Steve Jobs' Personal Life: His Idiosyncrasies, Likes and Dislikes

Steve Jobs, Apple's mastermind who took charge of the golden era of personal computing, led a full life characterized by several idiosyncrasies, some of which portray the amusing personality he was.

Fussy Shopper - Jobs was notoriously choosy of designs that he had to research for months before picking up a gadget or an appliance for his household. I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous, he told The Independent in 2005, at the original iPod Shuffle launch.

Jobs once described how he and his family went about choosing a washing machine for the household. Though he didn't have to worry about the price tag, factors like European versus American design, relative water use, detergent demands, and its time requirement, made him deliberate over it for weeks.

Jobs considered a choosing a washing machine similar to that to buying a phone. You get one of the phones now and you're never going to learn more than 5 per cent of the features. he was quoted as saying. You're never going to use more than 5 per cent, and, uh, it's very complicated. So you end up using just 5 per cent.

No wonder why designers were the most respected people in Apple who reported directly to the CEO. Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like, he told The New York Times in 2003. People think it's this veneer - that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.

Dislike for Focus Groups - Jobs never liked the idea of designing according to popular suggestions. It's really hard to design products by focus groups, he told Business Week in 1998. A lot of times people don't know what they really want until you show it to them.

John Sculley, former Apple CEO once reflected on what Jobs thought about product designing, He said, 'How can I possibly ask somebody what a graphics-based computer ought to be when they have no idea what a graphic based computer is? No one has ever seen one before.'

Car Without a License Plate - Jobs drove a silver Mercedes which had a barcode without a license plate. However, he never really got into trouble for a license plate-less car.

Disabled Parking Spots - Jobs didn't really care to find parking space when disabled parking spots were available. Andy Hertzfeld, who was a member of the original Macintosh development team once said, Jobs seemed to think that the blue wheelchair symbol meant that the spot was reserved for the chairman.

According to a popular Jobs legend, reported by Fortune, Apple employees often joked about Jobs being too busy to find a parking space and once put a Park Different note under his windshield wiper.

Wannabe Buddhist Monk Who Sold Computers -- Jobs traveled to India, after dropping out of Reed college, to visit Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram with a college friend (and, later, the first Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, seeking spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing.

He was quoted saying that he thought of becoming a monk up in a monastery in Japan instead of starting Apple, but his guru Kobun Chino convinced him otherwise. However, Jobs' critics often questioned his stringent management style given that he was a devout Buddhist: Imagine what he'd be like if he hadn't studied buddhism...

His marriage to Laurene Powell on March 18, 1991, was presided over by the Zen monk Kobun Chino Otogawa.

Bob Dylan's Music - Jobs loved playing Bob Dylan's tunes with his guitar during his youth. He liked discussing Dylan's lyrics with his close friends and went as far as dating folk musician Joan Baez, mostly because she was Dylan's unofficial ex-girlfriend, according to his close associates.

French Love - Jobs liked visiting Yosemite, Europe, in general, and Paris, in particular. According to a personal Web site on Jobs, he once said to French journalists that one of his biggest pride was to see an Apple billboard next to the Louvre.