What it's really like working with Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was passionate, as everyone knows. What he was passionate about was, I think, quite simple: he liked to build products. I do, too. This we had in common. It is a process which requires understanding the parameters, the goals, and the gives and takes. Stretch what's possible, use technologies that are good, rein it in when the time comes, polish it and ship it. It's a kind of horse sense, maybe a bit like building houses, where you just kind of know how to do it ... or you don't. Steve did.

Not only did he know and love product engineering, it's all he really wanted to do. He told me once that part of the reason he wanted to be CEO was so that nobody could tell him that he wasn't allowed to participate in the nitty-gritty of product design. He was right there in the middle of it. All of it. As a team member, not as CEO. He quietly left his CEO hat by the door, and collaborated with us. He was basically the Product Manager for all of the products I worked on, even though there eventually were other people with that title, who usually weren't allowed in the room :)

I guess I have this to say about it: it wasn't magic, it was hard work, thoughtful design, and constant iteration. Doing the best we knew how with what was available, shaping each release into a credible, solid, useful, product, as simple and direct as we could make it. And we shipped those products, most importantly.

That is what I remember most about Steve, that he simply loved designing and shipping products. Again, and again, and again. None of the magic that has become Apple would have ever happened if he were simply a CEO. Steve's magic recipe was that he was a product designer at his core, who was smart enough to know that the best way to design products was to have the magic wand of CEO in one of your hands.