How do you know Steve said no to him? Do you have examples you can share? And real stories, not just when you think he would have said no (because you would have said no).
When Apple first launched the MBA their marketing tag line was “Thinnovation”. The obsession with thin didn’t start under Ive. And people are making assumptions he was the one in the company obsessed with it. For all we know it was also a push from marketing. Once a design is boiled down to just a piece of multitouch glass what selling features are there besides cramming an incredible amount of power into an extremely thin and light design? When the 1 port Macbook came out some Windows OEMs were trolling Apple on social media claiming their Windows devices were even thinner and lighter. Yet Windows OEMs don’t get knocked for being obsessed with thinness.
Going back to Steve, there were plenty of things on his watch that people complained about - like the mouse that shipped with the iMac, the plastic cube that cracked, the iPod nano that easily scratched, the buttonless shuffle, the fat nano, the iPhone 4 reception issue which created the ‘you’re holding it wrong’ meme which still exists to this day. The original Air didn’t get great reviews. The ooh and aah’s were all centered around the look of the device and how thin and light it was. But it wasn’t until the 2010 Airs that the product really became a great device. People need to stop romanticizing the Jobs era.
