Is this a trick question?
I am serious, are you doing some kind of research for a project, or marketing department?
Look at what apple under Steve has done. The mac platform is not even the production box of choice anymore. Apple has been a joke to anyone seriously into sound, both listening and production for a while now. The over-arching theme is always the same "why limit one's self when one does not need to, since there is nothing a mac can do that a PC cannot."
The iPhone was not an innovation, nor was the ipod. Smartphones were already here, and mp3 players existed before the ipod. Apple is a marketing innovator, as they have managed to sell so many devices over the years, and users are generally willing to settle with the restrictions placed on them and the software that support them.
Back to the question. If Steve was an audiophile, the ipod would have followed a far different evolution, and iTunes would not be a piece of crap, only useful as a syncing app for the OSX handsets, because as a playback system it is very far from free, and even open source (which rarely actually hits the mark, but while I prefer winamp, foobar certainly represents what a software playback system should embody)!
Steve had on his store, music that had to be approved, of course, because it took a bit before more than just the majors had a crack at the wonderful 128k aac files. 128k! Even at 256k, aac will revealing artifacting, even on an apple handset the m4a/ps were designed for. Apple lossless is good, but why not just use FLAC? Even SONY has included more than just it's memory stick as an option on devices. They allowed non atrac onto minidisc, meaning, it became a pretty good little platform. Everyone got up in arms over sony copy protection, but were so glad to pay apple for 128k aac files, about the same price per song for an actual CD.
When they removed DRM, get this, they charges a 30 cent fee for every single song you already bought with DRM, to strip the DRM, on top of that, not everything is in 256k aac, though it has gotten a lot better, when apple was championed for raising the bitrate, it was pretty much top 40 only for a long time.
Steve may be one of the greatest marketing geniuses of our time, he may have a sense of design philosophy, that when it is not a one button mouse, or clickless mouse, or whatever his obsession with annoying mice, (mighty mouse little trackball was interesting idea, but the lack of actual buttons, just two would have been great, ends it for me, because touch sensitive stuff doesn't work right, not everyone's skin is that of a wealthy man), anyway, he may have pushed the idea of a deeper focus on form and function, driving the rest of the market forward, he may have even saved apple from doom when he left NEXT to become head again, but everything he has done, or had others do, has never been in the interest of the consumer.
Think for a moment and you can see that even the "credit" he gets for opening the digitall music market up, really makes little sense, since people had been trying to do this for years prior, but again, steve is, perhaps one of the greatest pitchmen, sorry billy mayes, but steve and his design team have, through even things like disney and pixar, is probably someone that will be looked at in the future as one of the greatest marketing executlives of this age.
There is, however, no evidence what-so-ever that he has any interest in high end audio, if you back up from looking at steve as this billionaire genius that saved a dying company and pushed other companies into improving their design, thus making it better for us in the long run, back up from that and look at what he has offered in terms of audio since he returned to apple. That is not the path of an audiophile. He is the great white shark of marketing, and it shows if you are even genuinely asking this question. The man behind the curtain, has pushed inferior distribution protocol, weak software, hardware that, really, wasn't any better than the competition, and in some cases, the things left out of the various ipod revisions that were so easily included in other players made the product a weaker choice. Steve wants you to buy an ipod to use itunes, not the other way around, which is why he had set up such a closed system. Even the phone, again, apple must approve. Musicians and Developers cannot stand this, and have been slowly stepping away from the platform. With an open platform they can introduce what they want without restriction, but more importantly, know what is coming. Apple could change their entire API tomorrow with no notice, breaking many many apps, and they can do it because what else can a dev do if they want to port to that platform? Basically, just deal with having to work with the nebulous apple, or move to something without "one more thing" hiding around the corner to take your business away.
I will make this short version. What type of listening device does an apple player come with? Do people wear these because they sound good, or as a statement of style? Does itunes sell lossless without DRM, and allow any band to add music to the store to sell, still allowing apple their commission... or does apple have to approve first, hinting that steve doesn't care where the most innovation in music is at, so long as the lables are happy?
The only thing that can be said with truth about him being one, is using the past tense.
/rant
