On a foggy, cool day in January, Steve Jobs and Apple are bidding to change the world again. Jobs sits comfortably in a leather chair in front of a rapt San Francisco auditorium crowd, a large video screen tracking his hand movements on a thin, slate-looking object resting comfortably in his hands. Dressed in his trademark blue jeans, dark turtleneck, and New Balance shoes, the wire-framed Apple co-founder and culture-shaper peppers his speech with "remarkable, awesome" and "amazing" references to his company's latest new wave-a notebook device called the iPad. This "truly magical and revolutionary product" fills a category need between his company's successful laptop and iPhone and iPod business lines, Jobs says.

Sterling Performance

Before his product announcement, he ticked off some heady numbers: In January, Apple sold its 250 millionth iPod; Jobs' self-proclaimed "mobile-devices" company now has 284 retail stores that attracted 50 million visitors in the fourth quarter of 2009 alone; its "apps" store offers more than 140,000 software applications for its mobile products (more than 3 billion downloaded in the store's first 18 months of operation); and Apple revenue makes it a more than $50 billion company.

The company's iPod and iTunes store "changed the way we discover, play and purchase music," Jobs says. In February, the company announced that its iTunes store recorded its 10 billionth song download (Johnny Cash's "Guess Things Happen That Way," purchased by a Woodstock, Ga., customer).