It's not just about taste though, is it? WebOS was beautifully designed, but has basically been unsuccessful. It's really a combination of taste and the ability to execute on it. Jobs wasn't as successful with Next, despite his tastes. He may not have had the right team in place to work with, to execute on his vision. And with Apple, he already had a well established brand to work with. Even all of the products released by Apple under Jobs' reign were not successful, such as the G4 Cube, the first Apple TV, the ROKR iTunes phone - and who is to say that products he nixed wouldn't have gone on to be successful - no one really knows.

Tastes are important, but there are a LOT of things that matter in addition to good design taste.