Apple Store, Fifth Avenue & 59th Street, New York City, Oct. 6, 2011. Photo by John C. Abell. Taken with an iPhone 4.

Why has the death of Steve Jobs caused such a huge outpouring of grief? Mainly, I think, because Jobs had an ability to make very human connections with people. He could do it in a commencement speech which barely mentions technology — but his greatest achievement was to do it with technology itself.

In the speech, Jobs talks about how and why the Macintosh shipped with multiple proportionally spaced fonts. From his perspective, that was a matter of good design — part a...