What puzzled me most about Steve Jobs was the personal uniform he adopted in mid-life: black mock turtleneck, faded Levi’s, and white running shoes.  How could someone so savvy about product design feel comfortable in such sad, suburban duds?  In an interview with a biographer that was released after his death, Jobs revealed that those sweaters, which I had assumed were from Land’s End, LLBean or some such fuddy-duddy purveyor, were custom-made for him by Japanese designer Issey Miyake.

After visiting a Sony factory in the 80’s and seeing the black uniforms Miyake had designed for the workers there, Jobs commissioned Miyake to design a nylon jacket with zip-out sleeves for Apple employees.  Miyake sent Jobs several prototypes, but by then the whole notion of a uniform had been rejected by Apple leadership.  But Jobs went ahead and implemented his own personal uniform, and asked Miyake to whip up scores of these simple, anonymous-looking sweaters.  Apparently he had over 60 of them when he died.  Why didn’t he commission a sweater that was amazing-looking and better-fitted, or ask Miyake to design his jeans and sneakers too?  It’s puzzling and also humanizing.  Hitherto the only really personal things I knew about Jobs (gleaned from this breezy, trashy, out-of-date biography) was that he had once dated Joan Baez, and that his favorite meal was a bowl of shredded carrots.  The story about the uniforms reminds us that all of Jobs’ ideas were not great ideas, and that he wasn’t consumed by good taste.

Is there anything left to say about Apple chairman Steve Jobs, who passed away on Wednesday?  He was just 56 years old and he died from pancreatic cancer, a fast, cruel way to die.  The commentary, both in newspapers and on twitter, praises him for “changing” the way we communicate, watch movies, listen to music, make presentations, and, basically, live.  And it credits him as a “genius,” breaking boundaries in computer technology.  The truth is that Steve Wozniak designed the first Apple computers, and that Jonathan Ive designed the roster of current, iconic Apple products: the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

If Jobs had a genius, it was for taste-making.  He wasn’t a scientist, he was an aesthete,  an aesthete with an astounding gift for marketing.  Just the day before he died Apple unveiled the latest iteration of the iPhone, the 4S, that resembled the earlier model but was enhanced with voice-detection.  Both geeks and and laymen were disappointed, because they didn’t just want a phone that was innovative, they wanted a phone that also looked innovative.  (Rumors predicted that the 4S would be all-glass, or tear-shaped.)  Jobs had set them up.  During his tenure at Apple he made product design important in a way that it has not been important since the Bauhaus, when looking modern was very nearly the same as being modern.  Jobs brought high design into our everyday lives.

The New York Times used their hallowed Op Ed page on Sunday to endorse the new Apple Store planned for the mezzanine in Grand Central Station.  Some have been concerned about the crowds, and about locating such a brazenly commercial endeavor in the grand old station.  In fact the Station is already terribly crowded, and already filled with shops, including Duane Reade, Starbucks, and an excellent food court and food market.

The Times wonders why both Apple and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) are being so cagey about the store’s design, and asks them to release plans.  Apple has always been secretive about new product and store designs.  And this time, I suspect, they don’t want to face a flood of ridicule similar the one they faced earlier this year, when Steve Jobs attended a City Council meeting in Cupertino, California and presented a rendering for a ludicrously-designed new Apple headquarters building there.  The huge, glowing glass donut, set down in lush gardens, looks like some hippie’s (or some six-year-old’s) idea of what a high-tech corporate campus is.  As with the Grand Central Station store, and their new products, I’m sure Apple has a seamless, sophisticated design that they’re holding in reserve.  It’s a way that the brand builds drama, and it’s entirely successful.