• The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, July 25, 2007 10:30 AM

Buttons have long been a hot-button issue for Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Bruce Tognazzini, a former user-interface expert at Apple, says Jobs was adamant that the keyboard for the original Macintosh not include "up," "down," "right" and "left" keys, giving it a sleeker appearance than other personal computers have.

When it comes to product design, Jobs functions like an exacting editor, challenging hardware engineers and industrial designers to trim unnecessary features that don't add value to a product, says one former Apple executive. Colleagues who share his sense of aesthetics tend to have the most successful careers at the company, several former executives say.

At an Apple event two years ago, Jobs mocked the complexity of traditional remote controls. He showed an image comparing media center remotes with more than 40 buttons next to a new Apple remote for playing movies and music. It had just six buttons. The spirit of simplicity extends even to Apple retail stores. The elevator in Apple's popular Tokyo store, for instance, has no floor buttons. It stops on every floor of the four-story building.

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