Steve Jobs: The Products

On 9/11/11, I was detained on my way to the U.S. Open women’s final. Security was tight and all spectators were patted down and relieved of food, water, and backpacks. A guard felt my jacket, discovered a hard, deck-of-cards-sized object, and, before I could remove it from my pocket for her to inspect, exclaimed, “Oh, that’s an iPhone!” Then she smiled and, in an action emblematic of the relationship between America and Apple, waved me through—as though nobody with such a device could have evil designs.

Apple is now synonymous with American values and enterprise. But it was not always thus. Apple users long constituted less than 6 percent of the market, even at the mid-’80s peak of the Macintosh. Before owning my first Mac, I wrote code in BASIC and grudgingly learned DOS commands and keystrokes—which required such awkward finger placements it was like playing a jazz chord progression whenever one backed up a file. Apple was already figuring out the seemingly obvious: Computers are meant to work for us. Apple products were simple, but only a rabid minority seemed to care.