Jony Ive still thinks of Steve Jobs every day
In a new podcast interview, ex-Apple chief designer Jony Ive has told of his hard early years at the company, and how hard it was leaving.
Jony Ive
Jony Ive left Apple in 2019, and reports since have claimed it was because of dissatisfaction with the company following the death of Steve Jobs. Speaking on the "Life in Seven Songs" podcast, he said leaving was more about needing to go on to the next phase of his life.
"I mean, it's a very natural thing, isn't it, that there are chapters and leaving Apple was in some senses, you know, a terribly hard thing to do because I did and I do love the company so, so hugely," he said. "And there's just times when, you know, it's time for the next chapter."
His next chapter concerned forming a design company named LoveFrom, which initially had Apple as a client.
"I had two areas of focus," he continued. "There was the goal to build the most extraordinary creative team that I could... and the other goal was to do that in San Francisco."
Asked about meeting Steve Jobs for the first time, he said he remembers it very clearly.
"I was shocked that he had the patience and the curiosity and interest to come and meet and to spend as much time as he did just looking through the work that was going on in the studio," said Ive, "which was very different from the work that we were, you know, developing and ultimately shipping."
"What was remarkable to me was where I could think and process myself and develop a perspective and an opinion and develop ideas, but could barely describe them," continued Ive, "here was somebody who could almost without thought, it made it appear effortless to describe really complex feelings and perceptions of ideas and opportunities."
"And so there's not a day that I'm not aware of him or aware of the loss," he said. "There's not a day where I'm not grateful for the time, you know, that we got together and for what I learned and what we discovered."
Jony Ive's playlist
"Life in Seven Songs" is a new fortnightly podcast from The San Francisco Standard. Much as the BBC's "Desert Island Discs" has been doing for over 80 years, the show asks an interviewee to select music that is significant to them and their life.
In the case of the new podcast, Ive's picks are:
- "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" by The Police
- "Main Theme/Carter Takes a Train" by Roy Budd
- "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" by The Temptations
- "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds
- "Define Dancing" by Thomas Newman
- "40" by U2
- "This Is The Day" by Ivy
Coincidentally, it's now 10 years since Apple infamously installed U2's then-new "Songs of Innocence" album on every user's iPhone.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
And the bending iPhone 6s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw
I remember one small instance in which I had that kind of realization. I was trying to use an equation from a text book and I wasn't getting the expected result. I started to suspect there was an error in the equation, so I checked another textbook, which had the same equation. So I banged my head against the wall for a while, convinced that I was doing something wrong -- surely it couldn't be the case that I was right and two textbooks were wrong. Finally, I went to my advisor, showed him the equation, and after looking at it for maybe 10 seconds he said, yeah that equation is wrong.
So I realized that this authoritative thing in the world, that I never questioned before, could be wrong. And not only could a textbook be wrong, but pretty clearly the people who write textbooks cut corners, like copying incorrect equations from older text books into their new text book. That experience made me think that maybe these other people weren't so much smarter than me, and maybe I can do something worthwhile, too.
That's the sort of thing that makes me think of Steve Jobs quite often.
I've wondered if that was connected to his departure.
All of these constraints, most of which are competing for priority, lead to compromises and accommodations for any number of reasons, including but not limited to cost, manufacturability, size, weight, power, heat, human factors, etc. Picking the right balance is extremely difficult and important but it’s rarely perfect. No doubt that some designers, like Jony Ive, try to maintain the overall design as close to their design intent and vision as much as possible which ends up sacrificing a bit on other attributes, like accessibility to the mouse’s charging port.
I think that a more holistic interpretation of Jony Ive’s impact of Apple’s success results in a much deeper appreciation of his expertise, abilities, and vision. If you look across the wider landscape of the products that Apple produced with Jony’s contributions you will repeatedly see that his designs not only established a deep brand recognition and design distinction for the Apple products themselves, but also established a benchmark and standard that many other product developers tried to copy at some level or another. Some of these copycat designs were freakishly clones of Apple’s designs while others attempted to add a design twist of their own that ended up with products that looked “off” compared to Apple’s designs.
Finally, the majority of folks on this forum, myself included, are only a small fraction of Apple’s customer base. Things that matter to us are not the only things that drive Apple’s design and product development decisions. The reality is that Apple’s successes are widespread and voluminous. Customer loyalty is through the roof. Finally, the bottom line numbers speak for themselves. Apple has been in a very good place for a long time. Every person at Apple that in some way touched the products being delivered can be thanked for that, but Jony and his team’s contributions were uniquely impactful for a long time and cannot be understated or graded based on any single design. The totality and impact of Jony’s vision was and continues to be one of the things that sets Apple apart from their competitors. Hopefully the standard he helped establish will live on for a very long time.