In recent months, Steve Jobs has found the time to sporadically answer emails from Apple customers. His replies are typically terse, sometimes as little as one word. Despite his brevity, the emails always make news, getting posted to almost every blog and publication that covers Apple. You’ve probably seen several of these stories. But how well did you really study them? To test yourself, I’ve created a little quiz.
In the left column are 11 quotes from Steve Jobs’ email replies. In most instances, they are the entire reply. In one case, he gave the same reply twice (I differentiate them by the month the reply was written). In a few cases, the quotes are an excerpt of a slightly longer message.
In the right column are 11 phrases that represent the topics of the senders’ original emails.
How good is your Jobs email savvy? Can you match each quote to its respective topic?
| 1. “It will come.” | A. Complaint re Apple’s lawyers |
| 2. “No.” [March 2010] | B. App Store for Mac OS |
| 3. “You won’t be disappointed.” | C. WWDC 2010 announcements |
| 4. “Software fix coming soon.” | D. Apple de-emphasizing Mac OS |
| 5. “Change your apps name.” | E. Printing on an iPad |
| 6. “Yep.” | F. iPhone OS focus of WWDC 2010 |
| 7. “Nope.” | G. Apple keyboard |
| 8. “Not to worry.” | H. iPhone leak diminishing WWDC 2010 |
| 9. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” | I. MacBook Pro updates |
| 10. “No.” [April 2010] | J. Tether iPhone to Wi-Fi only iPad |
| 11. “Just the normal cycle of things.” | K. Access to free online e-book |
Ratings
10-11 correct: You’re Steve Jobs. No fair.
7-9 correct: Steve Jobs emails are obviously the subject of your doctoral dissertation.
4-6 correct: About average — for someone who spends a good part of each day scanning RSS feeds.
2-3 correct: You’ve tried to ignore this whole email business, but some items penetrated your brain anyway. Sorry.
0-1 correct: Hi! Do you come here often? Or is this your first time? I suspect the latter.
Answer Key (Do not peek until you are done!)
1-E; 2-J; 3-C 4-G; 5-A; 6-K; 7-B; 8-I; 9-H; 10-D; 11-F
You can also click the links above to go to the Web pages where I originally found each quote.