The iPad is Steve Jobs’ final victory over the company’s co-founder Steve Wozniak

Jobs believes in perfection, not muddling through. He would seem as much at home in Victorian England as behind the counter of a sushi bar: a man who believes in a single best way of performing any task and presenting the results. As one might expect, his ideas embody an aesthetic philosophy as much as a sense of functionality, which is why Apple’s products look so good while working so well. But those ideas have also long been at odds with the principles of the early computing industry, of the Apple II, and of the Internet. The ideology of the perfect machine and open computing are contradictory. They cannot coexist.

This a follow-up to The other side of the iPad, where a friend commented: “Microsoft is big and doesn’t play well with others but at least it plays. Apple has somehow gotten everyone else blocked out. “