Last year I was working for a startup, I was working with a man I greatly respected, and still do, and he's crazy smart. However he was also my boss, which meant that at the end of the day his opinions mattered just a bit more than mine. Which is fine for decisions, but sucked in a collaborative design.
There was this large project going on, we were building some tech that was going to be the core of our business, and together we had been thinking through this problem for a long time. Then one day I came to the office, and he said "I think i got it, now I want you to listen to the whole thing first before you add anything... cause what I have works". It turned out to be the first sentence in a really terrible period between us. All sense of collaboration was gone after that. It was him telling me how things were going to be, and anytime I tried to contribute (add or change something) I was being insubordinate. I started to get very emotional, which lead to him getting emotional... I passionately believed in a few core concepts, and sometimes i'd even get through to him, but then a few days later he'd forget my argument and get really angry at me. If he was just another senior engineer, I think things would have gone much better, but the fact that he was my boss made things crazy difficult. Conversations would end with "because I have 40 years of experience". I felt like I was no longer allowed to contribute if my idea was too drastically different.
My point is, when you're in a position of power having an actual equal design collaboration is hard to accomplish. Everyone is passionate about their own ideas. Reading this article made me respect Steve because if this is true, he accomplished a very difficult task.