EDIT: So I got a coke and thought about this a bit. I like your point, but I feel like maybe the high-noters are high-noters precisely because they're ruthlessly self-critical and growth-minded. Ever see someone who was really good at something cringe after what you thought was an amazing performance, because they missed, e.g. the f6 in Mozart's Queen of the Night? They're better (honest?) at seeing their mistakes, and they're better at addressing them. Maybe that's the natural talent?

Aside from the tone, maybe, this article is not 'one for the masses.'

Jony Ive didn't just sit down and whip up the iPod, to use Spolsky's example. We don't see the blood/sweat/tears that goes into it. From Ive:

One of the hallmarks of our team is this sense of looking to be wrong ... It’s about being excited to be wrong because then you’ve discovered something new.

Obviously Ive has the creative ingredient. And some are going to be predisposed with talent. Michael Jordan may have had his famous "4am club" where he hit the court every morning to just drill, but so did Scotty Pippen, and he never hit the Jordan high note clutch performances that make my jaw drop watching 20-year-old replays. So I see your point, that talent matters. But the other way to look at it is that Jordan was just better at learning from his mistakes in those 4am practices.

So no, this is not some pedestrian piece of feel-good soup. Great work, in programming, design, anything, is about repeatedly pushing a boundary, recognizing where you messed up, fixing it, and repeating that all over again. The people who do this best are the people who believe that by iterating they can get better. This works even as you get all the way up into the stratosphere of a field.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Appl...