I think the idea that Jobs had "great taste" is a myth. What he was good at was implementing an all-encompassing product strategy that established Apple products as status symbols. I don't think it's an accident that Apple "arrived" in the late 90s. Why? Because that's when their experience with education enterprise could be combined with the broad marketing lessons to be learned from products like Air Jordans.
Apple products were visually-distinctive, but I wouldn't call them beautiful; they were relatively easy to use, though I wouldn't call them intuitive. But because they passed the bar in those two respects - in other words, because Apple products were not ugly nor difficult to use, and therefore not completely repellant on their face - the way was opened for Jobs to execute his coup de grace: positioning (through advertisement, third-party association, and pricing) the iMac, iPod, and eventually iPhone as markers of one's own affluence and taste. Everything else coalesces around that kernel of desirability, whether it's warranted or not. The "unifying sense of taste" of the products themselves is an illusion; what matters is that everyone agrees that Apple is the premium choice, in a society where premium (not necessarily fit) is of utmost importance.
This is why Apple stores and support are so crucial. Every generation of Apple product has a competitor that's more elegant, better-performing, more durable and reliable, better integrated within its own ecosystem, etc. But, again, what Jobs understood was that humanity always trumps engineering in the way our social and cultural hierarchies are constructed. Concierge and community are more desirable - more premium - when problems inevitably arise or UX inevitably fails. They maintain the illusion of usability when usability itself breaks down.
Jobs was just really good at playing people.