Finding the source of a Steve Jobs quotation

November 17, 2006 3:36 AM

I've heard that there's a Steve Jobs quote where someone asks him (paraphrased) "What about people who can't type?" and he answers "They'll die". Does anyone know the source and exact nature of the quotation?
posted by simonw to computers & internet (1 comment total)

D: All Things Digital, May 28, 2003, interview of Steve Jobs by Walt Mossberg, non-verbatim notes:

M: A lot of people think given the success you've had with portable devices, you should be making a tablet or a PDA.

J: There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, "People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this." "We look at the tablet and we think it's going to fail." Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. "And people accuse us of niche markets." I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out. We believe cell phones are going to carry this information. We didn't think we'd do well in the cell phone business. What we've done instead is we've written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cell phones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA.

posted by mcwetboy at 5:15 AM on November 17, 2006 [1 favorite]