Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products Hardcover – November 14, 2013

I was excited to see a book on Jonathan Ive, the head of Industrial Design at Apple. He is a living legend – with the Queen’s knighthood no less - with the string of runaway hits Apple has had. Stories abound of how the finer things in life from forging of samurai swords to examples from marine biology influence his design thinking. Author Leander Kahney summarizes his enduring legacy with this comment “(Ive) introduced the concept of fashion to an industry previously preoccupied with speeds and feeds”I was also a bit concerned Kahney would fall into traps authors often fall into when they profile tech executives as I wrote recently – speculation without direct access to the subject, and a chronological version of the subject’s life. Kahney does but it does not affect this book as much. He focuses more on the huge product hits – the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and iPad and uses his long term watching of Apple (he publishes the Cult of Mac) to use alumni and other contacts to weave enough of Ive into the descriptions. And unlike Walter Isaacson with Steve Jobs, he does not focus much on Ive’s youth other than to show the influence his dad and his consulting days in the UK had on his aesthetic sense.There is plenty of detail to savor – like the Daler Rowney sketchbooks preferred by the ID team, Bondi Blue translucence of the first iMac and Ive's minimalist stamp on the new iOS7. Apple fans will particularly relish these details of two decades of products they have enjoyed. Personally, I liked the design culture Kahney describes that Robert Brunner, IDEO, frog and others brought to the Valley in the 90s that have reshaped so many of our devices since. I also liked the fact he invokes anecdotes from auto, furniture and other product design from Italy, Japan and elsewhere.I would have liked to seen more on the “industrial” part of ID. The marvel of Apple is it can scale to millions of units within weeks of launch of what appear to be complex, lovingly man-made products. He talks a bit about the Unibody manufacturing process and the Foxconn contract manufacturing role but the majority of the focus is on individual product features.I also thought there is some hero worship where he describes Ive as irreplaceable at Apple, even more than Jobs was. Apple is a multi-dimensional phenomenon with its retail store experience, its massive apps ecosystem, its impressive supply chain and memorable marketing all as important as the product elegance.Overall, though I found it an enjoyable read. He fills in some of the gaps in other recent books about Apple. This comment in the chapter detailing the super secret ID studio is telling: “Walter Isaacson was given a tour (of the studio) but he only described the presentation tables in his biography of Jobs”

Like any excellent novels, this book is so impossible to put down! I am more than fascinated by his approach to the design process and the influences placed upon him as he grew up and studied the industrial design. In addition, it is more than a biography about Jony Ive; it also highlighted the tumultous challenges and hurdles of shifting the end result from engineering perspectives to design process as well as the difficult environment at Apple when the engineers and executives had a final say in the design process.The book described the exacting attention to the detail in his design process and end result that made Apple products very sought after. For instance, Jony insisted on the design process that favours the intimate human interaction with the machine rather than the end result from the engineering and manufacturing limitations. Because of him, the consumers have developed the taste for the 'organic' and 'humanistic' machines, which made iMac and iBook in translucent casing a roaring success in the late 1990s and iPod in the early 2000s. With Steve Jobs, Jony Ive had shifted the paradigm of interacting with the machines for the 21st century when the end result is finally consumer-oriented first instead of machine-oriented that dominated the electronic devices for many years. Jony Ive forced the engineers to work with him on stripping down the components to the minimium requirements while challenged them to seek the different approach of putting the components together. The result is amazingly high quality products with fewer pieces and manufacturing process that would be unthinkable or impossible in the past.Jony Ive and Steve Jobs wanted the minimalistic approach to the human interaction, design process, and engineering that made the unknown or untried manufacturing process and material into the mainstream only to be copied or adopted by other companies. Thus, Jony Ive explored different material and manufacturing process while pushing the engineering and manufacturing envelopes many times over. He took lot of risk in using the completely different or untried manufacturing process and different materials. The PowerBook Titanium was brilliant from the design and engineering perspective but deeply flawed during the use in the real world. The arm for iMac G4 with 'floating monitor' was absolutely an engineering feat: one can use a finger to move the monitor effortlessly. The milled aluminium was very expensive and could not be done in large quantities prior to the unibody MacBook.The proverbial icing on the cake was his work on iPhone and iPad.Of course, it highlighted some information from other sources such as Walter Isaacson's book, Steve Jobs, especially the close relationship with Steve Jobs who challenged Jony Ive to continue seeking perfect design solutions. That is understandable given the Apple's reputation of maintaining tight lips and keeping everything very close to the chest.I would recommend this book to the students of industrial design and to the people who are involved in the industrial design. And to the engineers, too!

I was very interested to read Kahney's book about Ive as I've heard about the Apple designer often. So I was happy to hear about it on Cult of Mac, a podcast that Kahney appears on.While I already knew many of the details in the book, reading them again from a different angle, that of product design, gave me fresh insights as to how Apple is run and their products are created. And as an Apple stockholder, I'm reassured that an engine for innovative product imagination is still present in Cupertino.I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in product design of any type, as it covers a few decades of design thought in Britian and the U.S. from the point of view of Ive and his associates. I actually got many useful nuggets such as, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication," "if there's not some sort of friction in a move forward, your step is not as consequential as you'd like to believe," "The real risk is to think it is safe to play it safe," and "We don't do focus groups--that is the job of the designer," said Jony. "It's unfair to ask people who don't have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design." I also noted about 15 more in my notes.I didn't give it 5 stars as I've really got to be knocked out by a book for that. But I read the book in 3 sittings, which is fast for me, especially for a non-fiction book.If you're interested in the inner workings of Apple and especially the design aspect of their products, check this book out. Also - if you're interested in this topic, you should check out the Charlie Rose interview with Ive and Marc Newson for more insights (Available for free on Hulu, just Google "ive,newson, rose, hulu"). I found it inspiring in and have watched it a couple of times.

That is a good account of the life and career of Ives, surely one of the most significant figures of recent design history. I found the insights into Apple culture entertaining but not revelatory- I’m not sure there’s much here on Apple that hasn’t been said elsewhere. The insights into Ives as a designer, though, I found fascinating. This is a unique story of a man with a huge passion (obsession???) for the raw process of design, given the opportunity to perform on one of the world’s most innovative platforms. His refusal to compromise - a trait he had before apple but that was doubtless deepened by his friendship with fellow-obsessive Jobs - has led to an extraordinary series of breakthroughs. I felt I was being invited, even in some small way, to watch a master at work. A joyous experience…

Disclaimer: as with most other people who would read this book, I've read both of the Steve Jobs biographies. (I'll confess I haven't read much other Apple History, though). Based on the limited stuff I've read, each book places their focus at the absolute centre of the Apple Universe, with all others as shadow players. This one tends to do the same for Jony Ive.While it tries to pull together a number of different sources to cast some light into the shadows created by being such a central component of one of the most secretive companies in the world, it sometimes fails to bring them into a coherent timeline. As a result the narrative of the book can be a little jerky in places.But, with all that said, it's a good read and as a fellow Brit I've got to be proud of the designer at the heart of Apple. I'm probably biased as I'm a recent convert to Apple equipment and have now plunged headlong, but it's a worthwhile book to read to round out the picture of Apple as painted by the Jobs biographies.

A lovely book and a great, relaxing read. Purchased for a University essay, but turned out to be very fascinating and enjoyable beyond my initial research requirements from it. Highly recommended. A really eye-opener into the world of Jony Ive and Apple!

A superb look at the man behind the design at Apple. Very interesting as it looks from his childhood and how his father taught him about caring about the whole design, to his moving to California and relationship with Steve Jobs and others at Apple.. Highly recommended.

This is a detailed and well-sourced book, and the coolest thing about it was finding all the insider details about Apple's processes - like learning that the iPad was originally going to come before the iPhone, and prototypes began in 2003!Another good thing is it also doesn't solely focus on Jony's life at Apple - it also talks about his school life, and other jobs, and relationships.If you love Apple, and design, read it!