Time flies: in November it will be five years since Jonathan “Jony” Ive left his position as the legendary chief designer at Apple. It seems that this upcoming anniversary has affected the former chief design officer (CDO) with a special nostalgia: in the podcast “Life in Seven Songs” he asked not only the most important pieces of music of his life but also talked about his time at the iPhone maker.
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Tough time before the job
In the show he recalls, among other things, the time when Apple was not doing so well in the 1990s. I moved from the UK to California on his own initiative in 1992 to join the industrial design team. “It was a time when Apple seemed to be dying.” He himself moved around the world for this “great company”. He missed London and his friends and his family. He also did not understand the culture at first and moved from a very small design company to a large corporation, which irritated him. “And now (this company) was heading towards irrelevance. (…) It was a very, very difficult time.”
Then in 1997 Steve Jobs returned to Apple, which was very influential for Ive. Instead of tinkering – and hoping that his designs would be implemented – Ive was able to see real interest from the executive suite for the first time. He was surprised that Jobs had the patience, curiosity and interest to meet him. “Then he spent a lot of time in the (design) studio, looking at what we were working on. These were all things that were completely different from what we developed and then delivered.” For Ive, this was a special time: “It didn’t exist before and it hasn’t existed since” – which should obviously be understood as a criticism of the post-Jobs era.
It was very hard for Ivey to leave
The tracks I chose for “Life in Seven Songs” included “De Do Do, De Da Da Da” by The Police, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds or “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” by The Temptations. There are also the soundtrack titles “Define Dancing” (Thomas Newman, from “Wall-E”) and “Main Theme / Carter Takes a Train” by Roy Budd (from “Get Carter”). As the final track he chose “This Is the Day”, written by Ivy.
However, “40” by U2 holds special significance for Ive: the song references it Psalm 40which reminds Ive of his departure from Apple. “Leaving Apple was in some ways an extremely difficult decision because I love this company so much. But there are times when it’s time for the next chapter.” Today Ive works with his own design company LoveFrom for various clients such as Airbnb and OpenAI. However, the collaboration with Apple had ended. Ive said he still thinks about Steve Jobs every day. He would have seen the world the same way.
(B.Sc.)
