Jony Ive

Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

by Leander Kahney  · 14 Nov 2013  · 363pp  · 94,139 words

12 Unibody Everywhere Chapter 13 Apple’s MVP PHOTOGRAPHS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS SECRECY AND SOURCES NOTES INDEX PHOTO CREDITS AUTHOR’S NOTE The first time I met Jony Ive, he carried my backpack around all night. Our paths crossed at an early-evening party at Macworld Expo in 2003. As a journeyman reporter hustling

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’s most celebrated designer carried a forgetful reporter’s bag around all night flabbergasted me. Today, though, I understand that such behavior is characteristic of Jony Ive. He focuses on his team, his collaborators and, most of all, on Apple. For Jony, it’s all about the work—but when talking about

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Design School 101. But it didn’t seem like Real World 2003. Only later did I realize that, on that June morning in San Francisco, Jony Ive handed me a gigantic clue to the secret of Apple’s innovation, to the underlying philosophy that would enable the company to achieve its breakthroughs

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votes Conservative, as the constituency of Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of the Conservative Party, who holds a seat famously occupied by Sir Winston Churchill. Jony Ive’s childhood circumstances were comfortable but modest. His father, Michael John Ive, was a silversmith, his mother, Pamela Mary Ive, a psychotherapist. They had a

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in a single area but also a breadth of empathy for other areas of design. So the British design school/art school vibe informs how Jony Ive interacts with service design, multimedia aspects, the packaging [and] the publicity.”10 Culture and history have a place in the mix of art and craft

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to which Jony Ive was exposed in the 1980s. At the time, the nation transformed itself from a semisocialist state with strong trade unions into a fully capitalist one

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a lot of youth revolt. Young Brits embraced punk, which encouraged experimentation, unconventionality and daring. It’s possible to read some of that independence into Jony Ive’s later approach. “In America, on the other hand,” Milton explained, “designers are very much serving what industry wants. In Britain, there is more of

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the culture of the garden shed, the home lab, the ad hoc and experimental quality. And Jony Ive interacts in such a way . . . [he] takes big chances, instead of an evolutionary approach to design—and if they had focus-grouped Ive’s designs

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]t’s still the standout component of his work.” Jony and Tonge combined labors to create a flatscreen ATM machine: clean, unadorned and, in the Jony Ive way, made of white plastic. It won the Pitney Bowes’ Walter Wheeler Attachment Award, which included a much larger prize than the previous bursary: £1

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was interested in getting things right and fit for purpose. He was completely interested in humanizing technology. —PETER PHILLIPS Summer 1989 saw the departure of Jony Ive, together with David Tonge, for America. Freshly graduated from Newcastle Polytechnic, their RSA prize money in their pockets, the two were booked to spend eight

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years, they are best known for their work on the British Airways flat bed, an innovative first-class seat that converts into a bed. Still, Jony Ive has gone on, left them for the world of Apple. His former partners remained philosophical, understanding that Jony couldn’t be kept back. Brunner tried

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things about Jony that struck Rick English was Jony’s dislike of awards. Or, rather, his dislike for receiving awards in public. “Even early on, Jony Ive stated that he was not going to go to those events,” said English. “That was interesting behavior because it was really different. He hated going

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to attract everybody’s attention. Off to a Running Start Although he wasn’t hired as a manager, Jony stood out as a natural leader. “Jony Ive was very serious about his work,” English remembered of those early days. “He had a ferocious intensity about it. He was calm, but very deep

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design leader. Most of the design team would depart, he warned, and besides, Apple already had a superstar. The job should go to his deputy, Jony Ive. “He had quiet leadership qualities and he was super respected,” said Brunner. “Not to put the other guys down at all, for me there was

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genius.”37 Even if a great idea came along, it was impossible to get anything done. Norman described just such an occasion. “I remember vividly Jony Ive coming to me one day,” said Norman. “Then, high-end Apple customers would buy a machine and the first thing they wanted to do was

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products out the door did end; in the coming years, the rate at which new products and new ideas were adopted—many of them from Jony Ive’s fertile brain—would be nothing less than remarkable. CHAPTER 5 Jobs Returns to Apple The thing is, it’s very easy to be different

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, but very difficult to be better. —JONY IVE On the morning of July 9, 1997, several dozen members of Apple’s top staff were summoned to an early-morning meeting. In an auditorium

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make Apple design driven rather engineering driven. By the time he returned, however, the old paradigm, with the engineers wielding the power, had returned, as Jony Ive had discovered. The “A” Team Jobs’s plan for switching up the teams at Apple upon his return was just as straightforward as his notions

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considered the famous Italian architect and designer Ettore Sotsass, who had catapulted Olivetti to the forefront of ID in the sixties.15 Across the road, Jony Ive realized his team was in jeopardy and that he had to demonstrate to his new boss what his shop could do. He put together brochures

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’re as ambitious as we are. When the challenges are that complex, you have to develop a product in a more collaborative, integrated way.1 —JONY IVE Steve Jobs loved the iMac, but as soon as it hit the market, he changed his mind about the color. In his typically binary fashion

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didn’t sell well and even became a symbol of form over function, its creation spoke for the growing power and influence within Apple of Jony Ive and his design team. CHAPTER 7 The Design Studio Behind the Iron Curtain When Steve came in, he wanted the conversation to be between him

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Jobs’s desire for an MP3 player worthy of the Apple marque and to do it by the looming deadline. The team’s newest member, Jony Ive, would be responsible for the look, workmanship and usability of the finished product. To meet the tight production deadline, Fadell matched up the drive from

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,” said the former executive. Product designer Satzger’s recollections agree: “The iPod was white because the second-generation iBook was white. Most of the things Jony Ive did historically at design school back in England were white, and he started pushing white at Apple.” Initially, Jobs’s instincts were against white products

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we’re really only at the beginning of something, that we have only just started. We still have lots more to do. —JONY IVE Over the years, the genius of Jony Ive’s IDg studio has been most apparent when the team confronted special challenges. A blending of epiphany thinking and practical implementation became

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think that’s very important.”24 Richard Powell, founder and director of the famous design firm Seymourpowell, liked what he saw. “When you talk to Jony Ive, his eyes sparkle with the memory of a design challenge overcome, a problem solved, a material found. He becomes animated about a surface perfected and

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—we’re talking about perception. We’re talking about how you feel about the product, not in a physical sense, but in a perceptual sense. —JONY IVE One morning in late 2003, just before the launch of the iPod mini, Jony and his team gathered for a biweekly brainstorming meeting. As usual

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and then has been completely redesigned in such a short period of time. It is really defined by the display. There are just no distractions. —JONY IVE While Jony’s group was secretly working on the iPad, Steve Jobs was telling the public and press that Apple had no intention of releasing

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their commitment to their global workforce and to environmental concerns remains less certain, it’s clear that Jony Ive will have a voice in shaping those policies into the foreseeable future. CHAPTER 13 Apple’s MVP [Jony Ive] has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. There’s no one who

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he was recovering from his first bout with cancer, he asked to see two people. One was his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs; the other was Jony Ive. After nearly eight years of working together almost daily, Jony and Jobs had a special and intimate relationship. The pair had been nearly inseparable, attending

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Apple cost $447.61. Apple was riding high, having surpassed ExxonMobil as the most valuable publicly held company in the world. Sir Jony Ive The year 2012 began auspiciously for Jony Ive, as it had for Apple, despite Jobs’s passing. Jony was named a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) in the

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of skeuomorphic design, which put him in the line of fire not only in the eyes of external critics but from some within Apple too. Jony Ive was never a fan of skeuomorphism, according to one unnamed Apple designer speaking to the New York Times.13 In an interview with the UK

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did, however, go as far as to opine warmly that “I don’t think there’s anybody in the world that has better taste than Jony Ive does.” Cook added, “Jony and I both love Apple. We both want Apple to do great things.”19 “Jony Is Irreplaceable” Before he died, Jobs

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his character: He isn’t afraid to take on executive colleagues. To judge from the outcomes of the corporate contretemps that have come to light, Jony Ive possesses both the determination and the corporate firepower to prevail when he chooses to engage in such turf battles. In the creative sphere, there’s

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? Why is it like that? Why is it like that and not like this?’”27 Very likely, as a man who see himself “constantly designing,” Jony Ive will continue to do precisely that at Apple into a future that will feature new designs, new products—and some happy surprises. Reading the Weft

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, and it’s rarely applied with the ruthless discipline practiced by Jony. Indeed, if there’s such a thing as a single secret to what Jony Ive does, it is to follow slavishly the simplification philosophy. That approach has accounted for many of the major breakthroughs, as well as for some products

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new language, and the challenge is, what is, that going to be? I have confidence that Jony Ive has the wherewithal to drive the next step for Apple, but this is by far the most difficult point.” Jony Ive (circled) as a student at Walton High School in Stafford, UK. A concept sketch for

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fired from Apple in 1985. Frog design’s Snow White aesthetic was so influential it set the design language for a generation of computers. When Jony Ive joined Apple in 1992, the design team was slowly trying to move away from Snow White which had dominated the ‘80s. The Domesticated Mac was

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one of Jony Ive’s first speculative designs for Apple. It was an attempt to design a computer for the home, not an office environment. Another of Jony’s

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pricing and marketing doomed it. The eMate was Apple’s first translucent product. Jony felt that translucency made a product less mysterious and more accessible. Jony Ive (left) with his former boss Jon Rubinstein, head of engineering, with some multicolored iMacs, the first product to bring fashion to computers. Associated Press/Susan

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a desktop computer into a much smaller space. The Power Mac G5 was the first computer to feature an interior that was designed entirely by Jony Ive’s team to be aesthetically pleasing. This early engineering prototype of the iPhone was built to test a lot of new components, like the custom

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several requests for comment. Nonetheless, my research partners and I did get a number of people to talk, on and off the record, about Apple, Jony Ive and their unique work culture. Notably, we got some major players, including some who have worked closely with Jony for decades. They took us inside

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the available videos, transcripts, launch archives, books, articles and the Apple product output itself, we offer the fullest picture available of the true events behind Jony Ive’s career and influence at Apple. NOTES CHAPTER 1 School Days 1. London Design Museum, interview with Jonathan Ive, http://designmuseum.org/design/jonathan-ive

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, 42 Brown, Gordon, 197 Brown, Julian, 42 Brunner, Robert, 30–33, 79, 98, 114, 159, 200 Apple’s recruiting and hiring of, 66–67 hires Jony Ive for Apple, 57–61 IDg studio established by and accomplishments under, 62–63, 67–95 at Lunar Design, 51–61, 65–66 management style of

After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul

by Tripp Mickle  · 2 May 2022  · 535pp  · 149,752 words

the Author Copyright About the Publisher Cast of Characters Tim Cook: Chief Executive Officer (2011–present), Senior Vice President for Worldwide Operations, COO (1998–2011) Jony Ive: Chief Design Officer (2015–2019), Senior Vice President of Design, member of design team (1992–2015) EXECUTIVES Angela Ahrendts: Senior Vice President, Retail (2014–

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Darbyshire: Cofounder & CEO, Tangerine Jim Dawton: Designer, Tangerine, classmate at Newcastle Polytechnic Clive Grinyer: Cofounder, Tangerine Peter Phillips: Partner, Tangerine PARENTS OF TIM COOK AND JONY IVE Donald Cook Geraldine Cook Mike Ive Pam Ive Prologue The artist loitered in the dimly lit corridor of a San Jose theater, waiting for his

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his lines, understood what was expected. Knowing that others were studying him, he wore a face that betrayed nothing. It was early June 2019, and Jony Ive’s presence was required at a product demonstration event after one of Apple’s annual gatherings, the ritual performances where the secretive company unveiled its

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do about tariffs, immigration, and privacy. They wanted Cook. The creative soul of Apple had been eclipsed by the machine. Chapter 1 One More Thing Jony Ive steeled himself outside the stately two-story home in Palo Alto. It was early Tuesday morning, October 4, 2011, and a storm system shrouded Silicon

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to imagine him angry than process their unspoken despair that his health had prevented him from attending. When they arrived at the Tudor-style home, Jony Ive had already departed after spending time alone with Jobs that morning. Laurene told the parade of business executives that Jobs was doing poorly and wanted

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city that sprawled outward into Essex, where Chingford is located. Many people who lived in the community were engineers who labored at local factories, including Jony Ive’s grandfather, who worked on machine-tooling equipment at the nearby Royal Small Arms Factory. They raised children and grandchildren who were predisposed to becoming

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and Tim Longley, an engineer, spent three years leading the project, defining the design and directing students as they assembled the machine. Just a child, Jony Ive often followed his father quietly around the craft and listened as Mike explained how to cast aluminum, sculpt fiberglass, or mold the propeller into a

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observed students tinkering with wood or installing rivets. They said he was as engrossed as a child watching Saturday-morning cartoons. Nearly fifty years later, Jony Ive said he could remember the hovercraft “being built with shocking clarity.” IN THE YEARS THAT FOLLOWED, Mike Ive encouraged his son as the boy began

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was considered too young, hardware leader Bob Mansfield was regarded as too narrowly focused, and product marketer Phil Schiller was thought of as too divisive. Jony Ive was better at managing a small team than worrying about Apple’s sprawling business. Retail chief Ron Johnson had the marketing and operational skills required

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huffed. “Are we not creative?” Ultimately, Cook decided to forgo titles. The deal itself answered Schiller’s question. Chapter 11 Blowout Anxiety welled up inside Jony Ive whenever the time came to release a new creation. It was impossible to feel that any product was finished. In the race against the market

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last word. “We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick,” he wrote. “This is my brick.” Chapter 13 Out of Fashion Jony Ive appeared to have reached a new pinnacle. Only a few months earlier, thousands of people had celebrated him with a standing ovation, cheering the Apple

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BEFORE SALES officially began, Apple took its high-end marketing strategy to Italy. Having flaunted the watch during fashion events in Paris and New York, Jony Ive arrived in the world’s other fashion capital, Milan, in mid-April 2015 to show the Italian grandmasters of craft what his combination of California

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were transformative and new, lest it risk entering a period of stagnation or, worse, irrelevancy. For Cook, the pressure was unrelenting. Chapter 17 Hawaii Days Jony Ive arrived in Sunnyvale for a scheduled review of a car project stuck in neutral. It was early 2016, and he quickly grew agitated at the

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Sean Lavery, my fact checker, was a pro’s pro, scrutinizing words, verifying facts, and navigating complexities. John Bauernfeind, my research assistant, unearthed details about Jony Ive and Tim Cook that opened critical avenues of reporting. An all-star support team generously fielded calls, provided edits, and kept me sane. Laura Stevens

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Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Ive, Jony, Andrew Zuckerman, and Apple Inc. Designed by Apple in California. Cupertino, CA: Apple, 2016. Kahney, Leander. Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013. ———. Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level. New York

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s Jonathan Ive in Conversation with Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter,” Vanity Fair, October 16, 2014, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/daily-news/2014/10/jony-ive-graydon-carter-new-establishment-summit. The fifty-eight-year-old Cook: Interview with Joe O’Sullivan, former Apple operations executive. Chapter 1: One More Thing

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2: The Artist Staff called it the holy of holies: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs: description of the space, as well as interviews with Apple staff. Jony Ive grew up: Interviews about the family with friends and work colleagues of Mike Ive, including John Chapman, Richard Tufnell, and Tim Longley. In the years

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/Apples-Jonathan-Ive-How-did-British-polytechnic-graduate-design-genius.html. Ive’s teenage art folder: Interview with Walton design teacher Dave Whiting; Kahney, Jony Ive; NAAIDT HMI Mike Ive presentation 2001, http://archive.naaidt.org.uk/spd/record.html?Id=29&Adv=1&All=3; interview with Ive’s former

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Weaver’s managing director Phil Gray and lead partner Barrie Weaver; interviews with Tangerine’s Peter Phillips, Clive Grinyer, Martin Darbyshire, and Jim Dawton; Kahney, Jony Ive; Parker, “The Shape of Things to Come”; Waugh, “How Did a British Polytechnic Graduate Become the Genius Behind Apple Design?”; Peter Burrows, “Who Is

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24/who-is-jonathan-ive; “Q&A with Jonathan Ive,” The Design Museum, October 3, 2014, https://designmuseum.org/designers/jonathan-ive; “The First Phone Jony Ive Ever Designed” (video), Vanity Fair, Oct. 28, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF21m-6yV0U. Desperately in need of a boost: Interview with

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recruiter who found Cook. “There’s no way Apple”: Interview with executive recruiter Rick Devine, who recruited Cook for Steve Jobs. Chapter 4: Keep Him Jony Ive’s yellow Saab convertible: Interviews with Robert Brunner and Clive Grinyer. San Francisco hadn’t yet been: “San Francisco in the 1990s [Decades Series],” Bay

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computers-cute-enough-to-wear.html. “This is Jony”: Interview with Tim Parsey, former Apple design studio manager, 1991–1996. The resulting computer featured: TheLegacyOfApple, “Jony Ive Introduces the 20th Anniversary iMac,” YouTube, May 21, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et6-hK-LA4A. Lee wanted to conduct: Interview with Robert

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Ive bristled: O’Kelly, “I’ve Arrived.” He considered quitting: Interview with Clive Grinyer; O’Kelly, “I’ve Arrived.” One day in July 1997: Kahney, Jony Ive. The return of Jobs unsettled: Isaacson, Steve Jobs; Brent Schendler and Rick Tetzeli, Becoming Steve Jobs. “What’s wrong with this place?”: Isaacson, Steve Jobs

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Guru Says Job Is to Create Products People Love,” Bangkok Post, January 27, 1999. As they talked at meetings: Interview with Doug Satzger; Leander Kahney, Jony Ive. Ive liked the idea: Karnjanatawe, “Design Guru Says Job Is to Create Products People Love.” “It has a sense”: Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 349. The

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team made models: Leander Kahney, Jony Ive. The plastic shell: Interview with Peter Phillips, who was working at LG at the time. It cost $60 per unit: Isaacson, Steve Jobs. In early

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May 1998: Kahney, Jony Ive. “What the fuck is this?!?”: Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 352; interview with Wayne Goodrich. “Steve, you’re thinking”: Interview with Wayne Goodrich. Another person who

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In his home country: John Ezard, “iMac Designer Who ‘Touched Millions’ Wins £25,000 Award,” Guardian, June 3, 2003. Over the next three weeks: Kahney, Jony Ive; interview with Doug Satzger. In most places that decision: Isaacson, Steve Jobs. In early 2001, Jobs moved: Steven Levy, “An Oral History of Apple’s

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Apple released the iPod: Ron Adner, “From Walkman to iPod: What Music Teaches Us About Innovation,” The Atlantic, March 5, 2012. Despite the triumph: Kahney, Jony Ive. “There’s no one who can”: Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 342. Designers said Thomas Meyerhoffer: Interviews with members of the design team. A member of the

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the-iPod-tunes-into-nature.html. He told his longtime friend: Interview with Clive Grinyer; Parker, “The Shape of Things to Come.” In May 2009, Jony Ive arrived: Isaacson, Steve Jobs. Representatives of Ive said he hadn’t spoken with Isaacson about that important episode. Isaacson didn’t provide Jobs’s response

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.apple.com/newsroom/2005/11/21Apple-Announces-Long-Term-Supply-Agreements-for-Flash-Memory/; Leander Kahney, Tim Cook. The technique, which was used: Leander Kahney, Jony Ive. Cook’s lieutenant, Williams: Corning Incorporated, “Apple & Corning Press Conference: Remarks from Apple COO Jeff Williams,” YouTube, May 17, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/

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, 2013, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oracle-ceo-larry-ellison-google-ceo-did-evil-things-apple-is-going-down/. The designer believed: Cambridge Union, “Sir Jony Ive | 2018 Hawking Fellow | Cambridge Union,” YouTube, November 28, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KywJimWe_Ok. “It will have the simplest”: Walter Isaacson,

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23/fashion/wrist-watches-from-battlefield-to-fashion-accessory.html; Benjamin Clymer, “Apple, Influence, and Ive,” Hodinkee Magazine, vol. 2, https://www.hodinkee.com/magazine/jony-ive-apple; Esti Chazanow, “9 Types of Uncommon Mechanical Watch Complications,” LIV Swiss Watches, December 21, 2019, https://p51.livwatches.com/blogs/everything-about-watches/9

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March 9, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2wJsHWSafc; Benjamin Clymer, “Apple, Influence, and Ive,” Hodinkee Magazine, vol. 2, https://www.hodinkee.com/magazine/jony-ive-apple. Comparable care was given: Ariel Adams, “10 Interesting Facts about Marc Newson’s Watch Design Work at Ikepod,” A Blog to Watch, September 9

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Come.” Some observers speculated: “Fortune 500,” Fortune, 2015, https://fortune.com/fortune500/2015/search/. In advance of the change: Stephen Fry, “When Stephen Fry Met Jony Ive: The Self-Confessed Tech Geek Talks to Apple’s Newly Promoted Chief Design Officer,” Telegraph, May 26, 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple

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/11628710/When-Stephen-Fry-met-Jony-Ive-the-self-confessed-fanboi-meets-Apples-newly-promoted-chief-design-officer.html. Chapter 14: Fuse the iPhone business: Apple Inc., 2015 Form 10-K for

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Tilley and Wayne Ma, “Before Departure, Apple’s Ive Faded from View,” The Information, June 27, 2019, https://www.theinformation.com/articles/before-departure-apples-jony-ive-faded-from-view. For the seats: Foster + Partners, “The Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park,” fosterandpartners.com, September 15, 2017, https://www.fosterandpartners.com/

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‘Steve Jobs,’” Hollywood Reporter, October 7, 2015, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/a-widows-threats-high-powered-829925/. Just days after the anniversary: “Jony Ive, J. J. Abrams, and Brian Grazer on Inventing Worlds in a Changing One—FULL CONVERSATION” (video), Vanity Fair, October 9, 2015, https://www.vanityfair.

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he spoke: Daisuke Wakabayashi, “Apple Sinks on iPhone Stumble,” Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2016. Chapter 17: Hawaii Days “When Anna and Andrew”: Video of Jony Ive’s speech at the Metropolitan Museum of Art obtained during reporting; Dan Howarth, “‘Fewer Designers Seem to Be Interested in How Something Is Actually Made

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of Mac, May 9, 2019, https://www.cultofmac.com/624572/apple-stage-rainbow/. Ive was excited about: Interview with Camille Crawford, former personal assistant to Jony Ive. Over the years: Interview with John Cave, longtime friend of Mike Ive and colleague at Middlesex Polytechnic. “Are you ready to celebrate”: Sina Digital, “

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v=1QfK9UokAIo. The designer’s payout: “10 of the Largest Golden Parachutes CEOs Ever Received,” Town & Country, December 6, 2013. After fifteen years: Tripp Mickle, “Jony Ive’s Long Drift from Apple—The Design Chief’s Departure Comes After Years of Growing Distance and Frustration,” Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2019. Epilogue

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AirPods and, 312–13 Apple Watch and, 133, 140, 176 basic Apple facts about, xiv resignation of, 400 Zuckerman, Andrew, 90, 364–65 Photo Section Jony Ive (right) shows Tim Cook (left) the recently unveiled Mac Pro in a ritual of corporate marketing after the 2019 Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose

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Way We Were,” just one of the examples of what classmates called Cook’s “corny jokes.” Breahna Crosslin While studying industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic, Jony Ive created his first phone, the Orator, a futuristic device that reimagined the traditional product by shaping it like a question mark. He’s shown here

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), joined Apple in 1998 as Senior Vice President for Worldwide Operations, revolutionizing their inventory management and helping them improve profitability. David Paul Morris/Getty Images Jony Ive (left) and Steve Jobs (right) dreamed up many of Apple’s product designs together, including the 2001 iMac G4, which was inspired by a

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s largest wireless provider. The agreement, six years in the making, turbocharged Apple’s sales in China. Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon After Jobs’s death, Jony Ive (right) began working more with friend and fellow designer Marc Newson (left). In 2016, they designed the lobby of London hotel Claridge’s for Christmas

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helped the company avoid financial penalties. Trump mistakenly called the CEO “Tim Apple” during a meeting broadcast on TV in 2019. Mike Theiler/CNP/MediaPunch Jony Ive joined his wife and high school sweetheart, Heather, to walk the red carpet at the Met Gala after Apple signed on to sponsor the Metropolitan

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the Empire State Building. Sam Hall/Bloomberg via Getty Images After the completion of Apple Park, London’s National Portrait Gallery commissioned a photograph of Jony Ive inside the headquarters he’d spent seven years helping Foster + Partners design. Andreas Gursky/ARS, New York, Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London

Steve Jobs

by Walter Isaacson  · 23 Oct 2011  · 915pp  · 232,883 words

Marxist hired by Jobs in 1976 to be the electrical engineer on the Apple II. ROBERT IGER. Succeeded Eisner as Disney CEO in 2005. JONATHAN “JONY” IVE. Chief designer at Apple, became Jobs’s partner and confidant. ABDULFATTAH “JOHN” JANDALI. Syrian-born graduate student in Wisconsin who became biological father of Jobs

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$309 million profit. Jobs was back, and so was Apple. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX DESIGN PRINCIPLES The Studio of Jobs and Ive With Jony Ive and the sunflower iMac, 2002 Jony Ive When Jobs gathered his top management for a pep talk just after he became iCEO in September 1997, sitting in the audience was

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, and the iPad—would set Apple apart and lead to its triumphs in the years after Jobs returned. Inside the Studio The design studio where Jony Ive reigns, on the ground floor of Two Infinite Loop on the Apple campus, is shielded by tinted windows and a heavy clad, locked door. Just

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-booth reception desk where two assistants guard access. Even high-level Apple employees are not allowed in without special permission. Most of my interviews with Jony Ive for this book were held elsewhere, but one day in 2010 he arranged for me to spend an afternoon touring the studio and talking about

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go to slot mode as soon as possible,” Jobs said tearfully. There was also a problem with the video he planned to show. In it, Jony Ive is shown describing his design thinking and asking, “What computer would the Jetsons have had? It was like, the future yesterday.” At that moment there

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call it a “Pod.” Jobs was the one who, borrowing from the iMac and iTunes names, modified that to iPod. The Whiteness of the Whale Jony Ive had been playing with the foam model of the iPod and trying to conceive what the finished product should look like when an idea occurred

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of Warner Music, Roger Ames. This time Jobs was charming. Ames was a sardonic, fun, and clever Brit, a type (such as James Vincent and Jony Ive) that Jobs tended to like. So the Good Steve was on display. At one point early in the meeting, Jobs even played the unusual role

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we have to give,” he told Bono. The singer said he was ready to try to put the deal back together, so Vincent immediately called Jony Ive, another big U2 fan (he had first seen them in concert in Newcastle in 1983), and described the situation. Then he called Jobs and suggested

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to show what the black iPod would look like. Jobs agreed. Vincent called Bono back, and asked if he knew Jony Ive, unaware that they had met before and admired each other. “Know Jony Ive?” Bono laughed. “I love that guy. I drink his bathwater.” “That’s a bit strong,” Vincent replied, “but how

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to play at his funeral. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE PIXAR’S FRIENDS . . . and Foes A Bug’s Life When Apple developed the iMac, Jobs drove with Jony Ive to show it to the folks at Pixar. He felt that the machine had the spunky personality that would appeal to the creators of Buzz

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-CENTURY MACS Setting Apple Apart With the iBook, 1999 Clams, Ice Cubes, and Sunflowers Ever since the introduction of the iMac in 1998, Jobs and Jony Ive had made beguiling design a signature of Apple’s computers. There was a consumer laptop that looked like a tangerine clam, and a professional desktop

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frazzled after working for nine years under Jobs. Their shouting matches became more frequent. There was also a substantive issue: Rubinstein was repeatedly clashing with Jony Ive, who used to work for him and now reported directly to Jobs. Ive was always pushing the envelope with designs that dazzled but were difficult

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multi-touch, touch-sensitive display for me?” he asked. It took them about six months, but they came up with a crude but workable prototype. Jony Ive had a different memory of how multi-touch was developed. He said his design team had already been working on a multi-touch input that

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overseeing the treatment, staying in the hospital room all day and watching each of the monitors vigilantly. “Laurene was a beautiful tiger protecting him,” recalled Jony Ive, who came as soon as Jobs could receive visitors. Her mother and three brothers came down at various times to keep her company. Jobs’s

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Jobs flew back from Memphis on his jet with his wife and sister. They were met at the San Jose airfield by Tim Cook and Jony Ive, who came aboard as soon as the plane landed. “You could see in his eyes his excitement at being back,” Cook recalled. “He had fight

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its functional requirements. At Apple, where Jobs pushed both design and engineering to the edge, that tension was even greater. When he and design director Jony Ive became creative coconspirators back in 1997, they tended to view the qualms expressed by engineers as evidence of a can’t-do attitude that needed

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that should be magical in all of its aspects. Around that time he read an article about magnets, cut it out, and handed it to Jony Ive. The magnets had a cone of attraction that could be precisely focused. Perhaps they could be used to align a detachable cover. That way, it

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Apple as CEO. So it was time for him to resign. He wrestled with the decision for weeks, discussing it with his wife, Bill Campbell, Jony Ive, and George Riley. “One of the things I wanted to do for Apple was to set an example of how you do a transfer of

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Goldberg, Craig Good, Austan Goolsbee, Al Gore, Andy Grove, Bill Hambrecht, Michael Hawley, Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, Elizabeth Holmes, Bruce Horn, John Huey, Jimmy Iovine, Jony Ive, Oren Jacob, Erin Jobs, Reed Jobs, Steve Jobs, Ron Johnson, Mitch Kapor, Susan Kare (email), Jeffrey Katzenberg, Pam Kerwin, Kristina Kiehl, Joel Klein, Daniel Kottke

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, Steve Jobs. Deutschman, 248; Steve Jobs, speech at iMac launch event, May 6, 1998; video of Sept. 1997 staff meeting. CHAPTER 26: DESIGN PRINCIPLES Jony Ive: Interviews with Jony Ive, Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller. John Arlidge, “Father of Invention,” Observer (London), Dec. 21, 2003; Peter Burrows, “Who Is Jonathan Ive?” Business Week, Sept. 25

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a New Machine,” New York Times, Nov. 30, 2003; Leander Kahney, “Design According to Ive,” Wired.com, June 25, 2003. Inside the Studio: Interview with Jony Ive. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, online database, patft.uspto.gov; Leander Kahney, “Jobs Awarded Patent for iPhone Packaging,” Cult of Mac, July 22, 2009

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, May 28, 2009. CHAPTER 27: THE iMAC Back to the Future: Interviews with Phil Schiller, Avie Tevanian, Jon Rubinstein, Steve Jobs, Fred Anderson, Mike Markkula, Jony Ive, Lee Clow. Thomas Hormby, “Birth of the iMac,” Mac Observer, May 25, 2007; Peter Burrows, “Who Is Jonathan Ive?” Business Week, Sept. 25, 2006; Lev

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, 2009; Levy, The Perfect Thing, 198; gawker.com/comment/21123257/; “Steve’s Two Jobs,” Time, Oct. 18, 1999. The Launch, May 6, 1998: Interviews with Jony Ive, Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, Jon Rubinstein. Steven Levy, “Hello Again,” Newsweek, May 18, 1998; Jon Swartz, “Resurgence of an American Icon,” Forbes, Apr. 14, 2000

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; Nick Wingfield, “Apple’s No. 2 Has Low Profile,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 16, 2006. Mock Turtlenecks and Teamwork: Interviews with Steve Jobs, James Vincent, Jony Ive, Lee Clow, Avie Tevanian, Jon Rubinstein. Lev Grossman, “How Apple Does It,” Time, Oct. 16, 2005; Leander Kahney, “How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing

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. 26, 2003, US2004/0006939, Jan. 15, 2004; Gary Allen, “About Me,” ifoapplestore.com. CHAPTER 30: THE DIGITAL HUB Connecting the Dots: Interviews with Lee Clow, Jony Ive, Steve Jobs. Sheff; Steve Jobs, Macworld keynote address, Jan. 9, 2001. FireWire: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, Jon Rubinstein. Steve Jobs, Macworld keynote address

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Hormby and Dan Knight, “History of the iPod,” Low End Mac, Oct. 14, 2005. That’s It! Interviews with Tony Fadell, Phil Schiller, Jon Rubinstein, Jony Ive, Steve Jobs. Levy, The Perfect Thing, 17, 59–60; Knopper, 169; Leander Kahney, “Straight Dope on the IPod’s Birth,” Wired, Oct. 17, 2006. The

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Will Play TV Shows,” New York Times, Oct. 13, 2005. CHAPTER 34: TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY MACS Clams, Ice Cubes, and Sunflowers: Interviews with Jon Rubinstein, Jony Ive, Laurene Powell, Steve Jobs, Fred Anderson, George Riley. Steven Levy, “Thinking inside the Box,” Newsweek, July 31, 2000; Brent Schlender, “Steve Jobs,” Fortune, May 14

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Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell. Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement address. A Lion at Fifty: Interviews with Mike Slade, Alice Waters, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Avie Tevanian, Jony Ive, Jon Rubinstein, Tony Fadell, George Riley, Bono, Walt Mossberg, Steven Levy, Kara Swisher. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interviews with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

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, Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell, George Riley, Tim Cook. Frank Rose, “Battle for the Soul of the MP3 Phone,” Wired, Nov. 2005. Multi-touch: Interviews with Jony Ive, Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell, Tim Cook. Gorilla Glass: Interviews with Wendell Weeks, John Seeley Brown, Steve Jobs. The Design: Interviews with

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Jony Ive, Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell. Fred Vogelstein, “The Untold Story,” Wired, Jan. 9, 2008. The Launch: Interviews with John Huey, Nicholas Negroponte. Lev Grossman, “Apple’s

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, Kristina Kiehl, Kathryn Smith. John Lauerman and Connie Guglielmo, “Jobs Liver Transplant,” Bloomberg, Aug. 21, 2009. Return: Interviews with Steve Jobs, George Riley, Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Brian Roberts, Andy Hertzfeld. CHAPTER 38: THE iPAD You Say You Want a Revolution: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, Tim Cook

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, Jony Ive, Tony Fadell, Paul Otellini. All Things Digital conference, May 30, 2003. The Launch, January 2010: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Daniel Kottke. Brent Schlender, “Bill Gates

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Raphael, “I Want Porn,” esarcasm.com, Apr. 20, 2010; Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, Apr. 28, 2010. Antennagate: Design versus Engineering: Interviews with Tony Fadell, Jony Ive, Steve Jobs, Art Levinson, Tim Cook, Regis McKenna, Bill Campbell, James Vincent. Mark Gikas, “Why Consumer Reports Can’t Recommend the iPhone4,” Consumer Reports, July

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Visionary Leader

by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli  · 24 Mar 2015  · 464pp  · 155,696 words

don’t give a shit about Apple.” Courtesy of Denise Amantea Steve would lunch three or four times a week with his most important collaborator, Jony Ive. The design chief was on the CEO’s wavelength, and Steve knew from the moment he met Jony that he was “a keeper.” © Art Streiber

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few who felt comfortable complaining to him about Amelio. One of those was Apple’s young design chief, a Brit by the name of Jonathan “Jony” Ive, who felt that he was wasting his talent at Apple. He invited Anderson to come by the industrial design lab, which Amelio had not visited

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from NeXT who also engineered several key deals. This group—minus Mandich, who would leave in 2000, and with the eventual addition of design chief Jony Ive—would drive operations at the company well through the mid-2000s. Given Steve’s volatile reputation and track record as a manager, it’s remarkable

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his response. “The reason you sugarcoat things is that you don’t want anyone to think you’re an asshole. So, that’s vanity,” explains Jony Ive, a crisply articulate Brit with the muscled frame of a boxer and a tendency to hunch forward over a table as he leans in to

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more than just another box. He found his answer in the skunkworks of a building several blocks away from the corporate offices. That’s where Jony Ive, the designer who had so impressed Fred Anderson, was toiling away. Ive, Apple’s head designer, was not yet a member of Steve’s inner

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I look at a car, I don’t say, ‘Oh, if I had designed this car I would have done this and this.’ People like Jony Ive and Steve Jobs are always looking at stuff that way. You know, I look at code and say, ‘Okay, this is architected well,’ but it

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quietly licensed from a tiny startup company called PortalPlayer and some elements from Mac OS X. Getting the hardware right was harder. This is where Jony Ive and his team of designers really showed their mettle. They created something known as a “thumb-wheel,” which functioned in some ways like the “scroll

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. Tim Cook now managed an intricate supply chain that fed a global manufacturing network capable of churning out tens of millions of iPods a month. Jony Ive had responded to this higher metabolism and greater manufacturing scale by experimenting with new metals, alloys, durable plastics, and super-hard glass that could be

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somewhat intuitive dexterity. The multi-touch gestures they had contrived to do all of this were rudimentary at this point, but “Jumbotron,” as design chief Jony Ive eventually dubbed their prototype, was intriguing enough to offer a sense of how engaging it would be to control a touch-screen computer with your

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Purple in the first place. But shortly after he returned from surgery, during one of their regular brainstorming walks around the Apple campus, Steve told Jony Ive that he was beginning to think differently. “Steve wanted to shelve the project,” Ive recalls. “I was so surprised because I was so excited about

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. This is why, during the last decade of his life, Steve built so much of his work life around his collaboration and deep friendship with Jony Ive. Their relationship was unlike any creative partnership either had experienced previously. Not only were they both extremely productive, but they seemed to get along even

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wasn’t just a veneer, even though the company did work hard and masterfully to propagate that image with Lee Clow’s brilliant ad campaigns, Jony Ive’s minimalist designs, and Steve’s exacting product introductions, where music players and cellphones were associated with words like magical and phenomenal. It was also

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. He and Laurene remained in Memphis for two excruciating months, during which things were so touch-and-go that relatives and close friends such as Jony Ive, Mona Simpson, Steve’s lawyer George Riley, and others came to visit and perhaps say goodbye to him. Ive even brought a special present from

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board (he would join it after Steve’s death), Steve would seek his advice about things going on at the company, and walk him through Jony Ive’s design lab whenever he came up to Cupertino. “We would stand at a whiteboard brainstorming,” remembers Iger. “We talked about buying companies. We talked

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his death. He was buried on October 8, with some three dozen people attending, including four Apple employees—Tim Cook, Katie Cotton, Eddy Cue, and Jony Ive—along with board members Bill Campbell and Al Gore, Bob Iger, John Doerr, Ed Catmull, Mike Slade, Lee Clow, the four children and Laurene and

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Grain of Sand”; Joan Baez sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”; and Mona Simpson read a moving tribute about Steve on his deathbed. Larry Ellison and Jony Ive also made remarks. Steve’s daughter Erin lit the candles at the beginning of the service, while the other children all spoke: Reed read his

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. Coldplay and Norah Jones, whose music had been featured in Apple television advertisements, played short sets for the crowd. But two speakers provided the highlights: Jony Ive and Bill Campbell, the Apple board member who had been a close adviser of Steve for many, many years. “Steve changed,” said Campbell. “Yes, he

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Clow on October 14, 2013; Jon Rubinstein on July 25, 2012; Avie Tevanian on November 12, 2012; Rubinstein and Tevanian together on October 12, 2012; Jony Ive on June 10, 2014; Bill Gates on June 16, 2012; and Mike Slade on July 23, 2012. The financial numbers and headcount statistics and other

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.com/Dell-Apple-should-close-shop/2100-1001_3-203937.html. Background information about Dieter Rams, the design genius who was the primary inspiration of Jony Ive, Apple’s head of design, came from the website of the German furniture design company Vitsœ, https://www.vitsoe.com/us/about/dieter-rams and

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, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Tony Fadell on May 1, 2014; Eddy Cue on April 29, 2014; Jony Ive on June 10, 2014; Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; and Jon Rubinstein and Avie Tevanian on October 12, 2012. The information and background about

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from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Jim Collins on April 15, 2014; Jony Ive on May 6, 2014, and on June 10, 2014; Tony Fadell on May 1, 2014; Laurene Powell Jobs on October 14, 2013; Tim Cook on

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to decline visibly. We benefitted from lengthy interviews with key current and former executives at Apple, including CEO Tim Cook, senior vice president of design Jony Ive, senior vice president of Internet software and services Eddy Cue, vice president of corporate communications Katie Cotton, and Tony Fadell, the founder of Nest Labs

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, 2014; Fred Anderson on August 8, 2012; Avie Tevanian on October 11, 2012; Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; Jon Rubinstein on July 25, 2012; Jony Ive on May 6, 2014, and June 10, 2014; John Doerr on May 7, 2014; Jean-Louis Gassée on October 17, 2012; and Marc Andreessen on

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, http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?recordid=463&page=26; and upon Apple’s online video archives to obtain the comments by Bill Campbell and Jony Ive speaking at the memorial for Jobs at Apple Inc. headquarters, October 20, 2011, http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/10oiuhfvojb23/event/index.html. Bibliography Books

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Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age. New York: HarperBusiness, 1999. Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Kahney, Leander. Jony Ive: The Man Behind Apple’s Greatest Products. New York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2013. Krueger, Myron W. Artificial Reality II. Boston: Addison-Wessley Professional, 1991. Lashinsky, Adam

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone

by Brian Merchant  · 19 Jun 2017  · 416pp  · 129,308 words

a technical manual; the label itself seems uniquely designed to dull the senses. “There’s no rock-star UI designer,” he says. “There’s no Jony Ive of UI.” But if there were, they’d be Bas Ording and Imran Chaudhri. “They’re the Lennon-McCartney of UI.” Ording and Chaudhri met

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reimagine how humans interacted with computing devices from the ground up, and to ask, what, exactly, they wanted those interactions to be. So Kerr approached Jony Ive to see if the ID group could support a small team that met regularly to investigate the topic. Ive was all for it, which was

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genius to the test. Showtime With a handful of working demos and a reasonably reliable rig in place, Duncan Kerr showed the early prototype to Jony Ive and the rest of the ID group. “It was amazing,” core member Doug Satzger said, sounding taken aback. Among the most impressed was Ive. “This

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compute such ecosystemic narratives. We want eureka moments and justified millionaires, not touched pioneers and intangible endings. ii: Prototyping First draft of the one device Jony Ive had finally decided that the time was right. Maybe Jobs was in an unusually good mood when he dropped by the ID studio for one

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Jobs might actually embrace: Give Cingular exclusivity, and we’ll give you complete freedom over the device. Fix What You Hate From Steve Jobs to Jony Ive to Tony Fadell to Apple’s engineers, designers, and managers, there’s one part of the iPhone mythology that everyone tends to agree on: Before

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latest batches of MP3 phones were looking increasingly like iPod competitors, and new alternatives for dealing with the carriers were emerging. Meanwhile, Bell had seen Jony Ive’s latest iPod designs, and he had some iPhone-ready models. On November 7, 2004, Bell sent Jobs a late-night email. “Steve, I know

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you don’t want to do a phone,” he wrote, “but here’s why we should do it: Jony Ive has some really cool designs for future iPods that no one has seen. We ought to take one of those, put some Apple software around

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this, we’re going to make our own phone.’” “Steve called a big meeting in the boardroom,” Ording says. “Everyone was there, Phil Schiller and Jony Ive and whoever.” He said, “Listen. We’re going to change plans.… We’re going to do this iPod-based thing, make that into a phone

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immaculately designed product hubs are the envy of retail stores around the world. Intended, it is said, to resemble the long wooden tables used in Jony Ive’s Industrial Design Lab, with considerable input from Jobs, who holds a patent on the glass staircases, Apple Stores began opening in the early aughts

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because we were all actually in this lockdown area. It was maybe just forty people at the max, but we had this hub right above Jony Ive’s design studio. In Infinite Loop Two, you had to have a second access key to get in there. We pretty much lived there for

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prototypes as an argument that an Apple phone could succeed in the first place. It’s fitting, then, that the very first known design sketch Jony Ive made of a touchscreen very closely resembles the iPhone screen that actually ended up shipping. “Some of our early discussions about the iPhone,” Ive said

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. There were a thousand problems every day we were trying to sort out. “Every two weeks we’d have a divisional meeting with Steve and Jony Ive and Tim Cook and all the operational teams, ourselves, myself and Tony and the other iPhone leaders. And we would just sit down and go

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intense.” That intensity is also likely the reason that the team that built the iPhone has since scattered to the winds. As of 2017, besides Jony Ive, none of the executive staff at Apple was seriously involved in creating the iPhone. Fadell exited the year after its launch. Scott Forstall was pushed

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, and Greg Christie, in addition to other members of the original iPhone team on background. Further details and quotes from Jony Ive were taken from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, Leander Kahney’s Jony Ive, and Brett Schlender’s Becoming Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs “misremembered” the iPhone’s touchscreen genesis in a Q-and

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were Dogfight, by Fred Vogelstein; Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson; Becoming Steve Jobs, by Brent Schlender; Inside Apple, by Adam Lashinsky; and Jony Ive, by Leander Kahney. Quotes attributed to Jony Ive, Steve Jobs, Mike Bell, and Douglas Satzger were drawn from those sources. John Markoff’s New York Times reporting and Steven Levy

Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

by Patrick McGee  · 13 May 2025  · 377pp  · 138,306 words

the company [that] needs selling now.” A few days later, Jobs decided to visit the Industrial Design studio, where a team of artists led by Jony Ive were working on Apple’s next products. A Matterhorn of Products In a twisted, comical sort of way, Steve Jobs and

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Jony Ive were on the same wavelength the first time they met one-on-one. As Jobs left Apple’s main campus and crossed the road to

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the Columbus prototype, soon to be named iMac. It looked like nothing he or anyone else had built before. “Make it lickable,” Jobs had told Jony Ive. And Ive had delivered. The prototype, machined from a durable cast plastic and painted a bright color, was see-through along the sides and around

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an entire product review.” Jobs went on a tirade. “Ninety-five fucking hundred jobs are depending on you, and you’ve failed!” Jobs fumed to Jony Ive, hardware chief Jon Rubinstein, technology chief Glen Miranker, director of engineering Josef Friedman, and a few others. “You’ve screwed the pooch,” Jobs continued. “I

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, and if the team wasn’t focused prior to that time, we surely were afterward.” Jobs’s biographer Walter Isaacson briefly recounted the event, with Jony Ive calling the rant one of Jobs’s “displays of awesome fury.” In Isaacson’s telling, quoting Jobs, Apple’s manufacturing engineers “came up with thirty

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PD veteran who also joined the iMac project. Several changes were made to get the project over the line, beginning with tweaks from Industrial Design. Jony Ive realized he’d pushed engineering too far. He oversaw changes that made the iMac easier to manufacture and offered more room inside for the logic

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. Or, as someone from ID put it, in skiing terms: “You gotta do a triple diamond to do a blue slope easily, don’t you?” Jony Ive emerged from the hard reset with newfound powers and influence. Jobs had made it crystal clear that ID’s zero tolerance for defects was integral

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given a task that wasn’t impossible. As for Novak, he thrived under Lundgren, who later named him an “iMac hero” along with ten others. Jony Ive recognized it too. Late in the project, Ive invited Novak into his conference room in ID. Novak walked over, worried he was going to be

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a single component, not a single fastener, carried over,” says an engineer from Product Design. “It’s an entirely different product,” adds a subordinate to Jony Ive. Another executive says the bill of materials—the cost of all the components in each iMac—nearly halved from the first generation to the second

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they could be taught. It was the start of a relationship that would transform both companies. The meeting of the minds between Steve Jobs and Jony Ive had made Apple products unique, but it was Terry Gou and Tim Cook who would ensure they were ubiquitous. Uncle Terry’s Vision Terry Gou

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was Cook, in Operations, who developed the relationship with Foxconn is important in understanding Apple’s product development cycle. The shape is a pyramid, with Jony Ive’s Industrial Design team at the top. ID would conceive how a product would look and feel, with an exactitude that drove fear into the

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decade following the return of Jobs. When it worked well, it created discipline and pride. Each domain knew their role, their place in the hierarchy. Jony Ive’s group was put into an elevated position often described as godlike. Unless what ID asked for defied the laws of physics, whatever ID said

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was running out. Steve Jobs had approved the product on the condition that it would ship by the Christmas season. Inventec, which had assembled the Jony Ive redesign of the Newton half a decade earlier, was Apple’s first choice; if they didn’t sign the document, Blevins would just walk out

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was the overall architect. He presented to Jobs a prototype made from foam core and stuffed with old fishing weights to give it some heft. Jony Ive’s team made it unapologetically white, with a polished, chrome-like stainless steel back, a remarkably sharp turn from the childlike colors of the iMac

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the team “because the functionality we were trying to achieve was way beyond anything Apple had done to date.” Advancements in LCD technology had allowed Jony Ive and the ID studio to reconceive from the ground up what a twenty-first-century computer should look like. The form factor of the original

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. “Really Fucking Stupid” For one of the late prototypes, Hillman presented what the manufacturing and assembly would look like to a roomful of VIPs, including Jony Ive and iMac lead Chris Stringer from ID, hardware chief Jon Rubinstein, PD vice president Dan Riccio, and Steve Jobs. At the time, around March 2001

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and Rubinstein, so he relied on instinct. “I actually responded in a second: ‘I agree with you. It is really fucking stupid.’ ” He was indicting Jony Ive and the designers—a big no-no, in most every other circumstance—but Jobs, the only power above ID, had given him license. Jobs turned

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the ID studio was making a strategic transition. Feeling like they’d mastered plastic on the design of the candy-colored iMacs and first iPods, Jony Ive wanted to push the boundaries on other materials, first with metals and later with glass. “We wanted to machine aluminum,” says Tony Fadell. “High polish

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of aluminum rather than multiple parts, a feat of industrial engineering that offered “a level of precision that is completely unheard of in this industry,” Jony Ive said at the time. This was accomplished using a CNC machine, which allows designers to conjure into reality a 3D image file of complex parts

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marked the first time he spoke about Apple’s operational edge at a major event, showing off a video of how it was made, featuring Jony Ive, Dan Riccio, and Mac hardware chief Bob Mansfield. “It put MD on the map,” says one person involved in the effort, referring to Manufacturing Design

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standardized parts and wider tolerances. And they’d play suppliers off one another based on price. But Apple was different: under the design direction of Jony Ive, Apple’s product portfolio remained radically simplified. Even by 2015, Apple was only releasing two new iPhones a year. They were hand crafting luxury phones

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irritated, even furious, that something they’d worked on for countless hours over months was copied and commoditized for the rest of the market. When Jony Ive, in 2014, was asked about the likeness of the latest Xiaomi phones, he fumed: “It really is theft and it’s lazy and I don

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’s investment like a government program is instructive. Year in, year out, China didn’t have the talent or expertise to build the products that Jony Ive’s studio conceived, but the engineers Apple hired out of MIT, Caltech, and Stanford, or poached from Tesla, Dell, and Motorola, routinely got them up

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new Huawei handset for its $2,800 price tag. But in so doing they’ve missed the wider point. It was only in 2014 that Jony Ive complained of cheap Chinese phones and their brazen “theft” of his designs; it was 2018 when Cupertino expressed shock at Chinese brands’ ability to match

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?v=yQ16_YxLbB8. Chapter 4: Columbus—A New World of Computing resignation letter already tucked: Ian Parker, “The Shape of Things to Come” (profile of Jony Ive), The New Yorker, February 16, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come. “The products suck!”: Leander Kahney

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, Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products. New York: Portfolio, 2013, 101–105. “tight green spandex”: Anonymous, “Apple eMate 300,” ancientelectronics (blog), February 10, 2020,

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-dalai-lama-not-big-enough-in-asia/. Chapter 5: “Unmanufacturable”—The iMac “Make it lickable”: Ian Parker, “The Shape of Things to Come” (profile of Jony Ive), The New Yorker, February 16, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come. a shortage of billiard balls: Bill Hammack, “Plastic

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, uploaded May 4, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiWd8ujtK5k. “giddiness of a pardoned prisoner”: Parker, “The Shape of Things to Come.” (profile of Jony Ive), The New Yorker, February 16, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come. stock had hit $39: Doug Bartholomew, “What’s

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, https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2020/02/102717908-05-01-acc.pdf; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 503–12. tied up on other projects: Kahney, Jony Ive, 172–75. “In jail”: Steven Levy, “The Perfect Thing,” Wired, November 1, 2006, https://www.wired.com/2006/11/ipod/. He proposed “Pod”: A version

The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness

by Steven Levy  · 23 Oct 2006  · 297pp  · 89,820 words

industrial design ninja as the guy responsible for the look and visual integration of the device. This is Jonathan Ive. Known within the company as Jony, Ive has continually made design history and put enough Apple hardware into the Museum of Modern Art's design collection to make MOM A an informal

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s Bono caUing him "Jony iPod" helped that one along.) That's inaccurate, but it is fair to say that his vision fixed its look. Jony Ive is a burly guy in his late thirties but appears younger. He's bulky under a loose T-shirt, hair shaved a few nanos short

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brutally simple. It's not just a color. Supposedly neutral—but just an unmistakable, shocking neutral." The Perfect Thing 98 It's almost as if Jony Ive, a London-born industrial artist, were channeling Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville's fabled novel. "In many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as

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." In fact, she promised that HP would sell a blue iPod, which was quite a departure from the shocking neutrality that Apple's design guru Jony Ive had established as a trademark look for the device. But a few hours after my conversation with Fiorina at the Las Vegas Convention Center, I

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution

by Fred Vogelstein  · 12 Nov 2013  · 275pp  · 84,418 words

,” Bell said. “I said, ‘Steve, I know you don’t want to do a phone, but here’s why we should do it: [Design director Jony Ive] has some really cool designs for future iPods that no one has seen. We ought to take one of those, put some Apple software around

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hour later and we talk for two hours, and he finally says, ‘Okay, I think we should go do it.’ So Steve and I and Jony [Ive] and Sakoman had lunch three or four days later and kicked off the iPhone project.” It wasn’t just Bell’s persistence and Ive’s

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working on the software, you used a simulator to test hardware performance. And no one outside Jobs’s inner circle was allowed into chief designer Jony Ive’s wing on the first floor of Building 2. The security surrounding Ive’s prototypes was so tight that employees believed the badge reader called

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like that” critique, and he made no secret of his seeing himself as the eventual Apple CEO. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that chief designer Jony Ive and head of technology Bob Mansfield were so suspicious of Forstall they refused to meet with him unless CEO Tim Cook was present too. I

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to various stores in big cities to witness it all and help whip up the crowds. Head of Global Marketing Phil Schiller went to Chicago. Jony Ive and his design crew went to San Francisco. Steve Jobs’s store was, naturally, the one in downtown Palo Alto at the corner of University

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’d been carrying around in a shopping bag and assembled a prototype of a Mac mini before Jobs’s eyes. He’d gotten chief designer Jony Ive to design the case and, using spare laptop parts, built the innards in his garage. He’d carried all this around with him for weeks

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before Jobs revived it to build the iPhone. Only after the iPhone came out in 2007 did Jobs start to reconsider a tablet. Chief designer Jony Ive had been exploring netbook designs. He was stuck on how to build a machine that small with a keyboard hinge that was both good-looking

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play

by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant  · 7 Nov 2019

professionals” and who were meant to track every product as it was developed; in doing so, he became an early champion of the recently hired Jony Ive, who would go on to design the iPod, the iMac, and the iPhone.15 Yet when I thumbed through Norman’s books and all their

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kind of dishonesty. Should pixels look like metal and wood if they’re not in fact metal and wood? It wasn’t a surprise that Jony Ive—an industrial designer by training, weaned on a faith in materials, the designer of the candy-colored iMac, then the iPhone—would hew to a

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world look more finished than it should. At almost every major Apple product announcement after the iPhone, until his retirement from the company in 2019, Jony Ive, the company’s storied design guru, would lend his dulcet London accent to a video talking about how the miraculous new thing was designed. He

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. In the 1970s Rams laid down a set of ten principles that summed up his philosophy, which today are held sacred by many designers. Under Jony Ive, several of Apple’s products echoed Rams’s iconic designs: the first iPod and the Braun T3 radio; the original iPhone calculator app and the

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loved features was the two-second rewind. Its invention sprang from observing users watching TV and wondering what someone had just said. 2001: APPLE IPOD, Jony Ive, Tony Fadell, and Phil Schiller Just like the Sony Walkman in the late 1970s, the iPod ushered in a wave of gadget adoption that was

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by Alex Kantrowitz  · 6 Apr 2020  · 260pp  · 67,823 words

Ahrendts, the former Burberry CEO and head of Apple retail, would’ve been among this group had she not stepped down in 2019. As would Jony Ive, Apple’s brilliant and sometimes detached former head of design, who stepped down that year as well. Apple’s designers are the first line of

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Fireball (blog). Accessed February 5, 2019. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/02/05/ahrendts-obrien. As would Jony Ive: Gruber, John. “Jony Ive Is Leaving Apple.” Daring Fireball (blog), June 27, 2019. https://daringfireball.net/2019/06/jony_ive_leaves_apple. a leaked United Airlines document: Mayo, Benjamin. “United Airlines Takes Down Poster That Revealed Apple

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