I was going to draw the analogy of the WWW, but @toddrjohnson already pretty much summarized it.

There's another — similar — parallel at play here: In the early days of the web, the "nerds" really didn't want to make their new "toy" too easy for the general public to get into. And that's where your Steve Jobs analogy applies... back then, AOL came in and said "simplicity and usability MATTER." Within a couple of years, most of the uber-geeky web access points became bit players...