Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

He was ego-free, which was very rare in the design student world. Most design students had lots of ego and very little talent. Jony was the other way around.

In New York, researchers have created a working prototype of an amazing touch-screen interface for a computer that, unlike most touch screens, supports multiple touch points -- or multiple people. Running on OS X, the interface is reminiscent of Steven Spielberg's fictional, gesture-based UI in Minority Report -- but much cooler.

Consider this: Apple says its stores are now making more than $1 billion in sales per quarter. Just two years ago, the stores were making $1 billion a year -- and at that time they were the fastest-growing retail operation in history, beating the previous record holder The Gap to $1 billion annual sales in just three years, according to Ron Johnson, the executive in charge of Apple's retail operations. The company's 136 stores now account for about 17 percent of its total revenue... Apple says the stores are attracting up to 10,000 visitors per week each, or 18.1 million visitors a year in total. These are extraordinary figures.

It's huge news for the Mac community. It's a real bombshell. Hell has frozen over, black is white, two plus two equals five, the whole fabric of the universe has been ripped open.

To them it's a rational choice. It's just the best computer around.