“Apple’s chief design officer, Jony Ive, addressed a handful of topics during Wired Magazine‘s 25th-anniversary event on Monday, including his long-term prospects with the company,” Roger Fingas reports for AppleInsider.
“There remains a lot to do, Ive told Vogue editor Anna Wintour, responding to the question of whether he might stay with Apple for another 25 years. The executive, quoted by journalist Shara Tibken, also noted that he enjoys the team he works with,” Fingas reports. “The ‘energy and vitality and sense of opportunity…it’s extraordinary and it’s very exciting,’ Ive said.”
“‘If you lose that childlike excitement, I think then probably it’s time to do something else,’ he added later in the interview,” Fingas reports. “Asked whether he’s reached that point, Ive simply said ‘Oh goodness no.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. ― Steve Jobs
“I have a blast because I get to work with these super-talented people. Take Jony Ive, If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it’s Jony. The difference that Jony has made, not only at Apple but in the world, is huge. He is a wickedly intelligent person in all ways. He understands business concepts, marketing concepts. He picks up just like that, click. He understands what we do at our core better than anyone. He gets the big picture as well as the most infinitesimal details about each product. And he understands that Apple is a product company. He’s not just a designer. That’s why he works directly for me. There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That’s the way I set it up.
”
Source: “Steve Jobs: The Unauthorized Autobiography”
If your goal is to make things thin, than I guess Apple is an exciting place.
Certainly Jony has designed a greater number of masterful award winning products during his career. He also designed some duds, as well. Like thermal issues with the trash can Mac Pro where design meant more than operating function. Also, loss of function when you make products too thin for thermal and battery issues and removal of useful ports. And let’s not forget the firestorm created with the flattening of iOS 7 icons that made some indiscernible to satisfy his personal Avant-garde tastes and the hell with users…
My understanding of the flat icon fiasco is that Jony Ive handed off the job to subordinates with little more than a brief instruction about the colour palette to be employed. He had fitfully followed the then-current industry fad of flat icon design exemplified by Android and Microsoft’s erstwhile Metro interface. The man was, and still is, a jock: a machine-shop aficionado, happily sweeping up aluminium shavings after a creative stroke. He had little personal interest in the new software design duties that he’d been assigned by CEO Tim Cook. He thinks of himself more as a muscular sculptor, like Michelangelo, than as a cartoonist like Bill Watterson, despite their equal greatness.
Ultimately, Jony Ive wants to design powerful and elegant machines that extend a man’s reach, grasp, and social influence: like the Lamborghini, a car that comes alive with your touch: thrumming almost silently with the sublimated energy of the mating challenge, breathing fire with a squeeze of the throttle, providing perfect expression of your will to take on the world! Unfortunately for him, Apple’s automobile design aspirations are like Google’s: remove the pleasure of driving from the driver. Maybe that’s why he’s spent more time designing shotguns and books with metal pages.
Personalities and priorities aside, the pursuit of thinness is not just a vanity project to be ridiculed. It is a continuation of the process of electronic miniaturisation that has been going on for seventy years. That is not an Apple thing, but an industry-wide aspiration. Apple leads in that, and should not be condemned for it. Rather, Apple should licence their technology to other companies who could make lumpen people like you and me happy by producing fatter and heavier devices bristling with ports, whilst Apple continued its brilliant invention of the future unencumbered by our temporal inconveniences.
Excuse me, Jony is in charge of design whether he likes it or not. He gave the instructions and the approval.
So, MeToo flat design to copy Metro and Android. Apple following, not leading — how wonderful! If you remember Derek Curie and others advocated for the next phase in 3D design, not copying others.
BTW, wonderful words spawning lucid mind images of the streamline powerful Lamborghini.
On another note. “It is a continuation of the process of electronic miniaturisation that has been going on for seventy years. That is not an Apple thing, but an industry-wide aspiration. Apple leads in that, and should not be condemned for it.”
Not against “miniaturization” per se. What I am against is when it goes too far. When they remove connectivity ports and headphone jacks, I get less for more money. Then I am FORCED to spend even MORE MONEY on rich Apple to survive and have the same functionality? Just not right. Also, thinness adds to thermal issues and affects battery life. It’s OK, we can respectfully agree to disagree on this one. 🙂
Thank you for an insightful post…
The most extraordinary about Apple for the time being, is the sheer stupidity and stubbornness shown to a large section of their Mac user base.
Exactly. What would be exciting are new macs and keyboards that just work rather than just work.
Is India exciting, extraordinary and full of opportunity for Tim Cooks Apple? How is apple doing in India?
Wow, is this a 10 year old speech? No?
Cue Jethro Tull….
He “enjoys the team he works with”… using their cheese grater Mac Pros according to that photo shown right here on MDN.
He and Phil the Schill both have a bad case of verbal diarrhoea.
I think what Jony Ive is doing is called “tooting one’s own horn.” Did anyone ask him what they’re doing about the Mac Mini or is that no longer an exciting and extraordinary product?
No self interest there… none….
Perfect!…
Well, what is he supposed to say? Apple sucks?
Yup, and that he and Tim Cook deserve keel hauling for not getting excited and selling an updated MacPro when Intel upgrades their chips by one micro hertz. It’s a travesty, an outrage that aspiring MacPro users – all 82 of them, have had their measurebating bragging rights suppressed for years. Lock ‘em up I say.
Of course not. That said, would like to see a little humility instead of arrogant hubris all the time when Jony screws up big time.
The “can’t innovate my ass” was the worst comment an Apple executive ever said as far as I can tell. Forget the industrial design the trash can has multiple problems I won’t detail here because they have been covered extensively on MDN for five years now.
When you bring in a panel of pro computer experts to study the problem, downgrade the Mac Pro from previous highs, take away ports and limit upgradability, charge more and don’t upgrade it for five years — that’s the hubris I’m talking about.
That said, we shall see the jury is still out…