It's true. I managed to "uninstall" Quicktime once. It left a dozen registry entries behind that broke future attempts to reinstall it on the occasions something called for it, when I didn't know what alternatives I had available. It persisted until I spent an afternoon hunting them down, pulling ownership shenanigans to allow myself to delete them, and finally getting rid of them. This was on the old computer, though, so it's been a few years. Easily more frustrating to remove than any virus I've had to deal with - the only viruses trickier so far are the ones I don't know I have.
That said, Mr. Jobs was a pretty cool dude and while I don't appreciate some of his company's attitudes in the past few years, and my school system has left me with a deep hatred for all things Mac (although, points to the company for donations to schools), he was a pretty big influence on the computer-based world I so love. And, as far as I'm aware, he didn't commit any atrocities, so for that reason alone his death is a sad event (like everyone else who meets that criterion, but we generally don't hear about because of the whole scale thing).
That said, I don't think his death is of such significance as to warrant the time it's apparently getting on what are ostensibly news networks, but whatever. I think it's the rare death, indeed, that warrants more than a 1 minute announcement and, if you're feeling fancy, maybe a short obituary type of thing.