For me, the transition from the old world of PCs to Steve Jobs’ platform came only recently. One spring day I found myself at the Apple Genius Bar on 14th street, with an appointment to have my son’s Mac Book looked at. I’d given it to him two years earlier at the start of college, and the poor thing now looked like it had been run over by a truck. My son had procured yet another Apple computer, and I was looking to get this one fixed so I could start recording music on a sweet little program called Garage Band, a product that made creativity easier and more democratic, like so many other things from Apple.

It took me about 10 minutes to decide that the Genius Bar was the greatest place in New York. At a table next to me, a bunch of six year old kids played games on computers with big white screens and the iconic bitten fruit logo. Halfway across the room, a lady in her seventies was wrapped up in lessons on how to use her new Mac. Along the wall, a parade of humanity sat waiting to get their phones and other devices fixed: America, Asia, Europe, Africa – the world’s citizenry chattering, pressing buttons and rubbing shoulders.

“This place is great,” I said to the kid with the Apple badge, assigned to watch over all of us waiting to be seen. “Yeah,” he said, brushing his hair off his forehead, “To me this floor is really a cultural institution.” He’d hit the nail on the head. After all, what is culture but the sharing of information in the most elegant ways possible?

It’s easy to over-estimate the importance of what Steve Jobs created at Apple. Ride any commuter train home at night, and you’ll hear people yammering on their gleaming iPhones: “What should we have for dinner tonight? Chinese or Italian. How about Chinese…No how about Italian…No maybe Chinese….” Hardly world-changing stuff.

But it’s also easy to underestimate his accomplishment. For starters, he decoupled the words “American” and “junk” from each other for the first time in decades. Since American culture exploded across the world in the 1960’s via blue jeans and Rock ‘n Roll, and then ebbed sadly and completely, nobody has made America cooler than Apple has the past 10 years.

And that’s very important. Steve Jobs succeeded by enforcing the concept that producers should adhere to a level of excellence dictated by their customers, and not the other way around. He charged a lot for his devices, but he insisted that his company be driven by one outrageous idea: that people are not stupid. That’s a subversively democratic world view.

Many have taken issue with the “hero worship” culture built up around Jobs. It must be said, though, that he was smart enough to see how it could empower him to pursue a singular vision without caving in to the sorts of bean counters and stock traders who have mediocritized so many other American companies.

Publishers and others who deal with Apple on a business to business basis will tell you it’s not the nicest company on earth. But the consumers, who Jobs focused on relentlessly, understood that each slick new accessory he brought along did more than make them look good. It made them feel smarter and more capable. And that’s a culture America can never have too much of.