i’ve been spending time in my head with apple. the actual structure of the company. the thinking behind it. how it has come to represent more than just hardware or software.
it started after reading isaacson’s biography on steve jobs. i didn’t come away inspired. the feeling was something closer to discomfort. the way apple makes decisions isn’t just technical. it is ideological. it is deliberate. and it works so well that most people don’t even realize they’re agreeing to it.
jobs talked a lot about privacy. but what he meant wasn’t control in the hands of the user. he meant trust. his view was that users shouldn’t have to worry about what’s happening in the background. the company should take care of that. and apple became the company that promised to do so.
over time, people accepted that promise. they didn’t question it. the products were clean. they worked. software improved. hardware became harder to access. eventually, the entire relationship between people and their devices changed. users weren’t meant to explore anymore. they were meant to stay inside the experience that was designed for them.
what apple offered in return was ease. no clutter. no confusion. no complexity. but also no real access. the system was shaped so that the surface was enough. users stopped thinking about what else might exist beneath it.
on the outside, this looks like simplicity. but it is also containment. not through restriction alone, but through design that discourages curiosity. things just work. things are just there. and because the experience feels smooth, people stop asking questions.
i still use apple products. i like how quiet they are. how little they ask of me. and maybe that’s what i find troubling. they work so smoothly that it becomes easy to stop noticing how much is being decided on my behalf.
I don’t think it is about laziness. it’s about what we are willing to trade. we let go of certain things to gain others. we give up control so things don’t break. we accept limits so we can avoid friction. and the truth is, the exchange feels fair most of the time.
but the cost is harder to measure. we lose the habit of questioning. not because we are forbidden to, but because nothing invites it. there is no signal that something is missing. everything works, so everything feels complete.
i’ve been thinking about what that means for how we design systems. when we remove tension, we also remove opportunities for people to engage more deeply. when we make things too smooth, there is no reason to pause. and without that pause, nothing gets examined.
maybe that’s the quiet risk. not that people lose access, but that they stop noticing it was ever something they could want.