#421 Jony Ive

I just wanted a sound bite, but he launched into a passionate twenty minute description about his latest work. I could barely get a word in edgewise. He couldn't help himself. Design is his passion. He began telling me how keeping things simple was the overall design philosophy for the machine. He said, we wanted to get rid of anything other than what was absolutely essential, but you don't see that effort. We kept going back to the beginning again and again and again. Do we need this part? Can we get that part to perform the function of these other four parts? It became an exercise to reduce and reduce and reduce, but it makes it easier to build and easier for people to work with. In releasing new products, companies tended to add more bells and whistles, not take them away. But here, Johnny was saying the opposite. The purpose of this book is to answer the question, how did an English art school grad with dyslexia become the world's leading technology designer? In the pages that follow, we'll meet a brilliant but unassuming man, obsessed with design, whose immense and influential insights have no doubt altered the pattern of your life. That is an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today and the one I've read for the second time, which is called Jony Ive, the genius behind Apple's greatest products, and it's written by Leander Kane. I decided to reread this book. The first time I read this book was probably five years ago, and I wanted to read this book because I think it perfectly follows what you and I discussed last week where we just talked about Steve Jobs' time at Next. And so last week's book and last week's episode ended when Jobs comes back to Apple. And when Jobs comes back to Apple, that is when he meets Jony Ive. And here's this great quote from Steve Jobs about Jony Ive. He says he understands what we do at our core better than anyone. If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it's Johnny. And Johnny is a great example of this maxim that repeats throughout these biographies that true interest is revealed early. And so this book says, as a young boy, Johnny exhibited a curiosity about the workings of things. He became fascinated by how objects were put together, carefully dismantling radios and cassette recorders, intrigued with how they were assembled and how the pieces fit together. Johnny's father, Mike, plays a massive role in Johnny's life. From a very young age, his father is encouraging his son's interest, and he would constantly have conversations about design. And And one of the best things that could have ever happened for Johnny's future career is the fact that his dad was actually hired to develop the standards for design education throughout The UK. And so this book says, Mike was among the most distinguished teachers plucked …