Jony Ive Discusses Steve Jobs, Apple Watch in Rare Vogue Interview

Vogue published a new interview with Jony Ive, Apple's Senior Vice President of Design, highlighting his work with the company. Vogue editor Robert Sullivan sat down with Ive weeks before Apple unveiled the Apple Watch and even got a chance to see the product.

Ive first discussed his connection with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and how the two "just clicked."

Five years later, a disenchanted Ive was about to leave when Jobs returned to reboot the then-floundering Apple, which happened, by most analyses, when Jobs enabled Ive. By Ive’s account, the two hit it off immediately. “It was literally the meeting showing him what we’d worked on,” Ive says, “and we just clicked.” Ive talks about feeling a little apart, like Jobs. “When you feel that the way you interpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel somewhat ostracized and lonely”—big laugh here—“and I think that we both perceived the world in the same way.”

Design critics now look back at the birth of the Jobs-Ive partnership as the dawn of a golden age in product design, when manufacturers began to understand that consumers would pay more for craftsmanship. Together Jobs and Ive centered their work on the notion that computers did not have to look as if they belonged in a room at NASA. The candy-colored iMac—their first smash hit—felt to consumers like a charming friend, revolutionary but approachable, and appealed to both men and women. “I think what we sincerely try to do is create objects and products and ideas that are new and innovative,” says Ive, “but at the same time there is a slightly peculiar familiarity to them.”

The most interesting aspect of the interview was focused around the Apple Watch. When first handing it over, Ive claimed, "Isn't it fantastic?" Sullivan noted Ive's obsession over the details of the watch -- the materials, the buttons, and most importantly the overall connection Ive hopes customers will have with the watch.

Feels nice, doesn’t it?” On my second visit to Cupertino, Ive has finally handed it over: the new Apple Watch. It is more watch than the computer geeks would ever have imagined, has more embedded software than in a Rolex wearer’s wildest dreams. When Ive shows it to me—weeks before the product’s exhaustive launch, hosted by new CEO Tim Cook—in a situation room that has us surrounded by guards, it feels like a matter of national security. Yet despite all the pressure, he really just wants you to touch it, to feel it, to experience it as a thing. And if you comment on, say, the weight of it, he nods. “Because it’s real materials,” he says proudly. Then he wants you to feel the connections, the magnets in the strap, the buckle, to witness the soft but solid snap, which he just loves as an interaction with design, a pure, tactile idea. “Isn’t that fantastic?”

“You know how very often technology tends to inhibit rather than enable more nuanced, subtle communication?” he asks. This is the question that haunts the son of a craftsman: Is he making tools that improve the world or shut people down? “We spent a lot of time working on this special mechanism inside, combined with the built-in speaker” —he demonstrates on his wrist. You can select a chosen person, also wearing the watch, and transmit your pulse to them. “You feel this very gentle tap,” he says, “and you can feel my heartbeat. This is a very big deal, I think. It’s being able to communicate in a very gentle way.”


We recommend you check out the entire profile on Jony Ive over here. It's a great read.