Steve Jobs once spent two whole weeks deciding which washer-dryer to buy for his home. While this might sound absurdly excessive to most people, for Jobs it was a natural extension of how he approached every decision in life. According to those close to him, he held nightly discussions with his wife and children around the dinner table, dissecting every aspect of various models. They talked about water usage, ecological footprint, the longevity of the machines, how gently they treated clothes, and even their noise levels.
In the end, Jobs chose a high-end German machine, not just because it was expensive, but because it met the very specific criteria he had labored over with his family, as pointed out by The Guardian. It wasn’t just a washing machine to him. It was a product that would live in his home, influence daily habits, and therefore deserved as much thought as anything else he had a hand in designing.
This kind of obsessive attention to detail wasn’t unique to domestic appliances. It was how Jobs lived. Every product Apple released under his leadership bore the unmistakable fingerprints of his perfectionism. His worldview revolved around the belief that design and function were inseparable. A good product wasn’t just supposed to work well. It had to feel right, look elegant, and offer an experience that was seamless and intuitive. That same instinct that drove Jobs to ponder washer-dryers for two weeks also drove him to question fonts, materials, curves, and even the tiniest animation details in Apple’s software.
But there was another side to Steve Jobs, one that didn’t dwell in long, thoughtful discussions or gradual consensus. At work, Jobs was a storm of intensity and impatience. He could be explosive, demanding, and even intimidating. He expected brilliance, and he expected it fast. A story recounted by Apple engineer Greg Christie in the Wall Street Journal perfectly illustrates this other side of Jobs.
In 2005, when the iPhone was still a closely guarded secret project known internally as “Purple”, Jobs gave Christie and his small team just two weeks to come up with a compelling software vision for the phone. If they didn’t deliver, he warned, he would assign the task to someone else. No discussion, no extension. Just two weeks to define what would eventually become one of the most iconic user interfaces in the history of consumer technology.
Christie and his team worked frantically. They developed the slide-to-unlock feature, perfected the bounce effect when scrolling reached the bottom of a list, and devised a fluid touch-driven music player. They delivered. But it wasn’t the end. The team would continue to present updates to Jobs every two weeks for months, and nothing got past him unless it met his exacting standards. Jobs didn’t even allow famed designer Jony Ive to see the software until he personally approved of its direction. Even after the first iPhone was publicly unveiled in 2007, Jobs kept cutting features, like a split-screen email view, simply because he felt they diluted the experience.
What’s fascinating is how both these extremes existed comfortably within the same person. The man who could calmly analyze washer-dryer specifications over family dinners for two weeks was also the boss who pushed his engineers to produce revolutionary technology under extreme pressure. In both cases, the underlying trait was the same: he cared deeply about the end result and believed that anything worth doing was worth doing perfectly.
This paradox is part of what made Jobs such a singular figure. His laser focus, whether aimed at a household appliance or a piece of cutting-edge technology, never wavered. He was, at once, a philosopher and a tyrant, a dreamer and a drill sergeant. And while not everyone could thrive under his leadership, those who did often found themselves contributing to products that changed the world.
Steve Jobs didn’t just want things to work. He wanted them to matter. Whether it was clean clothes or a clean interface, he brought the same relentless scrutiny to bear. That’s what set him apart. That’s what made him Steve Jobs.
