Jobs' Golden Apple

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And so on. At their best (which, until the iMac, hasn't been all that often), Apple products dazzle by giving us what we didn't know we wanted but suddenly can't live without. This fall we'll learn whether America's been yearning for a blueberry laptop built of bulletproof polycarbonate plastic (to make it, Ive explains, "rugged, robust, structural") and co-molded rubber (to make it "compliant, yielding, human"). And a little foldout handle. And a sleep light that throbs like a heartbeat. And a sleek, round charger whose cord rolls up like a yo-yo...

To be sure, iBook's look hasn't garnered universal praise. Silicon Valley insiders, reports a wag, "can't decide whether it looks like a toilet seat or a Hello Kitty bag." But even its detractors would have to agree that it's a striking departure for the home-computer market--and quite possibly a landmark in the quest Jobs began when he founded Apple two decades ago. "I remember when he pulled the white sheet off the first Mac in '84," says Tim Bajarin, a longtime Apple watcher. "Even then, he was going to create the 'computer for Everyman.'"

But he didn't, not really, though Apple products from the Lisa to the LaserWriter have certainly pointed the way. Back when the first Macs were rolling out in the early '80s, the mass market Jobs was aiming for didn't yet exist--at least not at the prices he was charging. Since then, the operating-system wars--and years of bumbling management--have taken their toll on the company. By the time Microsoft's Windows captured the OS flag, the software community had largely stopped writing programs for the Mac--a leading indicator of Apple's long, slow and very painful decline.

Today, however, the software that matters most is online, where operating systems matter least. "No website," says Jobs, "knows whether it's a Mac or Windows on the other end of the line." In fact, for the home user who spends most of his computer time reading e-mail and browsing the Web, the plug-and-surf iMac is clearly a superior product--a fact vividly evidenced by the rise of Apple's consumer market share from 5% to a startling 12% in less than a year. In a little-noted but surely deliberate statement of purpose, Jobs devoted the bulk of last week's keynote to two Web initiatives: QuickTime TV, an ambitious soup-to-nuts solution for Web video, and Sherlock 2, the upgrade to Apple's zippy search engine. Even at 12%, Macintosh remains a minority, and therefore vulnerable, platform, but that computer for Everyman that Jobs has been reaching for seems closer to his grasp than it has been for a very long time.

And so, with its sights wisely fixed on cyberspace, Apple sails toward a brighter future with its interim CEO at the tiller. Even now, Jobs remains the great unknown as he shuttles in his beltless blue jeans between Pixar and Apple, spending serious time at the former only when there's a movie coming out or a Disney exec to be placated. "We're doubly blessed," says a Pixar employee of the company's volatile leader. "We get him when it's important, but most of the time he leaves us alone." Jobs is the first to admit that his role at the studio is less than hands on. "I don't direct the movies," he grins, making clear that that's precisely what he does in Cupertino. But he insists that this return engagement at the company he founded is just a temporary gig. A decade or two from now, he told TIME last week, "I will not be running Apple."

But no matter: for now, at least, the company is once again churning out cool products that the public is actually buying. Act III is under way. The prodigal son is home. And, against all odds, the Apple dream is alive. "Is it possible to fall in love with a computer?" asks Jeff Goldblum in a new TV ad Jobs screened last week for the adoring legions at MacWorld. Then, as a tangerine iBook dances and twirls onscreen, Goldblum answers his own question with an erotic, breathy groan: "Oh, yes!"

The place goes nuts, and Steve Jobs stands there beaming, a latter-day Moses who may yet manage to enter the promised land.