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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. --With reporting by Janice Maloney/San Francisco