A closed box offends geeks’ tinkering impulse, which demands swappable components and visible source code. But most of us aren’t looking to hack our own computers. In fact, the very characteristics that empower enthusiasts tend to frustrate and infantilize ordinary users, making them dependent on the occult knowledge of experts. The techies who so often dismiss Apple products as toys take understandable pride in their own knowledge. They go wrong in expecting everyone to share the same expertise.

Hence Mr. Ive’s second boast about the iPad’s magic: “I don’t have to change myself to fit the product. It fits me.” A capable machine makes you feel powerful even if you don’t understand it and can’t fix it. The perfect tool is invisible, an extension of the user’s own will.

With its utterly opaque yet seemingly transparent design, the iPad affirms a little-recognized fact of the supposedly “disenchanted” modern world. We are surrounded by magic. Clarke’s Law applies not just to technology from advanced alien civilizations but to the everyday components of our own. We live in a culture made rich by specialization, with enormous amounts of knowledge embedded in the most everyday of artifacts.