Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products (31 page)

This prototype iPad has two dock connectors: one on the bottom and one on the side.

Jony is joined by some of his design team at San Francisco’s Apple store, including Daniele De Iuliis
(far left)
, and Danny Coster and Peter Russell-Clarke
(right)
. They are celebrating the first day of iPad sales, which designer Chris Stringer described as a “very special day.”

Associated Press/Paul Sakuma

Along with Jony, Chris Stringer
(left)
and Richard Howarth
(right)
are said to be the core members of Apple’s industrial design team.

Sir Jonathan Ive after getting his knighthood with his good friend, designer Marc Newson (who received a CBE for services to design).

Jony joins Steve Jobs in a product demonstration shortly before Jobs’s untimely death.

Associated Press/Paul Sakuma

The MacBook Air was one of the first Apple products to utilize a Unibody design, a major breakthough that reduces a complex computer case to a single hunk of finely machined metal.

Apple’s industrial design team, after receiving a D&AD Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

Associated Press/Rex Features

First and foremost, I’d like to thank my literary agent, Ted Weinstein, for pushing me to do this book. The team at Portfolio, including the boss, Adrian Zackheim, have been great. Natalie Horbachevsky and Brooke Carey did an excellent job editing, and Hugh Howard performed a postproduction miracle editing the manuscript and shaping the narrative.

Jose Garcia Fermoso and my brother, Alex Kahney, provided invaluable help finding, contacting and interviewing sources.

I’d like to thank John Brownlee for helping me with the writing and running of the Cult of Mac blog in my many long absences. Thanks also to my colleagues on the blog: Charlie, Buster, Killian, Alex, Rob and Erfon, for minding the shop and doing a great job.

The book has benefitted greatly from the reporting of others, in particular Paul Kunkel’s
AppleDesign
, Luke Dormehl’s
The Apple Revolution
and Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs.

There’s a T-shirt you can buy at the Company Store on Apple’s campus. It says, “I visited the Apple campus. But that’s all I’m allowed to say.” That just about sums it up when reporting on Apple.

Trying to persuade people to talk about the company isn’t easy. Apple people don’t talk, even about things that happened thirty years ago. The company is so secretive, that divulging anything—anything at all—is a firing offense. Everyone associated with the company—employees, contractors, partners—has signed a stack of nondisclosure agreements, which threaten not just termination but prosecution to the fullest extent of the law. Employees are mum about current product plans, which is understandable, but they won’t talk about old projects either. The secrecy extends to every single thing Apple does, but especially applies to its internal processes, which it considers industrial trade secrets. Apparently, knowing how Apple conducts meetings, for example, could give competitors a leg up.

Apple is the ultimate need-to-know culture. It operates like a spy organization. Staffers are told the absolute bare minimum to do their (highly specialized) jobs. Only a handful of executives and senior VPs have the whole picture, and often they don’t know what happened in other departments outside their own, or what happened in the rank and file.

Secrecy is so steeply embedded in Apple’s culture, keeping mum is as natural as breathing. Apple employees live in an Apple bubble. They do not attend conferences or give talks, and they barely circulate in Silicon Valley’s professional or social circles. Friends of employees know not to ask their Apple friends about work. If the subject comes up, it’s
met with an apologetic smile. They won’t even share with their spouses. One female designer interviewed for this book said she and her husband are especially careful not to talk about work because everyone expects them to; they work extra hard not to.

We contacted more than two hundred people for this book, mostly current Apple staffers or those who had recently left the company. Some were willing to talk on the record, but many wanted to keep their names out of print. Apple did not respond to several requests for comment.

Nonetheless, my research partners and I did get a number of people to talk, on and off the record, about Apple, Jony Ive and their unique work culture. Notably, we got some major players, including some who have worked closely with Jony for decades. They took us inside the studio and inside the minds behind Apple, in an unprecedented manner. The information they provided, and the details they were able to reveal about the company over many years, were immeasurably useful.

Thanks to their interviews, coupled with extensive research, and the available videos, transcripts, launch archives, books, articles and the Apple product output itself, we offer the fullest picture available of the true events behind Jony Ive’s career and influence at Apple.

CHAPTER 1

School Days

1
. London Design Museum, interview with Jonathan Ive, http://designmuseum.org/design/jonathan-ive, last modified 2007.

2
. Interview with Ralph Tabberer, January 2013.

3
. Ibid.

4
. Design and technology curriculum of UK schools, http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/toolsandinitiatives/a0077337/design-and-technology-dt, updated November 25, 2011.

5
. Interview with Malcolm Moss, January 2013.

6
. Interview with Ralph Tabberer, January 2013.

7
. Rob Waugh, “How Did a British Polytechnic Graduate Become the Design Genius Behind £200 Billion Apple?”
Daily Mail
, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Apples-Jonathan-Ive-How-did-British-polytechnic-graduate-design-genius.html, last modified 3/19/13.

8
. John Coll and David Allen (Eds.),
BBC Microcomputer System User Guide
. http://regregex.bbcmicro.net/BPlusUserGuide-1.07.pdf

9
. Waugh, “How did a British polytechnic graduate become the design genius behind £200 billion Apple?”

10
. Shane Richmond, “Jonathan Ive Interview: Apple’s Design Genius Is British to the Core,”
Telegraph
, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/9283486/Jonathan-Ive-interview-Apples-design-genius-is-British-to-the-core.html, May 23, 2013.

11
. Walter Isaacson,
Steve Jobs
(Simon & Schuster, 2011), Kindle edition.

12
. Paul Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, (New York: Graphis Inc., 1997), p. 253.

13
. David Barlex, “Questioning the Design and Technology Paradigm,” Design & Technology Association International Research Conference,
April 12–14, 2002, pp. 1–10, https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/3167/1/Questioning%20the%20design%20and%20technology%20paradigm%20.pdf.

14
. Mike Ive OBE, keynote address 1, “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” NAAIDT Conference 2003 Wales, Developing Design and Technology Through Partnerships, archive.naaidt.org.uk/news/docs/conf2003/MikeIve/naaidt-03.ppt.

15
. E-mail from a former schoolmate, October 2012.

16
. Interview with Craig Mounsey, March 2013.

17
. Interview with Dave Whiting, September 2012.

18
. Interview with Phil Gray, January 2013.

19
. Ibid.

20
. “Provisional GCE or Applied GCE A and AS and Equivalent Examination Results in England,” http://www.education.gov.uk/researchandstatistics/datasets/a00198407/a-as-and-equivalent-exam-reults-2010-11.

21
. John Arlidge, “Father of Invention,”
The Observer
, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1111276,00.html, December 21, 2003.

CHAPTER 2

A British Design Education

1
. Northumbria University, About Us page, http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/scd/aboutus/.

2
. Interview with David Tonge, January 2013.

3
. Interview with Paul Rodgers, October 2012.

4
. Interview with Craig Mounsey, March 2013.

5
. Design for Industry, BA (Hons), Course Information, 2013 entry, http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/?view=CourseDetail&code=UUSDEI1.

6
. Industrial Placement Information Handbook, Northumbria University School of Design, Placement Office, 2011–2012, http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/static/5007/despdf/school/placementhandbook.pdf.

7
. Octavia Nicholson, “Young British Artists,” from Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, http://www.moma.org/collection/theme.php?theme_id=10220.

8
. Interview with Penny Sparke, September 2012.

9
. Interview with Alex Milton, October 2012.

10
. Ibid.

11
. Carl Swanson, “Mac Daddy,”
Details,
February 2002, volume 20, issue 4.

12
. Nick Carson, first published in Issue 5 of
TEN4:
Jonathan Ive: http://ncarson.wordpress.com/2006/12/12/jonathan-ive/, Jonathan Ive in conversation with Dylan Jones, editor of British
GQ
, following his award of honorary doctor at the University of the Arts London, November 16, 2006.

13
. Ibid.

14
. Rob Waugh, “How Did a British Polytechnic Graduate Become the Design Genius Behind £200 Billion Apple?”
Daily Mail,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Apples-Jonathan-Ive-How-did-British-polytechnic-graduate-design-genius.html, last modified, March 19, 2013.

15
. Clive Grinyer, History, http://www.clivegrinyer.com/history.html.

16
. Luke Dormehl,
The Apple Revolution: Steve Jobs, the Counter Culture and How the Crazy Ones Took Over the World
(Random House, 2012), Kindle edition.

17
. Interview with Clive Gryiner, January 2013.

18
. Interview with Peter Phillips, January 2013.

19
. Interview with Phil Gray, January 2013.

20
. Dormehl,
The
Apple Revolution
, Kindle edition.

21
. Ibid.

22
. Peter Burrows, “Who Is Jonathan Ive?”
Businessweek,
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-09-24/who-is-jonathan-ive, Septermber 26, 2006.

23
. Dormehl,
The A
pple Revolution
, Kindle edition.

24
. Jonathan Ive, Travel and attachment report, http://www.thersa.org/about-us/history-and-archive/archive/archive-search/archive/r31382, 1987–1988, 1988–1989.

25
. The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, History, http://www.thersa.org/about-us/history-and-archive.

26
. Interview with Craig Mounsey, March 2013.

27
. Interview with Barry Weaver, January 2013.

28
. Ibid.

29
. Interview with David Tonge, January 2013.

30
. The Design Council Collection, The Design Council/The Manchester Metropolitan University, Design Council, Design Centre, Haymarket,
London. Young Designers Centre Exhibition 1989. Radio hearing aid designed by Jonathan Ive of Newcastle Polytechnic. http://vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=114262&sos=0.

31
. Burrows, “Who is Jonathan Ive?”

32
. Dormehl,
The Apple Revolution
, Kindle edition.

33
. Melanie Andrews, “Jonathan Ive & the RSA’s Student Design Awards” RSA’s Design and Society blog, http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/category/design-society/page/3/, May 25, 2012.

34
. London Design Museum, interview with Jonathan Ive, http://designmuseum.org/design/jonathan-ive, last modified 2007.

35
. Ibid.

CHAPTER 3

Life in London

1
. Robert Brunner Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/robertbrunnerdesigner/info.

2
. Interview with Robert Brunner, March 2013.

3
. Ibid.

4
. Ibid.

5
. Melanie Andrews, “Jonathan Ive & the RSA’s Student Design Awards” RSA’s Design and Society blog, http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/category/design-society/page/3/, May 25, 2012.

6
. Interview and e-mails with Barrie Weaver, January 14, 2013.

7
. Interview with Phil Gray, January 2013.

8
. Ibid.

9
. Interview and e-mails with Barrie Weaver, January 2013

10
. Interview with Clive Grinyer, January 2012.

11
. Ibid.

12
. Documents provided by Martin Darbyshire, May 2013.

13
. Ibid.

14
. Luke Dormehl,
The Apple Revolution: Steve Jobs, the Counter Culture and How the Crazy Ones Took Over the World
(Random House, 2012), Kindle edition.

15
. Interview with Paul Rodgers, October 2012.

16
. Interview with Clive Grinyer, January 2012.

17
. Dormehl,
The Apple Revolution
, Kindle edition.

18
. Interview with David Tonge, January 2013.

19
. Interview with Peter Phillips, January 2013.

20
. Paul Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, (New York: Graphis Inc., 1997), 254.

21
. Ibid.

22
. Interview with Clive Grinyer, January 2013.

23
. Ibid.

24
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, 254

25
. Interview with Clive Grinyer, January 2013

26
. Documents provided by Martin Darbyshire, May 2013.

27
. Peter Burrows, “Who is Jonathan Ive?”
Bloomberg Businessweek
, http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-09-24/who-is-jonathan-ive, September 26, 2006.

28
. Design Museum interview, http://designmuseum.org/design/jonathan-ive.

29
. Interview with Phil Gray, January 2013.

30
. Interview with Robert Brunner, March 2013.

31
. John Sculley on Steve Jobs, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_JYy_0XUe8.

32
. Harry McCracken, “Newton Reconsidered,”
Time
, http://techland.time.com/2012/06/01/newton-reconsidered/, June 1, 2012.

33
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, 237–38.

34
. Ibid.

35
. Dormehl,
The Apple Revolution
, Kindle edition.

36
. London Design Museum, interview with Jonathan Ive, http://designmuseum.org/design/jonathan-ive, last modified 2007.

37
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign,
236–46.

38
. Interview with Robert Brunner, March 2013.

39
. Dormehl,
The Apple Revolution
, Kindle edition.

40
. Interview with Martin Darbyshire, May 2013.

41
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign,
254.

42
. Dormehl,
The Apple Revolution
, Kindle edition.

43
. Interview with Robert Brunner, March 2013.

44
. Ibid.

45
. Dormehl,
The Apple Revolution
, Kindle edition.

46
. Ibid.

47
. Interview with Robert Brunner, March 2013.

48
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, p. 255.

49
. Dormehl,
The Apple Revolution
, Kindle edition.

50
. Interview with Peter Phillips, January 2013.

51
. Peter Burrows, “Who Is Jonathan Ive?”
Businessweek
, originally in Radical Craft Conference, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California., http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-09-24/who-is-jonathan-ive

52
. Design Museum, http://designmuseum.org/design/jonathan-ive.

53
. Ibid.

54
. Interview with Peter Phillips, Spring 2013.

CHAPTER 4

Early Days at Apple

1
. John Markoff, “At Home with Jonathan Ive: Making Computers Cute Enough to Wear,” http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/05/garden/at-home-with-jonathan-ive-making-computers-cute-enough-to-wear.html, published Feruary 05, 1998.

2
. Paul Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, (New York: Graphis Inc., 1997), p. 81.

3
. Interview with Robert Brunner, March 2013.

4
. Ibid.

5
. Ibid.

6
. Interview with Rick English, December 2012.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Paul Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, 229–30.

9
. Ibid.

10
. College of Creative Arts, Massey University, http://creative.massey.ac.nz.

11
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, 253.

12
. Interview with Robert Brunner, March 2013.

13
. Ibid.

14
. Ibid.

15
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, 253–56.

16
. Ibid.

17
. Ibid.

18
. Ibid.

19
. Ibid., 256.

20
. Ibid.

21
. Ibid.

22
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, 258.

23
. Interview with Rick English, December 2012.

24
. Poornima Gupta and Dan Levine, “Apple Designer: iPhone Crafters Are ‘Maniacal‘,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/01/us-apple-samsung-designer-idUSBRE87001O20120801, July 31, 2012.

25
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, 266.

26
. Ibid., 265.

27
. Interview with Don Norman, September 2012.

28
. Paul Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, 272.

29
. Ibid., 274.

30
. Ibid., 275.

31
. Ibid., 272–77.

32
. Interview with Clive Grinyer, January 2013.

33
. Jim Carlton,
Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania and Business Blunders
(HarperBusiness, 1997), p. 412.

34
. Kunkel,
AppleDesign
, p. 65.

35
. Daniel Turner,
MIT Technology Review
2007, http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18621/, May 1, 2007.

36
. Ibid.

37
. Ibid.

38
. Rachel Metz, “Behind Apple’s Products is Longtime Designer Ive,” Associated Press, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-08-26/Behind-Apples-products-is-longtime-designer-Ive/50150410/1, updated 8/26/2011.

39
. Isaacon,
Steve Jobs
, Kindle edition.

40
. Interview with Jon Rubinstein, October 2012.

CHAPTER 5

Jobs Returns to Apple

1
. Walter Isaacson,
Steve Jobs
(Simon & Schuster, 2011), Kindle edition.

2
. Steve Jobs at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 1998, video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJGcJgpOU9w.