Apple's Jonathan Ive Opens Up to The New Yorker About the Apple Watch

Jonathan Ive, amiably known as Jony Ive to many, is one of the two most powerful men in the world’s most valuable company. Serving as the senior vice president at Apple, Ive was the man behind the design of many of today’s most recognizable tech items — the iMac, iPod, iPad, MacBook, iPhone and more. Detracting from his mannish frame is his gentleness, touching everyone around him and speaking volumes about his character. The paragon of designers, Ive opens up to Ian Parker of The New Yorker, discussing everything from designing revolutionary items, working at Apple, Steve Jobs, and the process that went into designing the Apple Watch. Click here to check out The New Yorker‘s intimate conversation with Ive, and take a peek into his genius mind.

One afternoon in the studio, Ive sketched the Apple Watch as seen from the side, with the crown asymmetrical on two axes: nearer the top of the watch than the bottom, and nearer the face than the back (there is also a more flush secondary button). As an afterthought, he quickly drew the front of an iPod: a rectangle within a rectangle, and a circle within a circle. He pointed at the watch drawing. “It’s not for us to say if things are iconic,” he said, and then described it as a “very, very iconic view.” Ive explained that, had he centered the Digital Crown, the watch would be a quite different product. “It’s just literal. And you could say, ‘Why is that an issue?’ Well, if it’s literally referencing what’s happened in the past, the information about what it does is then wrong.” The crown rotates, which is reassuring, but it doesn’t wind the watch or adjust hands. The goal, Ive said, was to create “the strangely familiar.”