Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products

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“An adulating biography of Apple’s left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology.” —Kirkus Reviews

In 1997, Steve Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away at Apple’s headquarters, surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. Jony Ive’s collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world’s most iconic technology products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. Ive’s work helped reverse Apple’s long decline, overturned entire industries, and created a huge global fan base. Yet little is known about the shy, soft-spoken whiz whom Jobs referred to as his “spiritual partner.”

Leander Kahney offers a detailed portrait of the English art school student with dyslexia who became the most acclaimed tech designer of his generation. Drawing on interviews with Ive’s former colleagues and Apple insiders, Kahney “takes us inside the creation of these memorable objects.” (The Wall Street Journal)

Our Top Reviews

Reviewer: Guyton
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Fascinating story
Review: Lots of new information that will be interesting to anyone who follows Apple, Ive and design in general. Very well written.

Reviewer: Margaret
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Could have used bit more on the I in Apple ID
Review: 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”

Reviewer: Frances Brent
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Should have been bored, but was fascinated
Review: One doesn’t remotely begin to know or understand Jony Ive the subject of the book, but the list of suddenly commonplace, but unique to modern times, artifacts associated with his name is overwhelming. Not impressive, overwhelming. He ended up reading more like a force than a person. The list of upper and lower case names and acronyms associated wit Ivey, Jobs and Apple go scrolling by like a Times Square Marquee gone mad. An endless list of stunningly original and quickly outmoded products should be boring, but I clung to the words as though it were a Lee Child thriller.So much brain power, so much creativity, so much ego, so much fanaticism, so many power struggles among creative titans and surprisingly little greed are mixed into this tantalizing half told tale. I spent as much time referencing Safari and Wikipedia as I did reading the book. I wanted to fill in the pieces and know these adjunct people and more about the referenced technology. Was greatly a use to see a story in my local paper about one of the deposed Apple princes. Tony Fadell is now head of Nest, and trying to jazz up smoke detectors, using his Apple history to raise money.

Reviewer: Oliver Twist
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A real page turner!
Review: 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!

Reviewer: Michael McCabe
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The style was almost as laid back as Jony appears to be. However it conveyed the tension and stress that lies behind the products that have changed the world. It was nice to see that it wasn’t only about Jony but also about the team he leads. If you love and or respect the products Apple has produced it is worth reading because it gives you an insight into a company that wasn’t only an extension of Steve Jobs.

Reviewer: Davide
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Libro molto accurato e di particolare inspirazione per chi è un creativo o designer.

Reviewer: Stabil
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Dieses Buch lohnt sich für jeden der gerne mehr über Apple, die Philosophie und seinen Schöpfer wissen möchte.

Reviewer: Garnet Bartlett
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great book, loved it. On the kindle version it would be nice if the images were in synch with the writing instead of all at the back of the book. Other than that great read.

Reviewer: Joao
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great book if you want to know more about Jonathan Ive and his journey in the world of Industrial Design.

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