A nice compilation of Steve Jobs emails by Charles Arthur at The Guardian. But the title “the great communicator, though maybe not via email” seems a bit off. Arthur adds:

[W]hile Jobs might have been known as a great communicator when up on a stage in front of an audience, when dealing through email, “terse” barely begins to describe it.

Communications adapt to various mediums. On stage, Jobs is part showman, part salesman, part proud father of Apple products and also the company itself. He’s efficiently communicating a lot of new information in a fairly short space of time, drumming up enthusiasm.

Via email, he’s curt, but then I prefer to receive a curt, to-the-point email answer to any message I send rather than a load of waffle; and even if you do find Jobs’s replies terse, it’s worth bearing in mind one simple fact: he replies. He communicates. Most CEOS of massive companies don’t.