What are objects?
Jeff Goodell: Would you explain, in simple terms, exactly what object-oriented software is?
Steve Jobs: Objects are like people. Theyāre living, breathing things that have knowledge inside them about how to do things and have memory inside them so they can remember things. And rather than interacting with them at a very low level, you interact with them at a very high level of abstraction, like weāre doing right here.
Hereās an example: If Iām your laundry object, you can give me your dirty clothes and send me a message that says, āCan you get my clothes laundered, please.ā I happen to know where the best laundry place in San Francisco is. And I speak English, and I have dollars in my pockets. So I go out and hail a taxicab and tell the driver to take me to this place in San Francisco. I go get your clothes laundered, I jump back in the cab, I get back here. I give you your clean clothes and say, āHere are your clean clothes.ā
You have no idea how I did that. You have no knowledge of the laundry place. Maybe you speak French, and you canāt even hail a taxi. You canāt pay for one, you donāt have dollars in your pocket. Yet I knew how to do all of that. And you didnāt have to know any of it. All that complexity was hidden inside of me, and we were able to interact at a very high level of abstraction. Thatās what objects are. They encapsulate complexity, and the interfaces to that complexity are high level.