Understanding Steve

This morning’s Observer column.

Watching Jobs in action, I've always had the feeling that there's something eerily familiar about him. But it wasn't until I read a new book, The Master Switch, by Columbia law professor Tim Wu, that the penny dropped. The book chronicles the history of the major communications industries of the 20th century and finds that pivotal moments in their evolution came when an entrepreneur arrived to offer consumers higher quality, production values and/or greater ease of use than were being delivered by the incumbents…