Satzger argued that that means Apple equipment is in fact more serviceable. “For repair work, Apple takes back all its products and handles servicing through the company’s stores. Repairs and servicing are taken into account from the outset of a product’s design. . . . Apple’s service process is exquisitely refined for their own products.”13
Apple, as one of the world’s richest and most powerful companies, has clearly taken a leadership role in manufacturing. If their commitment to their global workforce and to environmental concerns remains less certain, it’s clear that Jony Ive will have a voice in shaping those policies into the foreseeable future.
CHAPTER 13
Apple’s MVP
[Jony Ive] has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That’s the way I set it up.
—STEVE JOBS
Steve Jobs had surgery for a pancreatic tumor in July 2004. As he was recovering from his first bout with cancer, he asked to see two people. One was his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs; the other was Jony Ive.
After nearly eight years of working together almost daily, Jony and Jobs had a special and intimate relationship. The pair had been nearly inseparable, attending many of the same meetings, eating lunch together and spending afternoons at the studio going over future projects.
Jobs’s first surgery didn’t fully cure him and he later underwent a second round of surgery, taking a leave of absence from Apple to undergo a liver transplant in Memphis, Tennessee, in May 2009. Jobs flew home on his private jet with his wife, where he was met by Jony and Tim Cook at San Jose Airport. The question of Apple’s future was very much in the air, as the announcement of Jobs’s leave had led many in the press to predict that Apple was doomed without him. It seemed to be the consensus of the punditocracy that the fate of Apple rested solely on Jobs’s shoulders.
Jony drove Jobs home from the airport and confided on the journey that he was disturbed by newspaper opinion pieces that staked Apple’s survival to Jobs.
“I’m really hurt,” Jony told Jobs. He was worried about Jobs’s health, and the health of the company they both loved. As Jony told Jobs’s biographer Walter Isaacson, the perception that Jobs was the engine of Apple’s innovation was damaging, he said. “That makes us vulnerable as a company,” Jony said.1
That Jony’s ego wasn’t always sublimated to Jobs’s and to Apple is hardly surprising. On another occasion, Jony also complained about Jobs’s habit of stealing his ideas. “He will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say, ‘That’s no good. That’s not very good. I like that one,’” Jony told Isaacson. “And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea. I pay maniacal attention to where an idea comes from, and I even keep notebooks filled with my ideas. So it hurts when he takes credit for one of my designs.”2
Nonetheless, Jony acknowledged, he could have never accomplished what he has without Jobs. “In so many other companies, ideas and great design get lost in the process,” he said. “The ideas that come from me and my team would have been completely irrelevant, nowhere, if Steve hadn’t been here to push us, work with us and drive through all the resistance to turn our ideas into products.”3
During 2011, with Jobs on leave that, in the end, proved to be his last, a rash of news stories claimed that Jony was threatening to leave Apple at the end of a three-year stock deal. Jony and his wife reportedly wanted their twin boys to be educated in Britain. The UK newspaper the Guardian published a story about Jony’s impending departure, giving it the headline “Apple’s Worst Nightmare”4; London’s Sunday Times ran a feature saying that Jony was “at loggerheads” with Apple over his desire to move from Cupertino back to Britain, where he owned a home in Somerset. One story suggested Jony would commute between Britain and California.5
Threatening was probably the right word; Jony didn’t quit. According to an unnamed friend quoted in the British newspaper article, Jony was “just too valuable to Apple and they told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them.” To cement his connection with Apple, the company reportedly paid Jony a $30 million bonus and offered him shares worth a further $25 million. At the time, Jony’s personal fortune was estimated at $130 million.
In retrospect, the facts suggest Jony had no intention of moving. He sold a mansion he owned in Somerset close to his parents because he wasn’t using it. Jony appeared more committed to Apple than ever.
Jony regularly gets calls from other companies and headhunters, offering him lucrative opportunities to design everything from cars to shoes. But he’s emphatically said no to the question of whether he would leave Apple. “The thing is, you could transplant me and this design group to another place and we wouldn’t work at all,” he said.6
• • •
On August 24, 2011, Apple announced that Steve Jobs was resigning as CEO, but would remain with the company as chairman of the board. Tim Cook officially took over the day-to-day running of the company.
The news shouldn’t have been a surprise but it was. Jobs had been on medical leave since January, and he was obviously a very sick man, appearing emaciated during his few public appearances that year. Even in the face of such a harsh reality, however, everyone found it difficult to imagine an Apple without Steve Jobs.
Many pundits weighed in, arguing that Jony should take over. He had a public profile (Cook did not) because of all the promotional videos he’d appeared in and the awards he’d scooped up. But few serious Apple observers pegged him as the next CEO—not even Jony himself. As one former member of his design team said of Jony’s attitude toward being CEO, “Jony doesn’t care about all those aspects of running a company.” Explaining that Jony had no interest in the business side of Apple—just as he had hated the business side at Tangerine—the designer concluded, “He just wants to focus on ID.”
“All I’ve ever wanted to do is design and make; it’s what I love doing,” Jony told one interviewer. “It’s great if you can find what you love to do. Finding it is one thing but then to be able to practise that and be preoccupied with that is another.”7
As the master of Apple’s global supply chain, Tim Cook was, in fact, much the logical successor. In just thirteen years, Cook had constructed a complex apparatus that allowed the company to build superb gadgets—albeit of Jony’s design—at unparalleled speed, volume, efficiency and profitability. Cook might not possess Jobs’s charisma, but he was a logistics titan who had been effectively running the company ever since Jobs had gone on his most recent medical leave. He also had experience, serving as interim CEO during Jobs’s absences in 2004 and 2009. According to Apple insiders interviewed for this book, Cook is generally affable, a consensus player who wants everyone to buy in, which makes him easier to work with than willful personalities like Jobs.
Jobs died just over a month after his resignation, on October 5, 2011. The man who once said in a speech at Stanford University that “death is very likely the single best invention of life” was about to be eulogized at just fifty-six. His funeral two days later in Alta Mesa was attended by just four of his colleagues from Apple: vice presidents Eddy Cue (software) and Katie Cotton (communications), CEO Cook and Jony. The memorial service held for Jobs at Stanford University ten days after that, though still private, drew former U.S. president Bill Clinton, former vice president Al Gore, Bill Gates, Google CEO Larry Page, U2 frontman Bono and News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. Jony had a chance to publicly mourn his mentor and friend three weeks after Jobs’s death. At a staff memorial service held on Apple’s Cupertino campus, Jony gave the most heartfelt (and humorous) speech of the day, filling his eight-minute tribute to Steve—his “best and most loyal friend”—with personal anecdotes. By turns Jony was funny, touching and insightful, as he described Steve’s passion and enthusiasm, his sense of humor and his grea
t joy in doing things right.
Jony’s eulogy started with an aside. “Steve used to say to me a lot, ‘Hey Jony, here’s a really dopey idea.’ And sometimes they were really dopey. Sometimes they were truly dreadful. But sometimes they took the air from the room, and they left us both completely silent.”
Jony remembered that Jobs “constantly questioned, ‘Is this good enough? Is this right?’” He saw Jobs’s great triumph as “the celebration of making something great for everybody, enjoying the defeat of cynicism . . . the rejection of being told a hundred times, ‘You can’t do that.’”
Jony closed by telling the massed Apple employees at the memorial, “We worked together for nearly fifteen years—and he still laughed at the way I said ‘aluminium.’ For the last two weeks, we’ve all been struggling to find ways to say good-bye. This morning, I simply want to end by saying, ‘Thank you, Steve. Thank you for your remarkable vision which has united and inspired this extraordinary group of people—for all that we have learned from you and for all that we will continue to learn from each other, thank you Steve.’”
Apple’s Fortunes Magnify
The day before Steve Jobs died, Cook debuted the iPhone 4s at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. There was an empty seat for Jobs marked “Reserved”; Jony was notably absent.
The iPhone 4s was Jony’s third-generation design, based on Richard Howarth’s early Sandwich concepts, and the device was the most advanced iPhone yet. Though it shared the same physical appearance as its predecessor, the iPhone 4, it had much-improved guts, and was a marvel of engineering. When the new iPhone went on sale on October 14, some critics called it overhyped and more of the same, but to judge from sales, the public disagreed. The first weekend saw a record-breaking debut, with four million units sold, and the iPhone 4s quickly become the world’s best-selling smartphone.
The importance of Apple’s first successful post-Jobs product launch did not go unnoticed on Wall Street. Apple’s stock began to soar. A share of Apple’s stock sold for $407.61 on January 3, 2012, reflecting a balance sheet that contained over $100 billion in cash, a sum that grew by the day. By the end of January, a single share of Apple cost $447.61.
Apple was riding high, having surpassed ExxonMobil as the most valuable publicly held company in the world.
Sir Jony Ive
The year 2012 began auspiciously for Jony Ive, as it had for Apple, despite Jobs’s passing. Jony was named a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) in the Queen’s New Year Honours List, for services to design and enterprise. It was the second time he had been recognized in the honors list, having been made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005. The second highest order of chivalry, the KBE entitled its new bearer to style himself Sir Jonathan Ive.
Jony described the honor as “absolutely thrilling” and said he was “both humbled and sincerely grateful.” In a rare interview with the Daily Telegraph, he said he was “the product of a very British design education,” adding that, “even in high school, I was keenly aware of this remarkable tradition that the UK had of designing and making. It’s important to remember that Britain was the first country to industrialize, so I think there’s a strong argument to say this is where my profession was founded.”8
Phil Gray, Jony’s first boss at Robert Weavers Group, met up with Jony during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. “When I asked Sir Jony what was it like being a knight of the realm, he replied: ‘You know what? Out in San Francisco it means absolutely nothing. But back in Britain it is a burden.’”9 Jony is referring to Britain’s strong class divisions. He’s no longer an everyman. He’s been elevated to a Knight of the Realm, and it embarrasses him.
Jony used his visit to London to talk to some design students from Northumbria, his alma mater. He arranged for the temporary closure of an Apple store in London, inviting the students in for a private talk. “Jony likes to get his opinions across; there is no question about that,” said a source. “But it is also important to him to give students some support. I guess that is his way of giving something back.”
As Northumbria’s most famous grad, Jony is regarded by his alma mater as a very valuable asset. Awarded the status of a visiting professor, he occasionally returns to give lectures. He features heavily in Northumbria’s marketing materials, but the college, protective of their special relationship, declined to talk about Jony or to release any information about his studies there.
He makes frequent visits to his homeland, staying in London three or four times a year. He has been seen at the London Fashion Week and attends the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed, a race meet for fans of fast, exotic cars. He’s served as a judge at Goodwood, where he’s been photographed with fellow designer Marc Newsom and composer Nick Wood, two of his best friends. The three often attend one another’s functions. Jony is also friends with Paul Smith, the British clothes designer, whom he presented with a giant pink iPod nano for his birthday.
Though design is sometimes thought of as a lonely, isolating process, Jony travels the world regularly. Although he will sometimes spend weeks with suppliers in Asia, on most trips, he’s in and out quickly. In 2013, he traveled to Amsterdam for a day, during which he went aboard Steve Jobs’s boat (designed by Philippe Starck and custom-built in Holland) and opened the new Apple store there.
In 2012, Jony and his wife and twin sons upgraded to a new San Francisco home, purchasing a seventeen-million-dollar spread on San Francisco’s “Gold Coast,” also known as Billionaire Row. Despite his image as a soft-spoken everyman in jeans and T-shirt, he’s often photographed at exclusive venues with other well-suited high rollers. When at home in San Francisco, he’s been known to attend the symphony and he socializes with the Silicon Valley elite. He’s been photographed at celebrity dinners with valley bigwigs such as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and the CEOs of Yelp, Dropbox and Path.
Occasionally, Jony gets involved in side projects. He designed some striking Soundstick speakers for Harman Kardon, which are part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. In 2012, he designed on commission a one-shot camera for Leica, which was to be auctioned for charity. Jony and Jobs were both fans of the storied camera maker, and when announcing the iPhone 4, Jobs compared it to “a beautiful old Leica camera.”10
By all appearances, Jony remains committed to Apple, despite occasional rumors to the contrary. He’s also reportedly working on a monograph of his work at Apple.
Apple Carries On
Even without Steve Jobs at hand to challenge him, Jony in 2012 remained a busy and engaged man. In March, Apple announced the third-generation iPad, called simply the “new iPad.” It would have the strongest launch of all previous iterations of the device, selling three million units over the first weekend.
The iPhone 5 was announced several months later, in September 2012. Redesigned with a bigger, four-inch retina display, the iPhone 5 was “the most beautiful consumer device that we’ve ever created,” said Phil Schiller. Preorders of the new phone topped two million in the first twenty-four hours after the announcement; upon its release on September 21, the phone set a new record with weekend sales of over five million units, and demand exceeded supply for several weeks.
One month after the iPhone 5, Apple announced the release of the second new iPad within the same year, along with its little cousin, the iPad mini, a tablet computer with a smaller, 7.9 inch display. In November, the two new tablets were released simultaneously in thirty-four countries and, between them, sold three million units in just three days. The surprise iPad was unusual because Apple’s normal release schedule didn’t shift significantly. Products came no quicker than they had before.
The new products proved a further boon to Apple’s stock. Within days after their release, Apple’s share price rose over 12 percent, from $505 to $568, and continued to climb thereafter.
Apple seemed to be gaining strength—
there was no sign the company was suffering from the loss of Steve Jobs. On the contrary, it was a period of incredible financial and creative fecundity. But on October 29, 2012, Apple announced a surprise executive reshuffle.
In a press release that seemed calculated to obfuscate what was really going on behind the scenes, Apple announced a major shift of executive offices. To put it more bluntly than the Apple communications did, Scott Forstall was fired from his role as head of iOS and Jony was promoted to overall creative head.
Jony would maintain his position of senior vice president of ID, but henceforth would also “provide leadership and direction for Human Interface across the company.”11 In other words, Jony would be in charge of the all-important product interfaces in both hardware and software, a role previously fulfilled by Steve Jobs. “Jony has an incredible design aesthetic and has been the driving force behind the look and feel of our products for more than a decade,” said Cook in a follow-up e-mail to employees. “The face of many of our products is our software and the extension of Jony’s skills into this area will widen the gap between Apple and our competition.”12
When parsed carefully, Cook was saying, in short: The man who had long been responsible for setting the direction for Apple’s hardware would now be given the power to reimagine its software as well. Although Apple chose to neither confirm nor deny them, rumors had it that Forstall was ousted over fallout with Jony over user-interface design. The departure of Forstall and Jony’s increased responsibilities strongly suggested that Forstall lost a power struggle.
Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products Page 26