Jony Ive talks about minimalism, taste, and Apple's design group
Ex-Apple design head Jony Ive has spoken at the Stripe Sessions 2025 conference about his career going from the UK to Silicon Valley, and from Apple to his own firm, LoveFrom.
Jony Ive at the Stripe Sessions 2025 conference -- image credit: Stripe
Jony Ive has been making more public appearances lately, certainly compared to his more private time when he was in Apple and tended to speak just on launch videos. Usually, too, he speaks about his friend Steve Jobs and the way the two of them worked together.
For his interview at the annual Stripe Sessions conference, though, Ive was pressed more on the deeper issues of design -- and on his opinions of Silicon Valley.
"I consulted for Apple for a couple of years," he said, "and then they persuaded me to move to San Francisco -- to move to Apple here."
"What I saw, I think, was -- or what I felt was a sort of an innocent euphoria, I think, of like-minded people driven by values clearly in service of humanity gathering together in some small groups, in some huge groups," he continued. "But I do believe there was a very strong sense of purpose. And that purpose was we are here to serve the species."
In case that sounded grandiose, Ive talked about how his concern was for how often people will use Apple's products and so how much tiny details matter. "I had such a clear awareness that in designing a certain solution -- for example, how we managed a cable that's in a box, that designing that, I knew that millions of people would engage with this little tab."
Away from product design, and yet also central to his operation when he was design chief, Ive revealed one idea that he'd used to help he and his team bond. "One of the things I thought was great was that every Friday morning, I asked that one person on the design team would make breakfast for the whole team," he said, "and we took it in turns."
The whole hour-long interview shies away from specifics about the products Ive designed, such as the iPhone or the iMac, and instead dwelt on the whole technology industry -- and our use of the devices that are created by it.
"I actually think that something that I feel conscious of is that I think generally in the valley and generally in our... industry, I think joy in humans has been missing," said Ive. "And that's something that sort of weighed on me a bit. And the products that we're all developing, they're complicated, aren't they? And sometimes joy gets confused with being trivial."
Separately, the Apple Watch that Jony Ive was key to designing, just celebrated its 10th anniversary. He's reportedly currently working with OpenAI's Sam Altman on a new AI project.
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Comments
Oh. Maybe I’m not commenting on anything new. I just Googled him and the first image that popped up was that of an interview of him from September 2024 wearing a nearly-identical outfit (including the shoes). That’s very minimalist of him. Is this specific outfit his version of Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck?
I'm not entirely convinced that he has achieved very much without the supervision of Jobs.
What has he done since leaving Apple? That red nose?
Having a single button on your phone is minimalist. Having that button perform multiple actions depending on whether or not it's pressed, long-pressed, double-tapped, or triple tapped?
Not so much.
The tech freaks always criticised Jony Ive's obsession with minimalism. Without it, the World would be a far worse place.
I usually don't allow any Microsoft software on my Mac, put it down to experience, but they bought the lovely, simple and uber-useful 'To Do' app. Now it is getting exponentially complicated and buggy and needs updates every couple of days - typical Microsoft! This would be the whole World without Jony Ive and Steve Jobs.