Headcase: Magic Touchpad

Steve Jobs is like King Midas, except everything he touches turns cute and colorful. Witness the iMac, the iPod, and Pixar. (Okay, they're gold, too.) Jobs has a stunning record, but part of his mystique comes from his fabled secrecy. One can only guess at his plans, until he surprises us with a new JesusPhone or whatever. We may never know whether he cultivates his enigmatic image primarily for personal or strategic reasons, but we can marvel at the cult around him implicitly denying the clockwork behind his creativity.

Maia Young, a psychologist at UCLA, co-authored a paper titled "Magic at Work: Quasi-Magical Explanations about Colleagues and Leaders." In one test, subjects read two equally positive performance reports. Employee A was praised for particular skills such as "aptitude with numbers," while subjects read that employee B simply "has a way of making things happen." In another pairing, one CEO earned points for "loyalty and long hours," and another for "insight and vision." In both comparisons, people preferred to work with the guy who'd achieved success through inexplicable means. And they not only rated the visionary executive as more creative than his workaday counterpart; they also preferred to be hugged by him and to receive a "lucky" object from him.

Jobs may soon decide to pass the buck to COO Tim Cook or senior designer Jonathan Ive. If Apple wants to maintain its reputation as an unpredictable game-changer, the choice is clear: Pick the artist over the operations guy.

While on the Job

Jobs' contributions to Apple

1976: Apple II

1984: Macintosh

1998: iMac

2001: iPod, iTunes

2007: iPhone