Excellent quote taken from Word magazine interview with Stephen Fry:
"It is a tragedy that something as powerful and wonderful as personal computing should be in the hands of a rapacious businessman like Bill Gates rather than a creative individual. Gates has sold the world the idea that he's a geek and he's not. I don't think he's written a line of creative code in his life. This is a man who, in the early '90s, said he saw no future in the Internet. Gates is an absolutely rapacious, brilliant businessman and like all of them since Rockerfeller he has anti-competitive instincts and fundamentally terrible taste. If you have a monopoly of personal computing, as he has, then it is unforgivable to design something so....bad. So badly designed, shoddy at every level, the icons and interface are achingly inadequate. It's without thought, without care, without love, without passion, without emotion, and that is unforgivable.
The genius of Jonathan Ive, who designed the iMac and iPod and all the other things people love so much, is that he understands there's nothing wrong with having an emotional view on these things you use every day. Beauty is not an added extra, it's fundamental. People thrive when surrounded by things that are well made, with life and vibrancy. Just imagine how we would leap forward in business if we allowed people who now work in grey places like you see on The Office to have working environments which - for no more money - were designed with love and care."