I started working for Apple at the Apple store. I later moved to Server Engineering. When I first arrived in Cupertino, the one thing that struck me was that the engineers at Apple were leveling harsher criticism at OS X and the rest of Apple's software than I had ever heard before. Even the most ardent Windows or Linux fanboys couldn't hit as hard as these engineers.

So many people seem to talk about "Steve the task-master". In reality, his true talent was picking people that would be as obsessed with perfection as he was. I suspect that the random report you hear from a "former Apple employee" complaining about Steve as some sort of tyrant were the result of the handful of times that the hiring process didn't go according to plan (it happens). My experience was largely that, as you went up the chain of command at Apple, managers weren't demanding more work from their underlings, but less. In other words, it was much more common to hear "if you're not happy with that feature then cut it and move on" than "I'm not happy with this feature, you need to refine it some more"...