Success Quote by Steve Jobs

It is a deliberately ridiculous image, and that is the point. Jobs is selling a philosophy of interface design with the swagger of a carnival barker: if a digital button can trigger a bodily urge, the computer has crossed from tool to desire-object. “Lick them” isn’t about taste; it’s about appetite. He’s smuggling in a claim that good design should bypass deliberation and go straight for the senses.

The line lands because it collapses the distance between the abstract and the physical. Early graphical interfaces had to teach people what “click” even meant. Jobs’ intent is to make the metaphor so convincing it becomes instinct. This is skeuomorphism as seduction: bevels, shadows, gloss, the visual cues that say “press me” before you’ve formed the thought. He’s arguing that the screen should feel inevitable, like a light switch, not like a computer.

The subtext is also competitive and slightly domineering: we can manufacture desire. Apple won’t merely make functional software; it will make software you crave. That’s a brand promise and a power move, especially in an era when tech still liked to present itself as rational, engineering-first, almost ascetic.

Context matters: this is Jobs at his most theatrical, bridging product and culture. He’s speaking to teams who might default to “good enough” usability, and he’s raising the bar to obsession. It’s an early glimpse of the world we now live in, where interfaces are designed not just to be used, but to be irresistible.