“Apple vice-president of industrial design, Jonathan Ive, made a rare public appearance at London’s Design Museum, where he spoke frankly about Apple and his design career. Ive – who leads the team that designed the iMac, iPod, PowerBook, iBook, Power Mac – every Apple product, is UK-born (Chingford), and studied at Newcastle Polytechnic. Ive spent time in Newcastle earlier this week, speaking with staff and students,” Jonny Evans reports for Macworld UK.
“‘So many students ask me about design movements and technology – but those things change,’ Ive told the audience, saying that he believes success as a designer is about, ‘focus and caring.’ Ive looked back at his student years: ‘I remember throwing stuff away and starting again, because I thought it could be a lot better. I worked hard at college. I understand that if you are prepared to keep going, if you really, really care, I think that’s fundamental,’ he advised,” Evans reports.
“Ive’s care and attention to detail imbues the products Apple makes, and Apple as a company ‘isn’t about making money, it’s about making nice things,’ he said. ‘We make money to support our desire to make nice things,’ Evans reports. “Former Apple CEO John Sculley has sometimes claimed that he initiated Apple’s iMac development. Ive denied this: ‘I’ve heard a couple of things – that’s a myth.’ In a rare show of sarcasm, he added: ‘Sure, we had loads of iMacs and iPods on the drawing board before Steve Jobs came back to the company.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “We make money to support our desire to make nice things.” Can you imagine Bill Gates or Michael Dell saying something like that? Gates and Dell will probably laugh out loud when they read Ive’s statement, but it will ultimately be the reason why they fail. Today’s younger generations look for quality products and Microsoft’s fragmented, old, delayed, stripped, insecure operating systems thrown on a commodity consumer-grade box assembled by the likes of Dell just don’t cut it anymore.
For our Windows-only friends, information about smoothly adding a powerful, secure, and fun Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal can be found here.
Microsoft strives for domination;
Apple strives for innovation.
It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
“it isn’t about making money, it’s about making nice things”…ironically, as we have seen…money shows up at the door as a happy by-product when you get this right.
I wonder if Jonathan Ive designed this sign while at Newcastle Polytechnic?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/1118807/
“that is why you fail.” spoke Yoda
I was lucky to get to Ive’s talk – actually it was an hour and a quarter of Q&A’s. He’s a very focussed, very modest and incredibly endearing. He got a fantastic ovation and stayed to chat informally too which was great.
No alluding to products or innovations to come but on being asked he would not discuss the Apple three button mouse – ie bound to be on the way.
He’s also no computer geek – he didn’t get the 17″ Powerbook to display what he wanted!
I gave him 10 out of 10. He’s a great advert for Apple.
” Can you imagine Bill Gates or Michael Dell saying something like that?”
Yes I can. But not with a straight face. And not without the audience bursting out loud.
I’ve always said with Apple (as with all the best companies) ‘Profit’ is the reward for seeking and delivering excellence. For Microsoft ‘Profit’ is the goal in itself – how little can be done for the biggest return.
Ive is a genius and an icon. Simple as that. Add Jobs into the mix and you get what we have. A company driven by ideas not profit, and as noted, as long as your ad types do their bit, bingo, profit.
Now, FFS, advertise the OS.
Thank goodness, Ive is not driven by money but by product philosophy, which happens to be the same as Jobs.
Otherwise, some other company would’ve swiped him from Apple.
What’s more important: making what your customers want to buy, or making what you want to sell?
Scorp_56:
I normally loathe ten word soundbites, but yours is an exception to the rule.
To add some nuance to your argument, what can you say when Ballmer promotes the idea of a $100 computer running a $300 operating system so that the piracy he perceives as an issue will hopefully disappear.
To a sales guy of Ballmer’s calibre (i.e. lucky who he roomed with at college) or even Michael Dell, aesthetics are an afterthought. Ballmer’s sole interest is in driving down everyone else’s costs so that his share of the pie increases. Dell’s interests run along similar lines.
I’m relatively sure that Apple may also be guilty of screwing down suppliers on cost, but the difference is that – for the most part – they don’t compound the ‘sin’ by screwing customers on quality.
The article should be titled.
“at Apple ‘we make money on fools who pay to much and to support our desire to drive nice cars, fly in gulfstreams and make nice things that are typically obsolete in a year”
Scorp:
Microsoft strives for domination;
Apple strives for innovation.
Doesnt every company strive to be the best in their respective industry?
I saw a 20″ iMac G5 for the first time yesterday. Very nice indeed. The new Cinema displays are also spectacular, although they didn’t have a 30″ one on display. Still, the 23″ version was awesome. ;(
Ive is truly a visionary genius, like Jobs. I wish he’d write a book.
NoMacForYou, quit spreading you stink around here. You’ve proven time and time again that you have no appreciation for quality, style, and ingenuity. Go back to your Dell running Windows XP. You deserve them.
He really, really works hard at using really, really in every sentence
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>> Doesnt every company strive to be the best in their respective industry?
No, Microsoft strives to be the only company in their industry. That’s the only way they can be the ‘best’.
Ahh, the ultimate curse, ‘Go Back to Your Dell and Windows’.
“He really, really works hard at using really, really in every sentence
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And Ballmer works really, really hard to use the word “developers” as many times as possible without passing out.
NoMacForYou:
Good question about every company striving to be the best in their field. But how companies define “best” is at the heart of the matter.
For some, it’s about making the most money.
And that’s how a lot of people define success and you need to have money to stay in business so I won’t argue that.
I think Apple though defines “best” as making high quality products. Period. Not market share, not most profits. But quality products (see Jobs interview in BusinessWeek).
This is a subtle, but important, distinction that makes all the difference in the world.
Instead of chasing profits, by focusing on quality and innovation, Apple has found that profits will chase you.
This is not an easy path to take, and as we have seen, it takes time for it to bear fruit (pardon the pun).
But think how satisfying it feels when people appreciate the labor you’ve put into something?
I’ve never read reviews for a consumer computer like the ones for the iMacG5. Has anyone else? Can you think of a product that more meets the needs of its intended users and shows such care and thought?
Oh yeah, there is one.
The iPod.
And we all know who makes that.
NoMacForYou says: “and make nice things that are typically obsolete in a year”
And that is just about the time the Windows world is finally getting it!
We make loads of crap to support our desire get all the money.
BG
“Ive’s care and attention to detail imbues the products Apple makes, and Apple as a company ‘isn’t about making money, it’s about making nice things,’ he said. ‘We make money to support our desire to make nice things,’
This is exactly why I love Apple, and why their stock is so frequently treated poorly by Wallstreet. Your typical stockholder is only interested in three things, money, money and more money. Microsoft makes them happy, Dell makes them happy. Companies who are only in business to make money, not to make a great product make them happy. Apple is more about the product than the money, they make great products first, and the money comes. This is why they have such a devoted following, and this is why naysayers like Thurott and Dvorak and Enderle predict the downfall of Apple time and again, and time and again they are completely wrong.
I also think that the iMac G5, iPod, OS 10, iLife, Powerbooks and iBooks, etc. are great products individually, but when you look at them collectively, are actually the result of a grand vision of what the computing experience can be.
Ease-of-use. Content creation. Security. An industrial design that gets out of the way and lets you create.
The best thing about OS 10 is that I don’t have to worry about it.
Buy a new printer? Just plug it in, it works.
Hooking up a projector? Plug it in, it’ll work.
Rarely do I have to worry about installing drivers. Just plug-in and get doing what I want to do.
No viruses or spyware slowing me down. No annoying help assistant popping up when not asked for and dancing on my screen.
Those are all distractions.
Give me the Mac experience so I can create and the freedom to do it.
“One thing probably none of you have got a clue about,” said Ive, speaking to the audience at the Design Museum, “We worked really, really hard to develop a mechanism that basically spring-loads the clutch so that at a point when you are opening it you counter-balance the display. And it’s one of the points we spent so much time working out, so that the product was so much nicer than anything else.”
This is why a Rolls Royce costs more than a Ford.
This is why people are willing to pay more for a Rolls Royce.
This is why people buy Apple products.
The Windows-ruled computer industry has the public brainwashed into thinking that all computers are the same except for speed. For most of these people, no amount of “proof” will make them believe differently. But, for those of us that do understand, no explanation is necessary.