There is a similar story about Larry Page when Gmail was being developed:
Before Google launched Gmail in 2004, its creator, Paul Buchheit, brought it to
Page’s open cubicle office for a review.
As Buchheit called the program up on Page’s computer, the boss made a face.
“It’s too slow,” Page said.
Buchheit disagreed. It was loading just fine, he said. No, Page insisted.
It had taken a full 600 milliseconds for the page to load.
“You can’t know that,” Buchheit said. But when he got back to his office,
he looked up the server logs. It had taken exactly 600 milliseconds
for Gmail to load.
It is quite plausible for people who being to obsess over a certain aspect to become overly sensitive to it. In my case, a lifetime of playing high speed video games makes it possible to notice things that others miss when it comes to things like framerates and microstutter in computer graphics. I find it likely that Jobs and Page were able to pick up on millimeter & millisecond defects.