We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn't build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.
So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they're gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.
And I've got this little keyboard which was phenomenal. It does error prevention and correction. Not that I won't make some, I probably will. But it's actually really fast to type on. It's faster than all these little plastic keyboards on all these smart phones. So I can just say sounds great, see you there. And I can send that. And there it is. It's that simple. And when Phil messages me back, I'll be alerted, I'll see the dot, and I can just go pick up that conversation where it left off. If I want to send a message to Eddie or Scott, I just push this and send a message and go. It's so simple. So that's SMS messaging, and again, you've seen the keyboard, it's pretty awesome. We'll come back to that a little later.
Now, as many as you know, our retail stores have for a while been selling over half their Macs to people who have never owned a Mac before: switchers. Well, I'm pleased to report that now, in the U.S., Macs selling through all channels, over half of them are selling to people who have never owned a Mac before. It's not just limited to our retail stores anymore. Half the Macs we're selling in the U.S. We are picking up lots and lots of new members of the Mac family, and we couldn't be happier. As a matter of fact, here's one that might be coming on soon. Jim Allchin at Microsoft was quoted recently as saying if he didn't work for Microsoft, he would buy a Mac, and he's retiring soon, so I've alerted our Seattle stores to keep an eye out for him and give him really good service. You know, Vista's coming out, and you know our ads with the Mac guy and the PC guy, we made a little ad for Vista, and I'd love to show it to you now, if you'd like to see it.
Isn't this awesome. And so I've got voice mail how I want to listen to it, when I want to listen to it, in any order I want to listen to it with visual voice mail. So that is a quick tour of the phone app.Now what I want to do is show you SMS texting. So I just go to that SMS icon in the upper-left-hand corner and push it. And I not only have SMS texting, but I have multiple sessions. So I can be carrying on conversations with people, and every time I get messages from them, I can be alerted to that, and go check it out. As an example here, I've got Eddie Q and I've been carrying on a conversation with Eddie, and I just tap this, and here's the conversation I've been carrying on right here. And if there's a new message it will tell me. And so there's a new message from Phil, and let's see the conversation was what.