Steve Jobs’ sons already have their professional careers underway, but there was a time when the Apple co-founder had to put aside his facet of big tech executive and tackle that of a family man. And in those moments, Jobs could become unrecognizable.
Nick Bilton, a New York Times writer, said this nearly a decade ago, when the iPad was still a defining device in its early generations. Said editor spoke to Jobs himself on the phone and, in a moment of curiosity, he asked the CEO how his kids were using the iPad when they just came out in 2010. The answer? “They didn’t use it”
“At the blacksmith…”
“We limited the amount of technology kids could use at home,” Jobs told Bilton. This attitude has been mirrored by Apple itself, a company that has strictly limited adult content on its platforms. There’s no porn on the App Store, and violent content is heavily gauged by age recommendations and features like Screen Time. intimidation online was also already a problem at that time. Jobs did not want the dangers of this technology to reach his children, hence his habit of limiting all access to more than healthy devices.
Thus, during dinners at Steve Jobs, they talked about “history, books and various subjects”. This is what Walter Isaacson was able to verify during one of the dinners he attended to write the biography of Jobs, where he saw that his children did not feel the need to look for screens.
And so This is something that has rubbed off on other senior executives.: Former Wired exec Chris Anderson confessed in the same New York Times article that his children accused him of being a “fascist” for exercising the same boundaries. Blogger founder Evan Williams, with the advent of the iPad, gave them access to a bunch of books so they could read them whenever they wanted. Physical books, on paper. No screens.
To this day, Apple continues to apply the same model, seeking to protect as much as possible what minors do with your devices. Screen Time has improved with each version of iOS, and iMessage continues to add measures to protect them from strangers. The advantage: parents tend to consider an iPhone as the first terminal of a minor compared to another mobile, knowing these protections.
Imagen | Emily Wade
In Applesphere | ‘If it’s green, I won’t answer’: Gen Z don’t trust Android and prefer an iPhone
