Steve Jobs Expected Instant Clarity, Judged Ideas Like A First-Time Customer, Says Former Apple Engineer Behind Autocorrect

Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs was famous for his exacting standards and impeccable instincts. For those who pitched him ideas, it was a high-stakes and nerve-wracking moment.

Ken Kocienda, the ex-Apple engineer behind iPhone's autocorrect feature, offered a glimpse into what it was like to present new concepts to one of tech's most influential leaders.

What Happened: Kocienda joined the original iPhone project early on and was part of the team building its keyboard. "And I invented auto correction — the code that takes your taps on the touch screen and figures out what you meant to type," he told CNBC.

But winning Jobs' approval was not easy. "If he didn't like it, he would say so in no uncertain terms and he could be pretty intimidating," Kocienda recalled.

See Also: Are Left-Handed CEOs Like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates And Mark Zuckerberg Wired For Innovation? New Research Says They Lead More Creative, Profitable Companies

Why It Matters: Jobs expected prototypes to be immediately understandable. "Steve didn't like a lot of talk or description about demos and prototypes before he was looking at them," Kocienda said.

"It needed to be obvious." He approached every product like a first-time customer: "He wanted to treat the work as if a person had just walked in off the street into an Apple store." This mindset taught Kocienda a powerful lesson, which he elaborates on in his book ‘Creative Selection': "When you are presenting work to other people, less really can be more."

Kocienda’s experience confirms what Jobs said in a recently resurfaced clip of a 1995 interview: “the difference between good people and great people in software is 50‑to‑1.” Earlier this year, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen shared in a podcast that Jobs expected “first class work” and did not tolerate anything sub-standard.

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