We reported yesterday on The Telegraph’s interview with Apple’s design guru Jonathan Ive, and the video of Ive officially being knighted at Buckingham Palace, after being granted knighthood last December for his work in design and enterprise. Last night, at the Queen’s Jubilee celebration of the arts, the BBC’s James Naughtie had the chance to speak with Ive. The designer explained that his passion goes back to the age of seven. He also confirmed plans to stick around at Apple for a while, and he even discussed his design ideals. The full six-minute audio clip from BBC Radio 4 is above.
“…Part fine art, part engineering… The goal isn’t to make money, the goal is to try and develop the very best products that we can.”
In a rare Q&A with the Evening Standard‘s Mark Prigg from the firm’s headquarters, Apple’s design guru talks about Apple’s design process and of course the competition.
When asked what made design different at Apple, Ive responded:
A: We struggle with the right words to describe the design process at Apple, but it is very much about designing and prototyping and making. When you separate those, I think the final result suffers. If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it’s new you are confronting problems and challenges you don’t have references for. To solve and address those requires a remarkable focus. There’s a sense of being inquisitive and optimistic, and you don’t see those in combination very often.
On the genesis of new products:
A: What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but then the next day there is an idea. Where you see the most dramatic shift is when you transition from an abstract idea to a slightly more material conversation. But when you make a 3D model, however crude, you bring form to a nebulous idea and everything changes — the entire process shifts. It galvanises and brings focus from a broad group of people. It’s a remarkable process.
Apple’s goal when building a new product:
A: Our goals are very simple — to design and make better products. If we can’t make something that is better, we won’t do it.
Why is the competition seemingly unable to keep pace with Apple?:
A:Most of our competitors are interested in doing something different, or want to appear new — I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us — a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better.
One particularly interesting comment regarded the praise Ive has for Apple’s iOS iPhoto team (which I do not believe Ive is involved with). He gushed, “The iPhoto app we created for the new iPad completely consumes you and you forget you are using an iPad.”
Aatma Studio just posted this iPad 3 concept. However, by the looks of it, we might have to wait for the iPad 5 for most of these features. The same studio has done other Apple product concepts in the past like this iPhone 5 concept. This, of course, follows Apple’s announcement earlier today confirming the next-generation iPad will unveil March 7 in San Francisco. We will bring you live coverage of the event next week as it goes down.
A new patent application published by the US Patent & Trademark Office (via Patently Apple) today reveals Apple’s possible plans to radically change the implementation of antennas in future iPhones and other small form factor devices.
The majority of the patent describes a new composite material made up of a “foam substrate formed of a plurality of foam cells”. However, possible uses for the composite, as detailed in the patent, include a possible new antenna window on mobile devices. This would mark a huge departure from the antenna design in the currently shipping iPhone 4, which still relies on the antenna baked into the stainless steel frame. The same antenna that caused so much controversy regarding reception issues.
Patently Apple explains the potential benefits of the composite: Expand Expanding Close
We reported yesterday on The Telegraph’s interview with Apple’s design guru Jonathan Ive, and the video of Ive officially being knighted at Buckingham Palace, after being granted knighthood last December for his work in design and enterprise. Last night, at the Queen’s Jubilee celebration of the arts, the BBC’s James Naughtie had the chance to speak with Ive. The designer explained that his passion goes back to the age of seven. He also confirmed plans to stick around at Apple for a while, and he even discussed his design ideals. The full six-minute audio clip from BBC Radio 4 is above.
