Substitute Apple for politics for the same result. Apple’s marketing teams have always been good at doing this, from that iconic “1984” ad to the Think Different campaign that marked the resurrection of Apple to the adorable recent “Critter” ads. Apple has always tried to define its story before you do. Shortly after Jobs returned, the company rolled out the Think Different ads series. (Here’s the ad, read by Steve Jobs. “The people crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”)
The iMac
The seminal moment in Apple’s recovery story is inarguably the introduction of the iMac in 1998. Jobs had been working at Apple as the “iCEO” for 10 months by then, as part of the NeXT acquisition that gave us macOS. The iMac captured global attention, put the company back into the zeitgeist, and became the foundation for the biggest corporate turnaround in history. He was wrong about the mouse, but he got the rest right. (He was also right about Wi-Fi, and introduced with the iBook, which Apple called “iMac to go,” a year later).
You want to lick it
Apple launched NeXT in March 2001, except it wasn’t called NeXT, had been heavily improved, and was launched as Mac OS X. At the time, Jobs said, “When you see it, you want to lick it,” pointing to its hideously attractive Aqua interface. I was at a launch event that had Apple fans beating at the windows. “I had to be here, it’s an historic moment – I eat, breathe, and sleep Mac,” one fan told me. In the decades since, OS X has formed the OS heart that beats inside all Apple products, from the Apple Watch to Mac, the iPad to iPhone, even Vision Pro. (Some of those products may also seem lickable.)
