There’s a not-uncommon belief among some Apple enthusiasts that the innovative spirit of the Bay Area tech giant ceased in the years following its legendary albeit mercurial CEO Steve Jobs’ death in 2011.
Jobs’ youngest daughter, Eve (no, really), is seemingly a big proponent of this idea, posting a meme on Instagram that appears to take jabs at Apple’s Wednesday morning keynote.
The meme, a screenshot of a viral tweet, shows a man posing with a shirt identical to the one he’s wearing. “Me upgrading from iPhone 13 to iPhone 14 after Apple’s announcement today,” the tweet reads.
In the Wednesday keynote, Apple announced the iPhone 14, a new AirPods Pro model and updates to its Apple Watches — including the outdoors-y Apple Watch Ultra.
After all, in the decade following Jobs’ death — and more recently, the departure of Jony Ive, Apple’s longtime creative head and close friend of Jobs — critics have noted that every iPhone and nearly every other Apple device feels incrementally similar. Gone is the buzz that used to mark these keynote events and, for the most part, the fans decamped by Apple Stores to be the first to get the latest iPhone. The company’s also received more flak for its post-Jobs design choices, such as the controversial notch on iPhones (and eventually MacBooks), the butterfly keyboard on mid-2010s MacBooks and most famously, “Bendgate.” (Not for nothing, however, many of Apple’s most notorious failures — remember the Apple Lisa? — came under Jobs’ watchful eye.)
And while Eve Jobs’ career path — once an equestrian, now a high-fashion model — has diverged far from her father’s, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson declared Eve to be the most similar to Steve of his three children. Perhaps she knows something we don’t.