By AppleInsider Staff
Published: 12:50 PM EST (09:50 AM PST)
Time magazine will announce its annual Person of the Year this week, and the magazine has revealed its top seven finalists, with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs making the cut.
The magazine issued its narrowed list this week, prior to the reveal scheduled to be made Wednesday on NBC's
Today Show. In addition to Jobs, the finalists are President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, and "the Chinese worker."
While Time's editors have already made their decision, readers are encouraged to chime in by voting for
their selection.
Jobs was named
CEO of the Decade by
Fortune in November. The publication heralded Jobs for his role in turning Apple into a groundbreaking leader in the technology realm, and for making his company the most valuable in all of Silicon Valley.
Those same accomplishments were
acknowledged by Time as "pros" for is being named Person of the Year. The magazine also noted that the iPhone App Store surpassed a billion downloads (
2 billion as of September). Users can rank each person's importance, and as of Monday afternoon, Jobs carried a score of 49 out of 100.
The magazine also listed reasons why Jobs should not be named Person of the Year: His
health problems keeping him away from the company for six months of 2009, AT&T's
network instability, and the arrival of competitors like the Palm Pre and devices with Google Android.
