Jobs's usage of "liberal arts" in the quotation is idiomatic, and "culture or refinement" is an apropos translation.
In general, particularly in the United States, many colleges and universities are structured in a way that separates hard sciences and engineering programs from a set of disciplines commonly referred to as "Liberal Arts": while definitions differ depending on the college or university, liberal arts programs generally include fields and departments like:
- Art, Fine Art, Art History, etc.
- Philosophy
- History
- English, Literature, etc.
They generally are fields that do not follow the scientific method and are not considered business-related, but are nonetheless essential to understanding humanity.
To get what Jobs is talking about here, it's important to understand the comparison Jobs is intending to make and how Apple has contrasted itself to two of its chief historical rivals, Microsoft and later Google.
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates, who—despite dropping out of University—was by all accounts a technological genius and a person with a very deep, analytical mind. Microsoft, at least perceived by Jobs, was considered to be full of people who were like Gates: analytically-minded without any creativity.
Similarly, Google was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page: two computer scientists with master's degrees from Stanford University. Consequently, they have attracted a very large pool of talent full of engineers like them.
Conversely, Steve Jobs dropped out of college after a single semester and was not an engineer (he relied on co-founder Steve Wozniak for the technical expertise). In the 2005 Stanford commencement speech, he mentioned that after dropping out, he audited liberal arts classes which formed the basis of the knowledge he brought to running Apple: for example, he mentions his auditing of a calligraphy class is the primary reason why the original Macintosh had excellent typography.
So when Jobs refers to Apple's DNA as being "technology married with liberal arts", he's referring to the sensibility he brought to Apple—and the subsequent corporate culture formed around it—as contrasted to heavily engineer-focused companies like Microsoft and Google. That is, according to Jobs, Apple—unlike its competitors—incorporates knowledge derived from the liberal arts fields (art, philosophy, history, etc.) into its technology, which gives it a competitive edge.
Best Answer
The word affinity is a synonym or euphemism for mistress. The passage is quoting a proverb making the rounds at that time. Notice that this passage uses quotation marks to indicate words which are a direct quotation. See for example, the Coshocton Tribune, June 3, 1918, p. 4:
The example above is clearly referring to a marital indiscretion, but the specific form it takes is not identified in the quoted proverb. It might refer to simple adultery, or to another taboo such as homosexuality, or to any form of infidelity in general.
@KitFox found another newspaper proverb in The Mt. Sterling Advocate, December 28, 1922. This one makes clear that affinity was used at the time to mean mistress: