...naware of Google’s plans, “the obvious and right place” for such a thing was the wrist. When he later saw Google Glass, Ive said, it was evident to him that the face “was the wrong place.” Cook said, “We always thought that glasses were not a smart move, from a point of view that people would not really want to wear them. They were intrusive, instead of pushing technology to the background, as we’ve always believed.” He went on, “We always thought it would flop, and, you know, so far it has.” He looked at the Apple Wat...
Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple - The New Yorker
9 years
..., or tardiness. That summer, Google made an eight-pound prototype of a computer worn on the face. To Ive, then unaware of Google’s plans, “the obvious and right place” for such a thing was the wrist. When he later saw Google Glass, Ive said, it was evident to him that the face “was the wrong place.” Cook said, “We always thought that glasses were not a smart move, from a point of view that people would not really want to wear them. They were intrusive, instead of pushing technology to the backgro...
Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple - The New Yorker
9 years
Hankey’s words were a reminder of the difficulty in obeying Dieter Rams’s commandment about long-lasting design. In 1973, a Sony ad announced, “This could be the tape deck you’ll leave your great-grandson.” That line, similar to the theme of Patek Philippe ads, may have been wishful, but it was not yet an absurd way to talk about consumer electronics. Today, Apple’s designers, like their competitors, ...
Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple - The New Yorker
9 years
The company’s process, which is enabled by almost limitless funds, and by sometimes merciless pressure on suppliers and manufacturers, also provides a layer of commercial armor plating: an Apple object is “manufactured in a way that makes it harder to copy,” Paola Antonelli said. “That’s the genius. It’s not only the formal effect.” When, in 2007, Robert Brunner first saw a MacBook’s “unibody” housing—made, unprecedentedly, out of a milled block of alumi...
Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple - The New Yorker
9 years
Typically, Robert Brunner explained, design had been “a vertical stripe in the chain of events” in a product’s delivery; at Apple, it became “a long horizontal stripe, where design is part of every conversation.” This cleared a path for other designers. In 2007, Brunner formed his own consultancy, Ammunition, and began working with Beats, a new headphone company founded by Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. Brunner’s f...
Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple - The New Yorker
9 years
...Powell Jobs, she cried out, “Yes! That is such a breakthrough, I forgot about that.” For each product, Jobs and Ive would discuss corners “for hours and hours.” She later noted that she and Ive share a taste for Josef Frank, the Austrian-Swedish designer of rounded furniture and floral fabrics, who once announced, in a lecture, “No hard corners: humans are soft and shapes should be, too.”
Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple - The New Yorker
9 years