Jonathan Ive: at Apple ‘we make money to support our desire to make nice things’

“Apple vice-president of industrial design, Jonathan Ive, made a rare public appearance at London’s Design Museum, where he spoke frankly about Apple and his design career. Ive – who leads the team that designed the iMac, iPod, PowerBook, iBook, Power Mac – every Apple product, is UK-born (Chingford), and studied at Newcastle Polytechnic. Ive spent time in Newcastle earlier this week, speaking with staff and students,” Jonny Evans reports for Macworld UK.

“‘So many students ask me about design movements and technology – but those things change,’ Ive told the audience, saying that he believes success as a designer is about, ‘focus and caring.’ Ive looked back at his student years: ‘I remember throwing stuff away and starting again, because I thought it could be a lot better. I worked hard at college. I understand that if you are prepared to keep going, if you really, really care, I think that’s fundamental,’ he advised,” Evans reports.

“Ive’s care and attention to detail imbues the products Apple makes, and Apple as a company ‘isn’t about making money, it’s about making nice things,’ he said. ‘We make money to support our desire to make nice things,’ Evans reports. “Former Apple CEO John Sculley has sometimes claimed that he initiated Apple’s iMac development. Ive denied this: ‘I’ve heard a couple of things – that’s a myth.’ In a rare show of sarcasm, he added: ‘Sure, we had loads of iMacs and iPods on the drawing board before Steve Jobs came back to the company.'”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: “We make money to support our desire to make nice things.” Can you imagine Bill Gates or Michael Dell saying something like that? Gates and Dell will probably laugh out loud when they read Ive’s statement, but it will ultimately be the reason why they fail. Today’s younger generations look for quality products and Microsoft’s fragmented, old, delayed, stripped, insecure operating systems thrown on a commodity consumer-grade box assembled by the likes of Dell just don’t cut it anymore.

For our Windows-only friends, information about smoothly adding a powerful, secure, and fun Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal can be found here.