Here’s the Secret Nobody Understands About Apple

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For reasons that would take too long to explain I find myself in Durban, South Africa, this week at a gathering of 6,000 architects from around the world. I haven’t yet found one who likes Steve Jobs’ design for the new Apple headquarters — the Pentagon-sized edifice, now under construction in Cupertino, Calif., that Jobs described as looking a little like a spaceship had landed.

“Does it have to be a spaceship?” asked an official at the American Institute of Architects.

Jobs is not here to answer for his design, but Ed Catmull is.

Catmull, who worked with Steve Jobs for 26 years as president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, has written a terrific book called Creativity Inc. that ends with a long chapter about what that collaboration was like.

Jobs famously took a hands off approach to Pixar, sensing that the people there knew more about computer filmmaking and storytelling than he ever would.

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