How did Steve Jobs thrive in a technical field with a non-technical background?

“I was always very impressed with Steve’s technical knowledge and ability to understand technical issues,” Brett Bilbrey writes for Quora. “A good example of this was when my team created the built-in iSight camera.”
“We had to replace the external iSight camera that was a CCD imager, with an internal CMOS imager. We had created a prototype iMac, with the new CMOS imager, and had it sitting next to a system with the old external CCD iSight,” Bilbrey writes. “It was an A/B comparison, and we had it set up in the Executive board room where Steve could come look at it when he had time.”
Steve Jobs“When it came time for Steve to compare the quality of our prototype to the existing external iSight, Steve started asking me very detailed and specific technical questions,” Bilbrey writes. “I had the answers, but he kept digging deeper and deeper, till he asked about the difference between the light well gathering characteristics of CCD vs. CMOS.”
“This was not the type of questions you expect from the CEO of a large company. And Steve had his hand in EVERYTHING at Apple from marketing, to engineering,” Bilbrey writes. “I consider myself a nerd savant (a title given to me by a friend), but Steve could surprise you with his depth of technical knowledge.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: People throw around terms like “genius” and “visionary” willy-nilly, but they actually applied to Steve Jobs.