Steve Jobs Once Spent Two Weeks Choosing A Washing Machine For His Palo Alto Home And He Got More 'Thrill' Out Of It Than Any Piece Of High Tech In Ages

Steve Jobs once spent two weeks debating which washing machine to buy, a decision that turned into a dinner-table saga, illustrating the Apple co-founder's belief that every choice, no matter how mundane, deserved the same rigor he applied to the Macintosh and iPhone.

What Happened: Jobs told Wired in 1996 that "Americans make washers and dryers all wrong," praising European models that "wash them with about a quarter as much water" and leave clothes "much cleaner, much softer and they last a lot longer."

Night after night, he and his family weighed trade-offs. "Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer?" he recalled.

The conversations finally produced a winner — a German-made Miele set. "I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years," Jobs said.

See also: Steve Jobs Believed Teamwork Required ‘Bumping Up’ Each Other Like ‘Old Ugly Rocks’ — Here’s What He Meant

Why It Matters: Colleagues later recognized the same deliberative streak inside Apple's design studio, where the billionaire spent "hour after hour" scrutinizing every pixel because he believed "God [was] in the details," biographer Walter Isaacson noted. According to an account by The New Yorker, that obsession led him to ban a cooling fan in the original Macintosh because it sounded "noisy and clumsy," forcing engineers to redesign the motherboard simply so it looked elegant.

Yet the slow, reflective Jobs could also demand lightning-fast fixes. Former Googler Vic Gundotra has recalled a Sunday call in which Jobs barked, "The second ‘o' in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient on my iPhone. I'm not happy." Fast Company chronicled similar outbursts, saying his "impatience with those who made compromises" routinely sent teams back to the drawing board.

Design historians argue that this blend of patience for deliberation and zero tolerance for mediocrity powered Apple's minimalist revolution. "It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple," Jobs once said of the company's hallmark aesthetic.

Photo Courtesy: Kemarrravv13 on Shutterstock.com

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