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But you know he loves it. And for many employees, the boss's volatile demeanor is a small price to pay for that passion. "Steve might be capable of reducing someone to tears," says John Patrick Crecine, an academic turned entrepreneur and Jobs friend of long standing, "but it's not because he's meanspirited; it's because he's absolutely single minded, almost manic, in his pursuit of quality and excellence." Indeed, Jobs' most potent weapon is still his messianic zeal to fulfill his original vision of Apple as the bridge between the average citizen and the mysterious world of the computer. "His DNA was built into this company," says Heidi Roizen, a partner at the Softbank venture-capital firm who has known Jobs since the beginning. "And when he came back, everything fell into place--a return to excellence in design, to listening to the consumer, to developing cool products."
In this his closest partner is Jonathan Ive, whose much lauded industrial-design team defined the new Apple by creating the smash-hit candy-colored iMac. "We work together as designers work together," says Ive. "We move from talking about overall goals and visions for a product to talking about how pieces of plastic are manufactured, how labels are designed."
Thus there has been a rebirth of that rare blend of hot tech and cool aesthetics that drew Ive from London to Apple's Cupertino headquarters in the first place. "The first time I used a Mac," he says, "it was so clear that somebody had paid attention to details that nobody else would have noticed. I remember thinking, 'That's remarkable. Why did they care so much?'"
It's Monday morning, and Jobs is onstage at the Flint Center in Cupertino, obsessing. Tomorrow the auditorium will overflow with thousands of Apple loyalists; right now he's rehearsing the killer moment where he says, "Say hello to the new iMacs," and the machines glide out from behind the dark curtain and across the stage. But the current lighting leaves their translucence insufficiently vivid on the gigantic onstage screen. So Jobs wants the lights brighter and turned on earlier in the roll-out. The producer, Steph Adams, speaks into his headset, telling the backstage guys to yeah, just try it again, with the edgy tone of a man whose job consists of placating a perfectionist. No good. Jobs jogs halfway up the aisle and slouches into a center seat, his legs slung over the seat backs of the next row. "Let's keep doing it till we get it right, O.K.?"
They go again. The iMacs are still underlighted. "No, no," Jobs whines, agonized. "This isn't working at all."
And again. Now the lights are bright enough, but they're still coming on too late. "I'm getting tired of asking about this," Jobs growls.
Again. And finally they get it right, the five impeccably lighted iMacs gleaming as they glide forward smoothly on the giant screen. "Oh! Right there! That's great!" Jobs yells, elated at the very notion of a universe capable of producing these insanely beautiful machines. "That's perfect!" he bellows, his voice booming across the empty auditorium. "Wooh!"
And you know what? He's right. The iMacs do look better when the lights come on earlier. Odwalla bottles are better with twist-off caps. The common man did want colorful computers that delivered plug-and-play access to the Internet.