[LINK] Steve Jobs: Great unwashed don't need PCs

[Richard Chirgwin]

My old line must by now be starting to sound somewhere between cliche 
and broken record: Ecco Homo. The industry has always said "the customer 
looks like me" and is always shocked when it turns out not to be. 
However: part of the experiment is whether Steve Jobs gets closer - 
because if I look at his attitudes and statements, he falls into the 
same mindset. IMO.

I don't mind the appliance model per se, but I'm not convinced that 
*this* (ie the iPad) is the appliance for me. In many ways I think not. 
But that's not "wrong for all", just "wrong for me".

The industry hates the idea of "adapt to the user" - but is Apple any 
different? Is it just making the user's "learning curve" less 
intimidating than with a PC or a new revision of Windows? That is part 
of the experiment, I guess. Once people get over the initial responses 
pro- and anti-iPad, its success should depend on whether people can do 
with the iPad enough to justify its price ad place in the home. 
Everything else is fluff ...

And I am concerned, not at the device itself, but the idea that people 
will get kind of habituated to the kind of control that Apple is applying.

RC