It’s easy to be a knee-jerk cynic about Steve Jobs. After all, this is a man who seemingly can’t describe a product made by Apple without using the words “revolutionary” and/or “magical.” Even techno-crud like the MacBook Air and Apple TV.
But there are moments when you simply can’t deny the man’s genius. Two weeks ago, I was staying at a working dairy farm 60 kilometers north of Bogotá, Colombia. I was fiddling around with my iPad (OK, OK, I was reading a crappy science fiction novel) when one of the kids that worked in the stables came up to me and started staring at it. He couldn’t have been more than 6 years old, and I’d bet dollars to donuts that he had never used a computer or even a cellular telephone before (Colombia has many attractions. The vast pool of illiterate poor is not one of them.)
Curious, I handed him the device and a very small miracle happened. He started using it. I mean, really using it. Almost instantly, he was sliding around, opening and closing applications, playing a pinball game I had downloaded. All without a single word of instruction from me (my conversational Spanish is largely limited to nodding sagely while intoning sí, sí interspersed with the occasional Quiero una cerverza más, por favor.)
Think about this. Steve Jobs has designed a powerful computer that an illiterate 6-year-old can use without instruction. If that isn’t magical, I don’t know what is.
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