While he was certainly targeting that kind of audience it is extremely shortsighted to think that it was Job's primary target. In fact, if you have enough knowledge about everything he has said and done, it's easy to argue that he was in fact targeting very competent peoples, that were quite knowledgeable about technology and that wanted shit to just work precisely for those reason.
Because when you know how things work and what they are capable of, the last thing you want to do is fight with them so that they work. At least, someone who doesn't know better cares much less because he is clueless about the existence of a better way.
Jobs was in the business of selling bicycles for the mind, not dumb consumption machines. The latter development of basic consumer focused products is just after the success of the iPhone and happened basically precisely when he left (while officially he was still managing apple, it's pretty clear that after the launch of the first iPad, jobs didn't have a lot of impact at Apple his health condition not allowing).
It also made sense because before Apple was something to exhibit to display wealth nobody that wasn't competent enough with technology would have spent so much money on it.
Which is exactly why current Apple offering is absolutely terrible for its price.
Most of the crap told on Apple nowadays are complete memes from the second wave of Apple cultist (most of them arriving with the iPhone) that completely ignore the true history of Apple and how it got to launch such successful products.
> it's easy to argue that he was in fact targeting very competent peoples
Competent in other fields of endeavour, sure.
Jobs was in the business of selling computers that looked (and worked) good to people who would otherwise hate computers. Dealing with geeks was always (and still is) a necessary evil, so he'd have enough of an ecosystem to sell to "normies".
Jobs fundamentally hated the Macintosh and tried very hard to get away from it very early (Newton, anyone?). Once he got back on the saddle, his first Big Idea was to wrap them into colourful shells, and fuck the tech inside (jesus, was the first iMac dog-slow!). His second idea was to co-opt FOSS and Java developers, again to have enough geeks building stuff for his platform; they would be unceremoniously dropped once the iPod got traction and he could finally get to run the "better Sony" he always wanted to have.
The rest is just stories he told to power his reality-distortion field.
There’s a couple inaccuracies you’re making, but here’s the most blatant:
> Jobs fundamentally hated the Macintosh and tried very hard to get away from it very early (Newton, anyone?).
Jobs had nothing to do with the Newton, it was started about a year after he was forced out, Sculley coined the term Personal Digital Assistant, and it was one of the first things killed when Jobs got back to Apple.
> Jobs was in the business of selling computers that looked (and worked) good to people who would otherwise hate computers. Dealing with geeks was always (and still is) a necessary evil, so he'd have enough of an ecosystem to sell to "normies".
NeXT contradicts that.
Though, I like how you mention he always wanted to be a "better Sony." That's definitely on point.
Surely Apple recognizes “*nix-sphere web software developers who want a nice laptop” as one of their target professional markets in the OSX era, too. That’s sold a hell of a lot of MacBooks. It’s developers of software for their own platforms that Apple has long had a tense relationship with.
The original iMac hardware specs were also pretty reasonable for when it came out, no?
> Most of the crap told on Apple nowadays are complete memes from the second wave of Apple cultist (most of them arriving with the iPhone) that completely ignore the true history of Apple and how it got to launch such successful products.
Apple Watch, Apple TV and HomePod would like a word.
Because when you know how things work and what they are capable of, the last thing you want to do is fight with them so that they work. At least, someone who doesn't know better cares much less because he is clueless about the existence of a better way.
Jobs was in the business of selling bicycles for the mind, not dumb consumption machines. The latter development of basic consumer focused products is just after the success of the iPhone and happened basically precisely when he left (while officially he was still managing apple, it's pretty clear that after the launch of the first iPad, jobs didn't have a lot of impact at Apple his health condition not allowing).
It also made sense because before Apple was something to exhibit to display wealth nobody that wasn't competent enough with technology would have spent so much money on it. Which is exactly why current Apple offering is absolutely terrible for its price.
Most of the crap told on Apple nowadays are complete memes from the second wave of Apple cultist (most of them arriving with the iPhone) that completely ignore the true history of Apple and how it got to launch such successful products.