Less is more

How did he do it? Design fans, Apple employees and Jobs acquaintances credit a natural design-sense drive to simplify.

A new product or feature begins with 10 ideas good ideas, no also-rans, which are presented as "pixel-perfect" mock-ups. Apple culls the 10 to three, which are tried out for months more before a final star is chosen.

When Steve Jobs weighed in, it was with a simple set of verdicts: "insanely great", "really, really, really great" and "shit," Niehaus said.

Being chewed up and spat out by Jobs is an experience most Apple employees who have come in contact with Jobs can relate to.

"I never asked you to start, so why should I ask you to stop?" Jobs told another former Apple employee, who wanted to know whether he should continue to work on a project that was being questioned by the forceful CEO.

The real Steve Jobs

Jobs described his world as very simple.

"For the past 33 years I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, 'if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'no' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something," he told Stanford University students in the soul-baring commencement address.

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart," he said.

Apple 3.0

Jobs had been on leave three times since 2004, and he clearly thought about an Apple without him.

Jobs and the Apple board had a succession plan - put his hand-picked successor Tim Cook in charge - and he has left a well-respected team.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," Jobs said in the commencement speech at Stanford. "Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

Reuters