I'm sure this one has made the rounds by now but this interview with John Sculley, one-time CEO of Apple Computers, regarding Steve Jobs and his methodology is pretty much fascinating as far as I'm concerned. Daniel points out a particularly poignant section:

An anecdotal story, a friend of mine was at meetings at Apple and Microsoft on the same day and this was in the last year, so this was recently. He went into the Apple meeting (he’s a vendor for Apple) and when he went into the meeting at Apple as soon as the designers walked in the room, everyone stopped talking because the designers are the most respected people in the organization. Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him. It is only at Apple where design reports directly to the CEO.

Later in the day he was at Microsoft. When he went into the Microsoft meeting, everybody was talking and then the meeting starts and no designers ever walk into the room. All the technical people are sitting there trying to add their ideas of what ought to be in the design. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Honestly, I think the whole debate between Mac vs PC is a tired one - similar tools for the same ends but the mentality involved at Apple is one worth noting. Over and over, Sculley points out that Jobs is a designer first, a tech nerd afterwards. There are so many great quotes and pieces to pull from the interview that it's too many to list here but I suggest, please, reading it entirely.