“The chief of design at Apple, Ive was Steve Jobs’ closest confidant, and now, at 50 years old, six years after Jobs’ death, he’s one of the two most important people at the world’s most valuable company, the other being CEO Tim Cook,” Rick Tetzeli writes for Smithsonian Magazine. “Ive’s mark is on everything Apple builds, from the airy, minimalist chic of its 497 retail stores to seminal devices like the iPhone and iPad, and newer pieces like the Apple Watch and the upcoming HomePod speaker.”
“One of the Ive creations that Apple launched this fall is the company’s vast new headquarters in Cupertino, California,” Tetzeli writes. “The Ring, as Apple employees call the main building on the new campus, is an enormous glass circle that wraps around a landscape of meadows and imported California hardwood trees. Ive spent more than five years working closely with the British architect Norman Foster on virtually every detail, from the 900 curved, 45-foot-long glass panels that serve as walls, to the elevator buttons, which are subtly concave (like the home button on an old iPhone) and made of brushed aluminum (like a MacBook).”
“Jobs loved the iPad, which he called an ‘intimate device’ because it was immersive, like a good book—a window into whatever worlds you chose to explore. ‘In so many ways,’ Ive says, ‘we’re trying to get the object out of the way,'” Tetzeli writes. “The iPhone X, which Ive now holds up for me to see, is Apple’s first phone to have that same transporting quality. It’s really a supercomputer a third-of-an-inch thick with an all-glass front display and back casing that curves seamlessly into the steel band that wraps around the sides. Ive places his space-gray iPhone X on the coffee table next to my iPhone 7-plus [sic], whose white bezel frames its rectangle of glass display. Mine is only a year old, but it looks clunky in comparison. Ive picks up my iPhone and gives a pointed appraisal of his own earlier handiwork: ‘It now seems to me a rather disconnected component housed in an enclosure.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wonder what Jony thinks of Apple TV’s Siri Remote*?
Of course, Ive is right about iPhone 7 Plus and, in fact, all iPhones prior to iPhone X.
*which seems as if it were delegated to a random intern while he was off futzing with subtly concave elevator buttons as the Mac Pro languished in inexplicable stasis
ATV remote is a disconnected piece of plastic shit.
I don’t get the complaints about the ATV remote. I love it. Never needs batteries, just charge it once a year. No need to aim it, just touch it anywhere. Some people seem to have trouble with which way is up, but that’s never been a problem for me.
Jony,
How about some BLACK AirPods, a Toslink our on the Apple TV 4K, a redesigned ATV remote that does not suck like a Dyson, a Real Mac Pro and an updated iPod Touch?
Jony is disconnected. So is Tim Cook and the rest of the pretentious cabal at Apple.
This all sounds a bit self indulgent, doesn’t it?
‘In so many ways,’ Ive says, ‘we’re trying to get the object out of the way.’
“Ive picks up my iPhone [7 Plus] and gives a pointed appraisal of his own earlier handiwork: ‘It now seems to me a rather disconnected component housed in an enclosure.”
I have the iPhone X and i really like it, but the luster of the edge to edge screen wears off after the first couple of uses. After that, it’s the same old iOS and apps that we were all using on our previous phones. And once you put a case on these things, 50 percent of that lovely design goes right out the window.
If Apple really wants to get the “object out of the way,” they should focus on better software. iOS is fine but Apple’s app division really isn’t doing much. They let 3rd party developers handle most of what we’re actually immersed in while using the “object” that Ive is designing. It’s not the design we all spend hours a day interacting with, it’s the software on the object.
The most grating example for me is the “updated” Podcast App on iOS 11. Bafflingly it removed the automatic play feature which played your episodes one after the other (in addition to now forcing two button presses to get an episode to play). There is a long thread on Apple’s forums about this.
I am still waiting for the eminently useful Coverflow view to return to Finder for selecting email and web attachments, which vanished a year or two ago. I struggle to think of anything that Apple has actually improved in its core apps in recent memory that I find useful, versus the things that have been broken or removed.
The Podcast app is one of the most confusing things Apple has ever produced.
The previous version was finally growing on me, then change for the sake of change that sucks. It’s as if UI designers no longer work on Apple apps.
Way to make us iPhone 8 Plus users feel confident in our purchase.
Elevator buttons. At least we have our priorities in order.
MDN, please have your blood sugar levels checked. Often times when people show a consistently negative and complaining and harping attitude, and just plain unhappy all around, they have health issues that are undetected.
I still have a G4 Cube that was Steve’s Baby and it was a POS (except for design) form day one and was never resolved. Steve wasn’t perfect, Tim’s not perfect, Jonny isn’t either – so please get over yourself.
Yes, Jobs made a mistake with the Cube, but he quickly admitted as much and it was discontinued in much less than a year. Apple has obliviously bumbled along with the mini-trashcan MacPro for three years running.
They could have:
1. bumped up the specs of the Mac Mini
2. offered more options for the iMac
3. Created an elegant (or not so elegant) box with room for RAM, 2 PCI slots, a couple HDs (of any size or variety, not just overpriced SSDs) and a truckload of USB3/TB ports, preferably with a couple accessible on the front where I can see the frickin’ orifice.
Is it really that expensive/time-consuming for the richest company in the cosmos to figure this out and get it done in less than three years?
IT’S a DESKTOP, fer cryin’ out loud. Doesn’t need, razor-thin edges, diamond-hardened micro-bezels or an adamantium housing, and size, weight, and power consumptions are non-issues.
“size, weight, and power consumptions are non-issues.”
That’s because the real issue is “existing” and Apple would rather it didn’t.
I can’t but wonder what the all off Apple’s employee’s do. There are very few products, they don’t manufacture anything, a few design people…… What the hell do they all do? Drink coffee, work out and sleep in pods?………
On a scale of zero to ten please share your ratings of Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, and Jony Ive. If you would, please add a short summary of your evaluations. This way everyone can benefit from your wisdom and knowledge.
Steve Jobs: Human, not perfect.
Tim Cook: Human, not perfect.
Jony Ive: Human, not perfect.
All brilliant in their own way.
(not Constant Complaining) and if it’s insightful, truly based on design merits, I never tire of it. A true creator, artist or designer is never done. No object is ever perfect and it’s natural to see weaknesses after the fact and those weakness are often the springboard for new ideas/fresh directions. If it was without fault (read; perfect), a creator would cease making. My unrequested advice, grow a thicker skin & turn up your critical/visual mind. No one is saying anyone is perfect. Jobs was Mr. “Harping” extraordinaire. Excellence demands it.
Dear Constant Complaining:
When Apple stops making stupid and ignorant mistakes we will stop complaining.
Your welcome,
Rational people of the world
SE remains the most iconic; an inspired design others still haven’t copied. When assessing someone else’s hardware do you find yourself looking for something “Apple” to be sure of what it is and that its not a knockoff Samsung. You’ll never get that with an SE. Hope they don’t fu$k it up in this coming cycle of promises.
I’m a great fan of the SE. There’s a lot of scope for creating a bigger screen version of the SE while keeping the case the same size.
I suppose that much depends on what Apple regard the iPhone SE as being. If they regard it as the cheap iPhone, then it won’t get a particularly exciting upgrade, but if they regard iPhone SE as the smaller sized iPhone which still has the features of it’s bigger siblings, then it could become a really exciting iPhone and still without any significant competition.
After evaluating all of the available options I bought a new iPhone 7+. Like the rugged design much better than the fragile 8 or X.
Perhaps the same could be said about Jony?
Dear Jony,
Your design may tantalize but soon the wonder washes away when the underpinnings are dirtied by rookie, amateurish blunders such as the latest Root bug quickly followed by File Sharing bug or the farcical iOS autocorrect bug,
Your good friend Steve would never have had these leave the labs yet, here we are. Now get your head out of the ether and start cracking some skulls along with your same-level leaders.
Maybe if Sir Ive had spent his time designing iPhones rather than farting around with the spaceship building, we’d have better iPhone designs. Then again, they’d probably be thinner still (as that seems to be his primary design criterion).
As cool as the iPhone X is, the SE still has the best industrial design of the batch. the iPhone 5 was the pinnacle of iPhone design IMO.