Full video of Jony Ive's Vanity Fair interview posted online

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  • Reply 21 of 60
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Rogifan View Post





    According to the book Leander Kahney wrote about I've, he is dyslexic. Clearly public speaking is not his forte. It's a shame that he's so nervous when speaking in public because I do think he's fascinating to listen to. You can tell he's so passionate about what he does and what he believes.



    I don't think that he is nervous or shy when speaking, rather he is incredibly modest considering his status as one of the world's best designers and he carefully considers how he wants to articulate his responses to the questions he is asked.

  • Reply 22 of 60
    bdkennedy1bdkennedy1 Posts: 1,459member

    OMG all of his babbling. I couldn't make it half way through the video.

  • Reply 23 of 60
    chadmatic wrote: »

    I don't think that he is nervous or shy when speaking, rather he is incredibly modest considering his status as one of the world's best designers and he carefully considers how he wants to articulate his responses to the questions he is asked.

    I think some of his responses are also calculated to avoid a lawsuit. ;)
  • Reply 24 of 60
    rogifanrogifan Posts: 10,669member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bdkennedy1 View Post

     

    OMG all of his babbling. I couldn't make it half way through the video.


    What babbling?

  • Reply 25 of 60
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    chadmatic wrote: »
    I don't think that he is nervous or shy when speaking, rather he is incredibly modest considering his status as one of the world's best designers and he carefully considers how he wants to articulate his responses to the questions he is asked.

    I think he's the type that doesn't like to cause any conflict. That was indicated with him asking Steve to dial down the criticism of his design team. It probably also explains getting rid of Forstall and replacing him with Federighi. Federighi doesn't seem like the type that would argue over things. It was good that Steve gave Ive the authority to make decisions above everyone except Tim so that he doesn't have to argue with people.

    He was being humorous and lighthearted through the whole interview but every time he was saying something humorous, it was quite reserved and low-key, which seemed like a way to quickly avoid offending people if it didn't go over well.

    I like that he's reached the status he has because I think there aren't enough people like him and people who are will too often get held down by more forceful personalities. It could just be an act though to hide the fact he's really a cold-blooded killer:

    1000

    Do we really know what happened to Forstall? Nobody has seen or heard of him since.

    One thing with the interviews Ive does is they keep covering the same topics and he uses the same answers. There's always something new, which makes it worthwhile but the more interviews he has, the more it'll seem like covering old ground. Future interviewers should make a point of not asking questions that have been used before.

    I liked when the interviewer asked when he got into work and he said he left around 7:30-8am on a 2 hour commute and the interviewer said so you get in around 8:30-9am and Jony said yeah. It adds up to 9:30-10am but I still don't think he's going in that early. He doesn't need to, he can design things at any time of the day, why struggle through the peak traffic? He also said he made phone calls from his car, that doesn't necessarily mean a chauffeur but it sounds like it. If not, stop making phone calls from your car Jony.
  • Reply 26 of 60
    I watched this interview.

    I can't stand the Vanity Fair editor, Graydon Carter, who sits there staring at Ive and looking surly. I thought his questions were poorly chosen.

    I warmed to Ive initially, but as the interview wore on, I became less convinced. 

    I don't think he's right about a lot of design philosophy at all. Contrary to what he stated, beautiful things can be useless, useful things can be ugly. That's just how it is. Yes, it's nice to combine beauty with function, but that's not Ive's goal; his goal is simplicity with function, which is but a narrow subset of ideals, which are desirable for making electronic tools. 

    I also thought that he needs a mirror. In the later stages of the interview, he talked about people knowing instinctively if something has been designed with care or carelessly. In my opinion, the iPhone 6 has not been designed with the loving care of previous iPhones. So this part of the interview I saw as Ive's subconscious uncontrollably revealing itself.
  • Reply 27 of 60
    pazuzupazuzu Posts: 1,728member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bdkennedy1 View Post

     

    OMG all of his babbling. I couldn't make it half way through the video.




    He does go on and on- one of the nicest things about last week's keynote was that it didn't include him in a video.

  • Reply 28 of 60
    rogifanrogifan Posts: 10,669member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Benjamin Frost View Post



    I watched this interview.



    I can't stand the Vanity Fair editor, Graydon Carter, who sits there staring at Ive and looking surly. I thought his questions were poorly chosen.



    I warmed to Ive initially, but as the interview wore on, I became less convinced. 



    I don't think he's right about a lot of design philosophy at all. Contrary to what he stated, beautiful things can be useless, useful things can be ugly. That's just how it is. Yes, it's nice to combine beauty with function, but that's not Ive's goal; his goal is simplicity with function, which is but a narrow subset of ideals, which are desirable for making electronic tools. 



    I also thought that he needs a mirror. In the later stages of the interview, he talked about people knowing instinctively if something has been designed with care or carelessly. In my opinion, the iPhone 6 has not been designed with the loving care of previous iPhones. So this part of the interview I saw as Ive's subconscious uncontrollably revealing itself.

    My guess is Ive wasn't really referring to aesthetics when talking about beauty vs ugly. A lot of people have told me the new iPhones are the best feeling iPhones Apple has ever made. I'm sure Ive and Apple feel it's been made with care.

  • Reply 29 of 60
    rogifanrogifan Posts: 10,669member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post



    One thing with the interviews Ive does is they keep covering the same topics and he uses the same answers. There's always something new, which makes it worthwhile but the more interviews he has, the more it'll seem like covering old ground. Future interviewers should make a point of not asking questions that have been used before.

    I liked the Vogue interview because we did get some new stuff. I think it was the first time he talked about his family. Mentioned he was married 27 years (got married when he was 21) and talked about spending time with his 10 year old boys. I was kind of surprised as personal  stuff has been off limits in the past.

  • Reply 30 of 60
    steve666steve666 Posts: 2,600member

    Ive has way too much power at Apple. I don't think Jobs would have let him touch OSX.

    Why is this guy doing software? Judging by how hideous Yosemite is, he never should have been let anywhere near it.

    Safari looks ridiculous, like a third grader designed it.

    His obsession with thinness at the expense of functionality is so annoying I wish Apple would just get rid of him already.

  • Reply 31 of 60
    rogifanrogifan Posts: 10,669member
    steve666 wrote: »
    Ive has way too much power at Apple. I don't think Jobs would have let him touch OSX.
    Why is this guy doing software? Judging by how hideous Yosemite is, he never should have been let anywhere near it.
    Safari looks ridiculous, like a third grader designed it.
    His obsession with thinness at the expense of functionality is so annoying I wish Apple would just get rid of him already.

    Ahem, this is from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs:
    Jobs described to me his respect for Ive:

    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 stuff up just like that, click. He understands what we do at our core better than anyone. If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it’s Jony. Jony and I think up most of the products together and then pull others in and say, “Hey, what do you think about this?” 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. He has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That’s the way I set it up.

    If you want to blame someone for giving Ive too much power, blame Steve Jobs. Same goes for thinness. Steve Jobs was as obsessesed with thin as anybody. Oh and by the way not everyone thinks Yosemite is hideous. In fact many people like it. The Verge review gave it an 8/10 for design. Other reviews have said its a welcome and needed design refresh. You can call it hideous but I think you're in the minority.
  • Reply 32 of 60
    jd_in_sbjd_in_sb Posts: 1,600member
    Dented cardboard
  • Reply 33 of 60
    rogifan wrote: »
    steve666 wrote: »
    Ive has way too much power at Apple. I don't think Jobs would have let him touch OSX.
    Why is this guy doing software? Judging by how hideous Yosemite is, he never should have been let anywhere near it.
    Safari looks ridiculous, like a third grader designed it.
    His obsession with thinness at the expense of functionality is so annoying I wish Apple would just get rid of him already.

    Ahem, this is from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs:
    Jobs described to me his respect for Ive:

    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 stuff up just like that, click. He understands what we do at our core better than anyone. If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it’s Jony. Jony and I think up most of the products together and then pull others in and say, “Hey, what do you think about this?” 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. He has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That’s the way I set it up.

    If you want to blame someone for giving Ive too much power, blame Steve Jobs. Same goes for thinness. Steve Jobs was as obsessesed with thin as anybody. Oh and by the way not everyone thinks Yosemite is hideous. In fact many people like it. The Verge review gave it an 8/10 for design. Other reviews have said its a welcome and needed design refresh. You can call it hideous but I think you're in the minority.


    Agreed.

    I know I sounded very harsh on Ive, but it's largely due to his philosophical bent.

    Jobs was obviously quite correct in recognising his genius. I just think that he didn't put the attention to the iPhone 6 that he would normally have done, due to the ?Watch.
  • Reply 34 of 60
    rogifanrogifan Posts: 10,669member
    Agreed.

    I know I sounded very harsh on Ive, but it's largely due to his philosophical bent.

    Jobs was obviously quite correct in recognising his genius. I just think that he didn't put the attention to the iPhone 6 that he would normally have done, due to the ?Watch.

    Someone on Twitter was musing about whether ?Watch took resources off other things. I don't know. But I do know as a $180B company its damn near impossible for Apple to be run like a startup. And just as Bill Gates left Steve Ballmer a whole lot issues at Microsoft, Steve did the same to Cook at Apple.

    I think we're starting to find out just how resource constrained Apple is. If they can't work on something like ?Watch and new iPhones at the same time there is s problem. Ben Thompson says user experience shouldn't suffer at the expense of features. But I don't think it's an either/or proposition. I can't think of one feature in iOS 7 or 8 that I would say is not useful and get rid of it. The issue isn't adding features (which many people felt iOS needed) it's that the amount of stuff Apple tried to do in two years with the resources they have was just too ambitious. I honestly wouldn't be opposed to major software updates every two years and the off years are for polishing and bug fixing.

    But mostly Apple needs to fix their resource issues. Does it really make sense that, excluding retail employees, Apple has fewer employees than Google? Cook said this year Apple is on course to do $180B in revenue. The law of large numbers is coming into play now. Apple needs new products and services for continued growth. We're already seeing growth stall with iPad. And IMO iPhone takes an unhealthy share of the revenue pie. Apple needs new revenue streams which is why we're seeing things like ?Watch and ?Pay (and the stuff Apple is working on that according to Cook there have been no rumors about). Of course all of this new stuff takes resources. Apple's new campus can't come soon enough.
  • Reply 35 of 60
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,309member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Rogifan View Post





    Someone on Twitter was musing about whether ?Watch took resources off other things. I don't know. But I do know as a $180B company its damn near impossible for Apple to be run like a startup. And just as Bill Gates left Steve Ballmer a whole lot issues at Microsoft, Steve did the same to Cook at Apple.



    I think we're starting to find out just how resource constrained Apple is. If they can't work on something like ?Watch and new iPhones at the same time there is s problem. Ben Thompson says user experience shouldn't suffer at the expense of features. But I don't think it's an either/or proposition. I can't think of one feature in iOS 7 or 8 that I would say is not useful and get rid of it. The issue isn't adding features (which many people felt iOS needed) it's that the amount of stuff Apple tried to do in two years with the resources they have was just too ambitious. I honestly wouldn't be opposed to major software updates every two years and the off years are for polishing and bug fixing.



    But mostly Apple needs to fix their resource issues. Does it really make sense that, excluding retail employees, Apple has fewer employees than Google? Cook said this year Apple is on course to do $180B in revenue. The law of large numbers is coming into play now. Apple needs new products and services for continued growth. We're already seeing growth stall with iPad. And IMO iPhone takes an unhealthy share of the revenue pie. Apple needs new revenue streams which is why we're seeing things like ?Watch and ?Pay (and the stuff Apple is working on that according to Cook there have been no rumors about). Of course all of this new stuff takes resources. Apple's new campus can't come soon enough.

    Qualified people have to be found and hired. Lots of competition for software engineers. I will say that the "issues" with recent releases / events seem to be fixed pretty fast, and I do like Yosemite / iOS UI correlations.

     

    On hardware, Apple is picking up hires a lot easier now that the PC industry is slowing. I can imagine Apple surpassing all competitors in delivered mobile GPGPU design (if Apple A8X bests Nvidia Tegra K1 benchmarks, that's a beatdown for sure). 

     

    BTW: Even after all of its hires, Google is still 98% an advertising company.

  • Reply 36 of 60

    I agree with the concept that Mr. Ive has too much power, regardless of who gave him the power.  He has misused his position to force his minimalist design concepts on the entire UI experience.  Bad idea.

     

    Contrast and color exist in nature and make our lives easier.  The same concept should be applied to software and user interface.  The bland, colorless, no-contrast, thin lined world preferred by Mr Ive really makes the user experience a giant pain as virtually everything is harder to see and takes me time to identify.

     

    Yosemite is even worse than Mavericks.  I suggest that Mr Ive go back to designing the exterior shell and be banned from software.  For crying out loud he is a DESIGNER, and an extremist at that.  How about devoting some attention to Mail (which has become a major pain on the behind the way it multiplies messages overtime you delete).  How about devoting some attention to Reminders (which is a fantastic tool but needs better stability and search features.)

     

    C'mon Apple.  normal people use colored hi-liters and underline things to gain contrast.  Time to go back to the concept of making things work for the consumer instead of catering to the weirdness of this designer.

  • Reply 37 of 60
    steve666steve666 Posts: 2,600member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Rogifan View Post





    Ahem, this is from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs:

    If you want to blame someone for giving Ive too much power, blame Steve Jobs. Same goes for thinness. Steve Jobs was as obsessesed with thin as anybody. Oh and by the way not everyone thinks Yosemite is hideous. In fact many people like it. The Verge review gave it an 8/10 for design. Other reviews have said its a welcome and needed design refresh. You can call it hideous but I think you're in the minority.

     

    You may be right, however I am surrounded by Apple users and every single one of them dislikes Yosemite.

    I would love to see a poll.

    I knew Jobs liked Ive and thinness, but I don't know if he would ever take it to this level, where machines need to be neutered to satisfy thinness.

    Personally I think it's ludicrous.

    Ive didn't go near software when Jobs was in power

  • Reply 38 of 60

    Other than to satisfy the massive ego of Mr Ive I am having a really difficult time trying to figure out why Yosemite even exists as an update.  I would be satisfied if major updates only happened every two or three years.

  • Reply 39 of 60
    rogifanrogifan Posts: 10,669member
    steve666 wrote: »
    You may be right, however I am surrounded by Apple users and every single one of them dislikes Yosemite.
    I would love to see a poll.
    I knew Jobs liked Ive and thinness, but I don't know if he would ever take it to this level, where machines need to be neutered to satisfy thinness.
    Personally I think it's ludicrous.
    Ive didn't go near software when Jobs was in power
    Ive wasn't involved in software when Steve was around because Steve chose to silo hardware and software. He even siloed Mac vs iOS. At one point there were different hardware and software leaders for both. When Cook let Forstall go he decided to streamline. One hardware leader, one software leader and one design leader across all hardware and software. There's definitely growing pains with this new org structure and Apple has tried to do a lot in the past two years (probably bit off more than they can chew).

    You may have anecdotal evidence that people don't like Yosemite. I'm sure I could find a bunch of people that think it's great. I've read reviews on various tech sites and the reviews are mostly positive. The Verge rated the design 8/10 which is the same rating Mavericks got. I don't pay a lot of attention to initial reactions design changes. Usually the people that dislike something are the most vocal especially on the internet. That certainly was the case with iOS 7. You would think iOS 7 (and now 8) was the most hated thing in history and yet Apple is selling more phones than they ever have. I think the haters are a vocal minority.
  • Reply 40 of 60
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    rogifan wrote: »
    My guess is Ive wasn't really referring to aesthetics when talking about beauty vs ugly. A lot of people have told me the new iPhones are the best feeling iPhones Apple has ever made. I'm sure Ive and Apple feel it's been made with care.

    I would only add that "feel" is as important as looks in aesthetics. The word aesthetics itself is based on "sense perception," meaning all the senses, and it carries a strong bias toward feeling, so we end up with "anaesthesia," lack of feeling.

    If you watch Jony Ive speaking, his hand gestures give him away. He interacts with the world with his relatively massive hands, and he often favors the left, meaning his right brain, where whole things are integrated, is engaged.

    This is all just facile psychologizing, though. The proof is the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus cases and cover glass. Like you say, many are going to say that these are the best-feeling iPhones ever made. He designs by touch, which merges both looks and function when it's a hand tool we're talking about.

    Anyway, we're rarely had such a designer in our midst designing tools for the masses. We're enormously lucky to have him and his team when the new tools are so revolutionary. That world in your pocket and all . . .
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