“Perhaps you’ve already read our cover story on Apple and its three wise men: Chief Executive Tim Cook, chief designer Jonathan Ive, and software head Craig Federighi,” Sam Grobart reports for Businessweek. “Perhaps you read the outtakes from those interviews and even the full transcript of the Tim Cook interview.”
“Well, this is the last installment of our saga, the complete transcript of the Jonathan Ive/Craig Federighi interview (which has been partially edited for clarity),” Grobart reports. “To set the stage, this interview took place a day after the iPhone 5S and 5C launch event. I met Ive and Federighi in a ground-floor conference room in one of the buildings on Apple’s campus in Cupertino, Calif. Federighi was first to arrive, followed by Ive. In case you’re wondering, they’re both nice—not standoffish, not chilly, just nice.”
Grobart reports, “Federighi asked me if I had used Apple products and for how long, which began a conversations about carwash wages and an Apple IIC. Ive complimented my messenger bag, which, I must admit, I was sort of psyched about.”
Two snippets:
• Jony Ive: One of the ironies is that, from a design point of view, we feel that we’ve done our job when you finally get to that point and you think, “Well, there couldn’t be a rational alternative.” It appears inevitable. It almost appears like it wasn’t designed. Then we feel like we got it right, which is sort of semi-ironic, as a design team, to not make you feel like it was designed. But that’s what we try to do.
• Craig Federighi: I think it’s a unique statement about Apple’s values in product development that it is taken as a given among everyone on the team that we will go to the most absurd lengths seemingly to get something just right, to solve, to do the level of architecture work that normally would constitute the most critical element of a product, but we’ll focus that amount of energy and more to say, “That blur has to be just right. That detail has to be just right.”
Much, much more in the full interview here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
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