Founders
Episode 178 #178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products
Founders

Episode 178: #178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products

Founders

Episode 178

#178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney.

What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney.

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[4:43] Mike Ive influence on his son’s talent was purely nurturing. They were constantly keeping up a conversation about made-objects and hw they could be made better.

[6:39] I came to realize that what was really important was the care that was put into it. What I really despise is when I sense some carelessness in a product.

[9:24] Take big chances. Pursue a passion. Respect the work.

[11:47] His designs were incredibly simple and elegant. They were usually rather surprising but made complete sense once you saw them. You wondered why we had never seen such a product like that before.

[15:52] Grind it out. You can make something look like magic by going further than most reasonable people would go.

[17:34] The more I learned about this cheeky, almost rebellious company (Apple) the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had a reason for being that wasn’t just about making money.

[24:06] He was completely interested in humanizing technology. What something should be was always the starting point for his designs.

[33:29] Jony was very serious about his work. He had a ferocious intensity about it.

[41:52] It is very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.

[51:38] Jobs didn't want to compete in the broader market for personal computers. These companies competed on price, not features or ease of use. Jobs figured theirs was a race to the bottom. Instead, he argued, there was no reason that well-designed, well-made computers couldn’t command the same market share ad margins as a luxury automobile. A BMW might get you to where you are going in the same way a Chevy that costs half the price, but there will always be those who will pay for the better ride in the sexier car. Why not make only first class-products with high margins so that Apple could continue to develop even better first-class products?

[1:19:25] A great prompt for your thinking: What is your product better than? Are you just making a cheap laptop? Or are you making an iPad? Netbooks accounted for 20% of the laptop market. But Apple never seriously considered making one. “Netbooks aren’t better than anything,” Steve Jobs said at the time. “They’re just cheap laptops.” Jony proposed that the tablets in his lab could be Apple’s answer to the netbook.

[1:20:32] It’s great if you can find what you love to do. Finding it is one thing but then to be able to practice that and be preoccupied with it is another.

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#178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products

Introduction

I just wanted a sound bite, but he launched into a passionate 20-minute soliloquy about his latest work. I could barely get a word in edgewise. He couldn't help himself. Design is his passion. This one was really hard, he said. He began telling me how keeping things simple was the overall design philosophy for the machine.


We wanted to get rid of anything other than what was absolutely essential, but you don't see that effort. We kept going back to the beginning again and again. Do we need that part? Can we get it to perform the function of the other four parts? It became an exercise to reduce and reduce, but it makes it easier to build and easier for people to work with. Reduce and simplify. This wasn’t typical tech industry happy talk. In releasing new products, companies tended to add more bells and whistles, not take them away. But here was Jony saying the opposite. Not that simplifying was a new approach, it's design school 101, but it didn't seem like the real world in 2003.


Only later did I realize that on that June morning in San Francisco, Jony Ive handed me a gigantic clue to the secret of Apple's innovation, to the underlying philosophy that would enable the company to achieve its breakthroughs and become one of the world's dominant corporations. Content to stand aside as Steve Jobs sold the public on their collaborations, including the iconic iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.


Ive’s way of thinking and design has led to immense breakthroughs. As Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, he has become an unequaled force in shaping our information-based society, redefining the ways in which we work, entertain ourselves and communicate with one another. So how did an English art school grad with dyslexia become the world's leading technology innovator. In the pages that follow we’ll meet a brilliant but unassuming man, obsessed with design whose immense and influential insights have, no doubt, altered the pattern of your life.

That was the introduction from this absolutely wonderful little book that I hold in my hand. Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products, and it was written by Leander Kahney. And this is another example of a book that I didn't even know existed. It was actually recommended to me by two misfits, Seger and Sid. So thank you very much for the recommendation. I actually love the book.

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