Steve Jobs in 2011: ‘We Build Products That We Want for Ourselves, Too, and We Just Don’t Want Ads’

Dan Frommer, writing for Business Insider in 2011 about that year’s WWDC (Jobs’s last):

While discussing Apple’s free, new iCloud email service, he took an apparent jab at Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and the others, which stuff ads in their free email services.

“No ads,” he boasted. “We build products that we want for ourselves, too, and we just don’t want ads.”

Jobs’s “we” is interesting to ponder here. Apple’s senior leadership today is comprised mostly of the same people in senior leadership positions in 2011. Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Eddy Cue, Craig Federighi, Greg Joswiak, and even John Ternus (then a director of hardware engineering for the iPad team, I believe) were all presumably included in Jobs’s “we”. The only big player missing today from Jobs’s 2011 “we” is Scott Forstall.

The people haven’t changed, but Apple has. Strong leaders inevitably shape the personality — the spirit — of organizations over time. Apple in 2011 was peak Steve Jobs Apple. Apple in 2026 is peak Tim Cook Apple. But it was Cook who popularized the “you’re not the customer, you’re the product” argument against “free with ads” online services. But that was in 2014.

★ Tuesday, 28 July 2026