Steve Jobs: ‘Apple’s goal is to stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities’

19 years ago

“‘There’s just one more thing,’ says Steve Jobs, as he does near the end of most Apple product launches. The phrase delights the Mac faithful in the audience in San Jose because they have come to believe that something wonderful, perhaps even magical, is about to be introduced into their lives. There was the iPod, of course, which now owns 75% of the mobile-music-player market, and the iTunes online music store, which now accounts for 84% of all legal sales of downloaded digital music. There have also been triumphant advances in nuts-and-bolts technology—from built-in wireless Internet to optical drives that record CDs and DVDs. No wonder “one more thing” often induces panic, and then a copying frenzy, among Apple’s rivals from Seoul to Shanghai to Seattle,” Peter Lewis writes for Fortune.

Lewis writes, “As his company moves deeper into music, video, consumer electronics, telephony, software, and services, Jobs is asked, How does he describe Apple Computer Inc. these days? He responds by picking up the new Apple remote control device and placing it against a giant, peanut-shaped remote that comes with a computer running Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition PC operating system. The Apple remote, sleek and white and smaller than an iPod, has six buttons. The Media Center PC remote is a handful, with more than 40 buttons. ‘Apple is a company that takes complex technology and makes it easier and simpler to use,’ he says, and seems satisfied with his answer. But moments later he smiles, and refines his definition: ‘Our goal is to stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities.’ In other words, Apple has many ‘one more things’ to come.”

Full article here.

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