So Vincent and Milner, along with the copywriter Eric Grunbaum, began crafting what they dubbed “The Manifesto.” It would be fast-paced, with vibrant pictures and a thumping beat, and it would proclaim that the iPad was revolutionary. The music they chose was Karen O’s pounding refrain from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’” Gold Lion.” As the iPad was shown doing magical things, a strong voice declared, “iPad is thin. iPad is beautiful. . . . It’s crazy powerful. It’s magical. . . . It’s video, photos. More books than you could read in a lifetime. It’s already a revolution, and it’s only just begun.”
Once the Manifesto ads had run their course, the team again tried something softer, shot as day-in-the-life documentaries by the young filmmaker Jessica Sanders. Jobs liked them—for a little while. Then he turned against them for the same reason he had reacted against the original Pottery Barn–style ads. “Dammit,” he shouted, “they look like a Visa commercial, typical ad agency stuff.”
He had been asking for ads that were different and new, but eventually he realized he did not want to stray from what he considered the Apple voice. For him, that voice had a distinctive set of qualities: simple, declarative, clean. “We went down that lifestyle path, and it seemed to be growing on Steve, and suddenly he said, ‘I hate that stuff, it’s not Apple,’” recalled Lee Clow. “He told us to get back to the Apple voice. It’s a very simple, honest voice.” And so they went back to a clean white background, with just a close-up showing off all the things that “iPad is . . .” and could do.
The iPad commercials were not about the device, but about what you could do with it. Indeed its success came not just from the beauty of the hardware but from the applications, known as apps, that allowed you to indulge in all sorts of delightful activities. There were thousands—and soon hundreds of thousands—of apps that you could download for free or for a few dollars. You could sling angry birds with the swipe of your finger, track your stocks, watch movies, read books and magazines, catch up on the news, play games, and waste glorious amounts of time. Once again the integration of the hardware, software, and store made it easy. But the apps also allowed the platform to be sort of open, in a very controlled way, to outside developers who wanted to create software and content for it—open, that is, like a carefully curated and gated community garden.
The apps phenomenon began with the iPhone. When it first came out in early 2007, there were no apps you could buy from outside developers, and Jobs initially resisted allowing them. He didn’t want outsiders to create applications for the iPhone that could mess it up, infect it with viruses, or pollute its integrity.
Board member Art Levinson was among those pushing to allow iPhone apps. “I called him a half dozen times to lobby for the potential of the apps,” he recalled. If Apple didn’t allow them, indeed encourage them, another smartphone maker would, giving itself a competitive advantage. Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller agreed. “I couldn’t imagine that we would create something as powerful as the iPhone and not empower developers to make lots of apps,” he recalled. “I knew customers would love them.” From the outside, the venture capitalist John Doerr argued that permitting apps would spawn a profusion of new entrepreneurs who would create new services.
Jobs at first quashed the discussion, partly because he felt his team did not have the bandwidth to figure out all of the complexities that would be involved in policing third-party app developers. He wanted focus. “So he didn’t want to talk about it,” said Schiller. But as soon as the iPhone was launched, he was willing to hear the debate. “Every time the conversation happened, Steve seemed a little more open,” said Levinson. There were freewheeling discussions at four board meetings.
Jobs soon figured out that there was a way to have the best of both worlds. He would permit outsiders to write apps, but they would have to meet strict standards, be tested and approved by Apple, and be sold only through the iTunes Store. It was a way to reap the advantage of empowering thousands of software developers while retaining enough control to protect the integrity of the iPhone and the simplicity of the customer experience. “It was an absolutely magical solution that hit the sweet spot,” said Levinson. “It gave us the benefits of openness while retaining end-to-end control.”