(FORTUNE Magazine) – How has the iPod changed Apple?

It feels great. We're having fun. Most of us can't wait to get to work in the morning. But it's not like Apple has somehow morphed into a mass-market consumer electronics company. Our DNA hasn't changed. It's that mass-market consumer electronics is turning into Apple.

Do Apple and Pixar have anything in common?

I've always said that Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company. At Apple we come at everything asking, "How easy is this going to be for the user? How great is it going to be for the user?" After that, it's like at Pixar. Everyone in Hollywood says the key to good animated movies is story, story, story. But when it really gets down to it, when the story isn't working, they will not stop production and spend more money and get the story right. That's what I see about the software business. Everybody says, "Oh, the user is the most important thing," but nobody else really does it.

You're about to turn 50. Has middle age made you more patient?

It makes us look further ahead, but it doesn't make us more patient. You know better what questions to ask. There aren't enough good people to do everything you want to do. So now we chew on things for a while before we decide to have the A-team go after something. That's not the same as being more patient.

So do you think young people are different?

You or I move into a new house, and the first thing we do is call the phone company to get our land line turned on. Kids, they just move in with their cellphones. Stereos are the same: Kids aren't getting stereos; they're getting speakers for their iPods. That's become the audio market. People are buying iPods and Bose speakers instead of a JVC or Sony stereo system. And those guys have never come to us and said, "Could we work with you on the iPod?" Some companies are prisoners of their point of view.

Why is Apple in vogue?

We live in an era where more and more of our activities depend on technology. We take our photos without film and have to do something with them to make them usable. We get our music over the Internet and carry it around in digital music players. It's in your automobile and your kitchen. Apple's core strength is to bring very high technology to mere mortals in a way that surprises and delights them and that they can figure out how to use. Software is the key to that. In fact, software is the user experience.

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