Link: Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple – The New Yorker

Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple – The New Yorker

This New Yorker article about Jony Ive and Apple’s design studio is nothing short of amazing and full of design porn:

To our left was an open kitchen with tables and benches, a vintage Faema espresso machine, and a wall of books that included “100 Superlative Rolex Watches” and a study of Joe Colombo, the designer best known for his round-cornered Kartell storage carts. The kitchen flowed into an area of individual workstations. To our right was a brightly lit room where a dozen oak worktables stood, in tidy formation, on a polished-concrete floor.

Here’s the Rolex book:

Joe Colombo is known for a lot more than round cornered storage carts. Here are a couple:

Joe Colombo – Optic Clock, 1970

Joe Colombo, Universale chair, 1965

Some titilation:

Now all but a few tables were covered in sheets of gray silk, and I knew only that that future would be no taller than an electric kettle.

And downright brilliant observation:

Jobs and Ive had different dispositions, but perhaps shared a lack of social smoothness, and it seems fitting that one of their great joint achievements was to give digital distractions to people forced to ride in elevators with nodding acquaintances.

This is one of the best inside profiles of Ive and Apple culture that I’ve ever read. The New Yorker and the profile author, Ian Parker, have tackled something the tech press have not: How Apple, always an experiential brand, arrives at the experiences it makes and the profile does it without revealing a damn thing about future products or indulging bullshit. Very well done and worth the read.

Source: Gruber