I don't think I've heard a story about the equalizer, but I think in general you're right. It worked out that Jobs hit on products that were successful enough of the time, but "idiosyncratic" seemed to be one of his defining characteristics. A few of Jobs's products were so wildly successful that we tend to forget or gloss over the ones that, well, weren't so much.

I think idiosyncratic also describes Jony Ive -- but as a pundit (possibly John Gruber?) put it on a podcast recently, Jobs was a better editor. He was good at zeroing on what made designs work rather than merely beautiful. If I have any major criticism of the post-Jobs Apple, it's that they seem to prioritize aesthetics over functionality. I know that's a knock that critics made against them long before the Tim Cook era, but I don't think it was really true until post-Forstall.

(And no, I don't mean losing the headphone jack. I mean more things like the entire UX of the new Apple TV, from the beautiful user interface which makes navigating through multiple seasons of a TV show an endlessly scrolling nightmare compared to the previous model's design to the thin, elegant, ergonomically disastrous remote control. Ive seems particularly drawn to the notion that thinness and symmetry are more important than usability.)