomberg then highlighted Walters’ groundbreaking career, praising her for redefining the way television journalism is now done. Walters kicked off her career at NBC’s “Today Show” in 1961 and left NBC for ABC’s “Evening News” fifteen years later, where she was the first woman to anchor an evening news program. She became a co-host of “20/20” in 1979, and she created “The View” in 1997. 
 
 “You opened a whole career for women, but also, I think it’s not just women, you made a difference in how journalism, and particularly TV journalism is done today,” the mayor said. “You set a new standard, you asked the tough questions. But in a nice way, that not only got real answers, so the public was informed, but also didn’t make enemies, you were never nasty about it.” 
 
 The pair wrapped the segment with a look back on their personal relationship. 
 
 “I’ll tell you quickly, then we may want to have something else on this program besides me, me, me,” Walters said. “At one point, we were doing a few years ago who we would most like to marry. The other women were picking, I forget who you picked. Do you remember? You know, big stars. And I picked the mayor. Because I thought he’s as cute as can be and he’s rich. Who wouldn’t want that? We were married on the show. And just before we go to break, I would like to tell you, that it was never consummated.” 
 
 “Hope springs eternal,” Bloomberg said. 
 
 Before going to commercial, Walters again thanked her viewers and reminded them that she’s “not done yet — I still have another year to go.” 
 
 “And you won’t believe what they have in store for me,” she said.
– For the first time ever, Barbara Walters’ Most Fascinating Person of the Year is no longer alive: She chose Steve Jobs. Walters had already selected the Apple founder when he announced his retirement from the company, but never got the chance to sit down with him for the interview. It seemed appropriate to break the show’s rule that "every fascinating person must be living," Walters said last night, because "rules were made to be broken—and that’s certainly how Steve Jobs lived his life." Another interesting entry on the list that was not initially reported: Herman Cain. In an amusing portion of his interview picked up by the Daily Beast, he told Walters he would like to be defense secretary. Fortunately, he acknowledged that he was speaking “totally, totally hypothetical,” because he just might have a few foreign policy issues. The Daily Beast notes that Walters "looked stunned" and replied, "What?" Click for the rest of Walters' Top 10.