London’s Financial Times today carries a profile of Jony Ive in which he discusses how the Mac changed his dislike of computers, why he is consumed by design and disinterested in sales, the difference between designing a phone (and its slim battery) and designing a smartwatch–and why Apple decided to take a low-key approach on even the top-end Edition watch.
The piece also contained an interesting (if possibly mistaken) estimate on Apple Watch pricing (update: Apple PR has now confirmed to us that the FT is indeed mistaken) …
Ive told the FT‘s Nick Foulkes that the original Macintosh changed his view of computers, and set the tone for his design philosophy It is a story that’s been told before but it makes an interesting opening.
I was inherently sceptical and didn’t like using a computer at art school. I remember discovering the Mac just at the end of my course. What shocked me was that via this object I became aware of the people who had designed, developed and made it. So in a way I wasn’t actually that interested in the Mac itself, but did have a clear sense of the humanity within it […] I think you start to develop a relationship with the product, in that you feel it’s the result of the great care taken by the people who worked together to develop it. And you respond to that.
That sense of humanity is, he says, what drives the design team’s meticulous attention to detail.
This is difficult to describe and it could be misinterpreted very easily, but there is a sense of almost serving your fellow humans. While people might not be able to articulate why they care and why they prefer one thing over the other, I really think that most people are very discerning.
Foulkes says that Ive has something of the same intensity about him as Steve Jobs.
Perhaps the least emotionally loaded way of describing Jobs would be intense. There is also some of that intensity about the way Ive works, and it is this professional focus that liberates him from worrying too much about Apple’s share price and its effect on the US dollar. He says the design team is not “distracted by or overly concerned with the ramifications of what we do, because we’re so consumed by design and trying to solve problems. I think being fanatical and myopic are fundamental to our approach.”
This myopic approach is, says Ive, the reason he doesn’t worry about how many Apple Watches the company will sell.
I’m much more concerned about how we can make them as good as possible than how many we’ll sell. We’re brutally self-critical and go through countless iterations of each product
Designing the Apple Watch was, he says, a very different experience to designing the first iPhone, because the team came from a totally different starting-point.
It was different with the phone – all of us working on the first iPhone were driven by an absolute disdain for the cellphones we were using at the time. That’s not the case here. We’re a group of people who love our watches. So we’re working on something, yet have a high regard for what currently exists.
And the way we interact with a watch is very different to the way we interact with a phone.
“One of the things that struck me,” says Ive, “was how often I’d look at my watch and have to look again quite soon afterwards, because I hadn’t actually comprehended what the time was. If I had looked at something on my phone, because of the investment involved in taking it out of my pocket or my bag, I would certainly pay attention. I quite like this sense of almost being careless and just glancing. I think for certain things the wrist is the perfect place for this technology.”
One of the tidbits shared in Bloomberg‘s piece about the Apple Watch developer workshops was that Apple recommends watch apps are designed to be used for no more than ten seconds at a time.
Foulkes says Ive is unapologetic about the anticipated one-day battery-life of the Apple Watch, just as he is with the iPhone–despite the fact that 60% of our readers want it to be improved.
“When the issue of the frequent need to charge the iPhone is raised,” Foulkes writes, “[Ive] answers that it’s because it’s so thin and light that we use it so much and therefore deplete the battery.”
Many high-end watches come with extravagant cases and packaging. The Apple Watch Edition won’t, says Ive.
We didn’t want the packaging to be a sort of shorthand for value, where the box needs to be big and we have to include expensive materials. We’ve always liked the idea that if we are heavy in our thinking, we can be much lighter in the implementation. So there’s huge virtue, I think, in keeping the packaging small: at least, it is the right choice environmentally, it’s easier to move things around and you don’t end up with your wardrobes full of large watch boxes that you don’t use.
Foulkes also makes reference to pricing, suggesting that the steel model of the Apple Watch will have the same starting price as the Sport model.
He runs through the three ranges of Apple Watch with their different materials – the stainless-steel Apple Watch, the anodised-aluminium Apple Watch Sport (both from $349) and the Apple Watch Edition in 18ct yellow or rose gold (with an as yet unconfirmed price of around $4,500).
There is no quote from Ive on price, and the ‘both’ is probably a mistake, but you’d have thought with such a high-profile piece that Apple PR would have vetted it for factual errors. Update: Apple PR has now confirmed to us that the price reference was “a misinterpretation.”
In fact, the complete piece makes an incredibly interesting weekend read, if you can wait that long.
We should of course learn much more about the Apple Watch–hopefully including the actual pricing on the steel and gold models–at the Apple’s Spring Forward event on Monday. The wearable goes on sale in multiple countries in April.
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Monday can’t come soon enough, then finally all this stupid price speculation will be over with.
there will be plenty of more speculation at that point. but most of the big questions should be answered.
True. They’re so annoying. Especially “anal-ysts”.
“60% of our readers want it to be improved.”
This drives me nuts!
Do you want battery life to stay the same?
Do you want battery life to improve?
Of course we want things to improve! Even if we’re happy with the current product!!!!
I’m surprised it wan’t 100%
Well, the price would be a thicker device, so it will never be 100%
But if we chose ‘improve battery life thought chip efficiencies without making phone thicker’, we’re lumped in with the 60% who want improvements right?
even if one might think the battery life / thinness ‘sweet spot’ is perfect.
No, 60% (originally – 66% now) think Apple “should thicken the iPhone to improve battery life.” http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/25/results-users-want-apple-to-thicken-the-next-iphone-to-improve-battery/
Ah, ok. I apologise. But yeah, don’t make it thicker Apple… ;-)
And more importantly, Ben, is that users want the battery life to be improved, but what they SEE is that Apple made mind-bogglingly inane design changes like making the iPhone 6 0.7mm thinner than the iPhone 5 by effectively protruding the camera through the back shell, off-centered so the thing rocks like a crappy knockoff phone when set down and used. No one was especially unhappy with the thickness of the iPhone 5, it was already slimmer than the 4! I doubt you’d have found 30% of people before the 6 shipped that would have voted “Thinner” as a Top 3 feature. Yet Apple made that odd change…completely at the expense of longer battery life, which absolutely WAS a Top 3 feature request. It was the purposeful weird design choice at the expense of battery that has most users baffled and disappointed. Personally, I don’t understand what Ive’s team was thinking; the camera bulge is ugly and not clearly a functional improvement. Well, that’s not true, I –do– know what they were thinking: they know that 90% of users put cases on their iPhones, to protect those shiny metal bodies, and by protruding the lens outwards from the chassis they were effectively pushing it further through cases too. And that is really another “design” problem here: Apple is designing for function over form, it’s just that there are only subtle hints that prove that and they belie the design “intention” that Apple otherwise espouses.
I suspect it’s techies who want more battery-life, while the mass-market is wowed by thinness
Not with the non-techies I know. Most of the techies actually carry cables and the like, and plug-in in a very opportunistic manner. Non-techies don’t think of such things. And unlike RAM, battery life is something that impacts them, very directly, and they have little understanding of the intricacies like quitting apps and Location Services running, etc. No, most of the complaints I hear are from non-techies, many of whom have come from Android or have many Android-using friends (so are not “enveloped” by the Apple RDF on all sides). They know inconvenience; and when someone like me parrots the Apple marketspeak about “thinness”, the usual response is “well, that is dumb…”
Some people use their phones WAY too much and it’s so unhealthy IMO. I know that sounds like an excuse, but it’s also true. In 6 months of iPhone 6 ownership I haven’t had a single day when the phone died before bedtime and regularly get two full days. In other words, my heavy use days easily get me a full day and I can’t imagine being on my phone for that long as to not make it. That literally sounds like a mental disorder akin to OCD.
Loving these recent glimpses into the design detail behind everything Apple does. This one wasn’t as in depth as the New York Times piece, but there’s a few cracker quotes in there.
When it comes to opening any new purchase, Apple or otherwise, packaging is important, and mad as it sounds, I love that anticipation as a box pulls away and slides off to reveal my latest crazy investment.
To think Ive and Co actually engineer that experience is amazing, I thought I was just being weird, but now I know I’m weird on an Apple Design Team level! :-)
Completely agree. It’s a huge part of the process. A pal of mine told me (don’t know if it is right or not but it could be) that with the iPhone the box has been designed so that it takes the perfect amount of time to come apart to build anticipation before the phone is revealed.
Also, first time I bought an iMac the assistant fetched it for me in a normal brown box. I joked to him that I thought Apple paid the utmost attention to their packaging too. He said, and I quote “No sir, this brown box is to protect the actual iMac box inside.”.
I was gobsmacked.
I am quickly becoming a Apple Fanboy. I’ve used an iPhone for a couple years now, after using an iPod touch for the previous couple of years. I recently purchased a iPad Mini to replace a android tablet and a windows 8.1 tablet I had. I also purchased a MacBook Air to replace my PC laptop. I am a cross between a mainstream user and a techie, more on the mainstream user side. I can’t help but love the design, construction and UI of these products. When you compare Apples and organges there are pluses and minus for each device, price being one of them. But in my opinion, Apples build qualtity and the passion they put into their products has one me over.
It’s great isn’t it? And the haters will now point out how the competition is also making high quality premium stuff now, but fail to acknowledge that they are doing so only as a reaction to Apple’s success. Before Apple, they were making cheap plastic garbage with little design care or passion just to pump the economy full of commoditized junk. Now they are all about design, gee I wonder why?
Apple stuff isn’t perfect, and it has bugs too, but it does come with so much more of that “the people that designed this stuff obsessed over it and love it” rather than “this stuff was made to satisfy the corporate accountants only”. It’s not for everyone, but for those who appreciate the finer things in life like a good wine or how a BMW drives, etc…
I read the whole article, and as for Apple “moving toward luxury,” I certainly hope they do not go so far as to the average person not being able to afford their products anymore…you are a 700 billion dollar company for a reason, the average joe put you there. Don’t leave us behind.
They won’t. In one of the previous articles one of the executives questioned the luxury aspect of the watch and how apple is a company for everyone, and a luxury product may confuse people. They’re fully aware of what they’re doing.
my guess.
on 09.03. we will hear: “edition. 18k gold. and it will be available from only (1)998”
:D
Great interview and more insight into his design thoughts.
Must say for someone who has great design taste, as a fellow Englishman he really needs to sort his shoes out !! :-)
Do I sense narcissism in Jony?
Like the market Apple forced to give their phones bigger screens, Ive will reluctantly come to realise that the market is shifting towards better battery life, at long last. Too bad he’ll do it later, rather than sooner.
Jony, a very beautiful creation isn’t worth a damn, if it is sitting dead with its battery drained more often than not.
Lightning cables, we can get away with that:
– It’s easy (and cheap) to leave a spare one lying around at the office.
– It’s easy to buy a little microUsb-to-lighning adaptor and keep it in our wallet for “emergencies”.
But carrying around a spare MagSafe adaptor that’s (apparently) the size of a small stack of coins (or buying a few spare ones at probably $30 a pop) isn’t gonna be very practical, mate…
It might be an elegant solution in Jony’s eyes, but I’m not sure how he “connects” with the needs of “normal” working and busy people anymore.