From Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet "Ginger"

"I think it sucks!" said Jobs.

His vehemence made Tim pause. "Why?" he asked, a bit stiffly.

"It just does."

"In what sense?" said Tim, getting his feet back under him. "Give me a clue."

"Its shape is not innovative, it's not elegant, it doesn't feel anthropomorphic," said Jobs, ticking off three of his design mantras.

"You have this incredibly innovative machine but it looks very traditional." The last word delivered like a stab. Doug Field and Scott Waters would have felt the wound; they admired Apple's design sense. Dean's intuition not to bring Doug had been right. "There are design firms out there that could come up with things we've never thought of," Jobs continued, "things that would make you shit in your pants."

There wasn't much to say to that, so after a pause Tim began again: "Well, let's keep going, because we don't have much time today to-" "We do have time," said Doerr curtly, changing his own ground rules. "We want to get Steve's and Jeff's ideas."

"The problem at this point is lead time in our schedule," said Tim.

Jobs snapped his head from Doerr on one side to Dean on the other, as if he'd been slapped. "That's backwards," he said, his voice rising.

"Screw the lead times."

I keep returning to this article. I love Job's stellar ADD and vivid vocabulary, both loosely disguising a superlative design and business sense. I am not an Apple person, nor an apple user (except my recently acquired ipod), but I am becoming a Jobs fan. He knows who he is.

I've become a big admirer of Steve Jobs too over the past year or so. He currently adorns my desktop :)

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