Jony Ive

"Thinking of Apple’s investment like a government program is instructive. Year in, year out, China didn’t have the talent or expertise to build the products that Jony Ive’s studio conceived, but the engineers Apple hired out of MIT, Caltech, and Stanford, or poached from Tesla, Dell, and Motorola, routinely got them up to speed. Apple could send a caliber of talent to China—what one Apple veteran calls “an influx of the smartest of the smart people”—that no government program ever could. And the culture was such that the Apple engineers would work up to eighteen hours a day. Moreover, whereas a government program could at best train a workforce to engineer products, it wouldn’t have the ability to actually purchase the goods. But Apple could and did."

"Apple was different: under the design direction of Jony Ive, Apple’s product portfolio remained radically simplified. Even by 2015, Apple was only releasing two new iPhones a year. They were hand crafting luxury phones but doing it in mass-market quantities. In their search for suppliers, Apple gravitated toward quality, not price. To reach that quality, Apple had to come up with new processes to make the phones; but until Apple chose a new design these processes wouldn’t exist. So it had to work far more intimately with suppliers. “Apple influenced the entire manufacturing process because what they were doing was so unique. Nobody else was doing this, so Apple had to fund that equipment,” says Brian Blair, a tech analyst who repeatedly toured Apple’s suppliers back then. He uses an analogy from the automotive world: it’s one thing for Volkswagen or GM to make 10 million cars a year; what Apple was doing was akin to making 10 million Ferraris a year."

"Jony Ive emerged from the hard reset with newfound powers and influence. Jobs had made it crystal clear that ID’s zero tolerance for defects was integral to a new culture that would cascade across product development and then throughout the organization. The new approach hit Apple in waves. “I remember these other groups being like, ‘I’m glad I’m not in your shoes!” ’ Hoenig says. “But sure enough, it just literally rippled through the organization over the course of a year, and every group eventually suffered.” Engineers in other departments gained a respect for Ive because of his diplomatic skill. “What Jony did was—he understood that Steve’s cruelty, his savagery, his impatience would cause people to split and just quit the company,” says a senior person on the project. “That happened a lot. And he would run interference with them. He was a Steve handler as much as he was a visionary, detail obsessed, brilliant designer.”"

"Taking in all that he saw, then looking at Ive, Jobs said, “Fuck, you’ve not been very effective, have you?” In the world of Steve Jobs, this was a compliment. He was recognizing them, surmising that their problem was an inability to communicate their own worth. According to Ive, the two started collaborating that day on an all-in-one computer code-named Columbus, because it represented the New World. At a software review meeting afterward, Jobs beamed about what a “great group” ID was, then told them about Columbus."

"Jobs went on a tirade. “Ninety-five fucking hundred jobs are depending on you, and you’ve failed!” Jobs fumed to Jony Ive, hardware chief Jon Rubinstein, technology chief Glen Miranker, director of engineering Josef Friedman, and a few others. “You’ve screwed the pooch,” Jobs continued. “I’m going to sell my one fucking share of Apple stock!”"

"“We wanted to machine aluminum,” says Tony Fadell. “High polish, very accurate, detailed metals—and that’s where Foxconn came in. Foxconn supplied all the metals for the Apple products, and Foxconn got tons and tons of money [from Apple] to go get all the equipment [needed] to make these high precision metals.” Jony was enamored with the stainless steel back of the original iPod. Earlier reviewers of the device critiqued the choice of material because of the way fingerprints marred the chrome look. But this wasn’t some oversight. It forced the user to polish the unit, and for Ive that created an unconscious, nurturing connection."

"When Jobs unveiled the unibody MacBook during a famous “one more thing…” moment, it marked the first time he spoke about Apple’s operational edge at a major event, showing off a video of how it was made, featuring Jony Ive, Dan Riccio, and Mac hardware chief Bob Mansfield. “It put MD on the map,” says one person involved in the effort, referring to Manufacturing Design, a part of Ops that intimately works with suppliers to figure out how to make Apple products. “We knew we had changed the world, from a design perception.”"

"Thinking of Apple’s investment like a government program is instructive. Year in, year out, China didn’t have the talent or expertise to build the products that Jony Ive’s studio conceived, but the engineers Apple hired out of MIT, Caltech, and Stanford, or poached from Tesla, Dell, and Motorola, routinely got them up to speed. Apple could send a caliber of talent to China—what one Apple veteran calls “an influx of the smartest of the smart people”—that no government program ever could. And the culture was such that the Apple engineers would work up to eighteen hours a day. Moreover, whereas a government program could at best train a workforce to engineer products, it wouldn’t have the ability to actually purchase the goods. But Apple could and did."

"Thinking of Apple’s investment like a government program is instructive. Year in, year out, China didn’t have the talent or expertise to build the products that Jony Ive’s studio conceived, but the engineers Apple hired out of MIT, Caltech, and Stanford, or poached from Tesla, Dell, and Motorola, routinely got them up to speed. Apple could send a caliber of talent to China—what one Apple veteran calls “an influx of the smartest of the smart people”—that no government program ever could. And the culture was such that the Apple engineers would work up to eighteen hours a day. Moreover, whereas a government program could at best train a workforce to engineer products, it wouldn’t have the ability to actually purchase the goods. But Apple could and did."