"I have heard that Steve requires final say on circuit boards because he wants to make sure the traces are beautiful."
This may have been true in the Apple I and Apple II days, but he's mellowed out a lot since then. This kind of extravagance caused a lot of problems for him (it crippled the Mac from developing much since Steve didn't like hard drives or fans, it affected the NeXT cube for the same reasons, and he had the entire NeXT factory repainted multiple times because he didn't like the particular shade of grey they chose).
This may have been true in the Apple I and Apple II days, but he's mellowed out a lot since then. This kind of extravagance caused a lot of problems for him (it crippled the Mac from developing much since Steve didn't like hard drives or fans, it affected the NeXT cube for the same reasons, and he had the entire NeXT factory repainted multiple times because he didn't like the particular shade of grey they chose).