Inc. Magazine On Steve Jobs

From Inc.com | 25 Top Entrepreneurs | Steve Jobs
“Jobs is different from most of his peers in that he takes personal responsibility for what Apple makes and how those products feel to the user. Jobs directs the design process from start to finish, asking endless questions, expressing often conflicting opinions, unfailingly pushing the company toward better, more useful products.

The sort of decisions that at most companies are considered finishing touches—the color of a computer case, the look of a hinge, the sound a product makes when it is opened or closed—are to Jobs the very heart of the user experience and so are at the core of the design process. Michael Dell doesn't do it that way, but then Michael Dell knows he is no Steve Jobs.

I have spent 27 years talking to, writing about, and watching Steve Jobs. And I have to say he has the best taste in product design, the best ability as a one-on-one technical manager, and the greatest skill at making the rest of us want to buy stuff we don’t strictly need of any American industrialist, ever.”
—Robert X. Cringely