"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." -Steve Jobs, to Rob Walker, "The Guts of a New Machine", New York Times Magazine, 2003:

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/the-guts-of-a-ne...

He said much the same thing on camera, followed by Jony Ive on the iMac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BibWZJOClgU

STEVE JOBS: Design's a really loaded word. I don't know what it means. And so we don't really talk about design a lot around here. We actually just talk about how things work. Most people think it's how they look, but it's not really how they look. It's how they work.

Everyone says, you know, I want to make a great product, or I want to make a great movie, or whatever they're doing. So there's no difference there, but there's a big difference in the outcomes.

JONY IVE: When we were developing the new iMac, we were at a point when we had a couple of solutions that, I mean, at the time I think we thought they were good, but we had that sinking feeling, you know, when you are aware that you're trying to convince yourself something's actually better than in your heart you really know that it is. Sometimes you just have to look at yourself and go, you know, it's just not really great. It's okay, it's good, but let's not fool ourselves and call it great.

Steve really felt that we could do better, and when we all realized we needed to, I mean, that's a hard call to make, you know. We're willing to throw something away because it's not great and try again, when all of the pressures of commerce are at your back saying no, you can't do that.

Steve is so much more than a supporter of design. He not only has a very clear sense of vision and sense of the future, but has this sort of unnerving ability to describe the future in a way that's very inclusive, in a way that draws people from many different disciplines in to share this sense of what this vision could be.