If it makes anyone feel any better, I don't think Steve Jobs was all that interested in his personal celebrity. He was intensely private and only ever made public appearances to promote Apple and its products, and he only did that because he was the best at it. It's the rest of society that made him into a folk hero for what he did, and the fact is our society undervalues technical people like Dennis Ritchie.

As far as important people whose deaths went largely unheralded, the death of Norman Borlaug a couple of years ago is another great example.