Steve Jobs' return to Apple is a stroke of marketing genius. Jobs has proven himself an articulate defender of the Macintosh. I'm especially thinking of his Oscar-worthy performance in the PBS special Triumph of the Nerds, in which he waxed poetic and wistful about the Apple that existed before he hired his personal Judas, the man known for his prowess in marketing colored soda water. Jobs is a man who embodies the passion that the Mac has always stirred in the hearts of its users. A passion that has been missing at Apple - for way too long.
Jobs brings back home is worthy of celebration, but there's more to it than that.
Jobs is a visionary. He has always been ahead of the curve, sometimes too far out. He created a market for the Macintosh where one did not exist, although arguably his refusal to license the Mac OS ultimately led us to today's state of affairs. More than that, he saw that giving the powerful but arcane UNIX environment a graphical interface held potential, even if he had difficulty marketing his Nextstep operating system. Now it's emulated by Sun, Hewlett-Packard, Digital, and Silicon Graphics.