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From the outset, the shape and style of Apple’s computers was Jobs’s primary interest. Within months of the introduction of the Apple II, he became vice president of research and development and thereafter almost always had the final say in major product decisions. As the company grew, and Jobs’s influence mounted, so did the force of the tactics he had used to push, goad, prod, cajole, and coax Wozniak during the development of the Apple II. He was always attracted to the latest, and brightest prospect, and in time the more interesting projects came to be associated with his presence.

Jobs had little interest in laborious research. There was nothing he believed in more deeply than his own intuition and his sense and touch for where the technology and markets would meet. Long-term product planning and a sense of how Apple’s different computers would combine to produce a uniform lineup was a subordinate concern. With the continued success of the Apple II, Jobs developed what amounted to a religious faith in the strength of his instincts: “You make a lot of decisions based on the fragrance or the odor of where you think things are going.” He was unwilling to let product planning become burdened with analysis, focus groups, decision trees, the shifts of the bell curve, or any of the painful drudgery he associated with large companies. He found Apple’s prototype customer in the mirror and the company came to develop computers that Jobs, at one time or another, decided he would like to own.

Inside the company he gained a reputation for possessing a flair for getting things done, for having a gentle touch for the “soft side” of production. “He has,” said Bill Atkinson, “a drive for excellence, simplicity, and beauty.” And Tom Whitney observed, “One of Jobs’s attributes is an infinite patience to make something better. It’s never good enough for him. He always wants more features with less cost. He always wants to leapfrog the next natural step. A lot of the success of Apple is due to his damned stubbornness but it’s also very difficult to work around because he always wants everything.” Another who watched him closely was more skeptical. “He would have been happier as Walt Disney. One day he could have been working on rabbits’ ears, the next day on Disneyland, the day after on movies, and the day after that on Epcot Center. The trouble with the computer business is that you don’t get to change your mind a whole lot.”

Jobs developed computers the way he improved himself. He had a knack for adopting other people’s ideas when they suited his needs, discarding the aspects he found wanting, making subsequent improvements, and finally delivering opinions (or computers) with such conviction that it was easy to believe they were his entirely original contribution. But his strengths were also his greatest weaknesses. An ability to listen to convincing arguments provided an immune system against his snap judgments, but underlings came to be wary about speaking their minds. His optimism, what one manager called “the depth of his technical ignorance,” meant that he underestimated how long computers would take to develop or what price they would sell for. Gradually the lineup of Apple’s computers came to reflect Jobs’s own temperamental, unpredictable, inconsistent streaks.

Yet his audacious, aggressive nature colored Apple’s computers and was the spark that lit the company. Two years after the introduction of the Apple II, work was either starting or proceeding on five products which bore the code names Sara, Lisa, Annie, Mac, and Twiggy. Sara, named for the daughter of its chief hardware designer, eventually became known as the Apple III. Lisa was named after Jobs and Nancy Rogers’s daughter. Annie was a low-cost Apple II which never saw the light of day. Mac was one person’s favorite apple. A group working on developing a disk drive called their product Twiggy because, in its original incarnation, it was supposed to bear a physical similarity to the British model: It was going to house two diskettes and thus, one