Almost every day when Jobs was healthy and in the office, he would have lunch with Ive and then wander by the studio in the afternoon. As he entered, he could survey the tables and see the products in the pipeline, sense how they fitted into Apple's strategy, and inspect with his fingertips the evolving design of each.

Usually it was just the two of them, while the other designers glanced up from their work but kept a respectful distance. If Jobs had a specific issue, he might call over the head of mechanical design or another of Ive's deputies. If something excited him or sparked thoughts about corporate strategy, he might ask the chief operating officer, Tim Cook, or the marketing head, Phil Schiller, to come over and join them.

Ive described the usual process: ''This great room is the one place in the company where you can look around and see everything we have in the works. When Steve comes in, he will sit at one of these tables. If we're working on a new iPhone, he might grab a stool and start playing with different models and feeling them in his hands, remarking on which ones he likes best. Then he will graze by the other tables, just him and me, to see where all the other products are heading. He can get a sense of the sweep of the whole company, the iPhone and iPad, the iMac and laptop and everything we're considering. That helps him see where the company is spending its energy and how things connect.

''And he can ask, 'Does doing this make sense, because over here is where we are growing a lot?' or questions like that. He gets to see things in relationship to each other, which is pretty hard in a big company. Looking at the models on these tables, he can see the future for the next three years.