"They were walking around, and they just looked at the sunflowers and how there's a certain essence of the sunflower, and how it floats above the plant — and that became that iMac," Isaacson says. "And of course, Steve Jobs and Jony Ive have their names on the design patent."
Even though his name is on hundreds of patents, Jobs wasn't necessarily a skilled engineer. His expertise, Isaacson says, was in his ability to identify and execute great design and ideas.
"He was great at design patents," Isaacson says. "He understood that design matters [and] that beauty matters."
"The magic of Apple under Steve Jobs was — and still is — that it could connect design and beauty to great engineering, and then execute on it," he says.
For Jobs' biography, Ive told Isaacson it was Jobs who was able to appreciate the great ideas, embrace them, develop and execute them.
"That's why his name is on so many patents," Isaacson says.
Some of those patents include even the packaging for many Apple products, like the original iPod. Jobs learned early on that you have to impute a beauty to a product from the moment people see the box, Isaacson says.
That idea carried over to the now-famous Apple stores, where Jobs also has his name on the patent for the iconic glass staircases that seem to hover in the air.
"He had the patent on how it [was] fastened and how those stairs seemed to float," he says.
Though most companies file design and product patents simply to keep their property safe, Isaacson says Jobs' motives were slightly different: Jobs was promoting the value of design as well as function.
"When you care enough about how you open a box or how you get to the second floor of the store, that shows a commitment to beauty and design," he says.
The Patents and Trademarks of Steve Jobs: Art and Technology that Changed the World is showing at the Smithsonian's S. Dillon Ripley Center in Washington, D.C., from May 11 through July 8.
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