There was a 'Wired' cover that had a big Apple logo with a crown of barbed wire as thorns, and underneath it just said, 'Pray.' I remember this because of how upsetting it was. Basically saying either it's going to just go out of business or be bought.
— Jonathan Ive
We won't do something different for different's sake. Designers cave in to marketing, to the corporate agenda, which is sort of, 'Oh, it looks like the last one; can't we make it look different?' Well no, there's no reason to.
What I think is remarkable is the force of habit and the fact that while we can have a practice for doing something that has been repetitive and established over many, many years, it doesn't actually mean there's any virtue to doing it that way at all.
I find that when I write, I need things to be quiet, but when I design, I can't bear it if it's quiet.
I think a beautiful product that doesn't work very well is ugly.
My focus is incredibly narrow. I can't talk with any authority other than design and development of product.
Innovation at Apple has always been a team game. It has always been a case where you have a number of small groups working together.
I am very aware that I'm the product of growing up in England and the tradition of designing and making, of England industrialising first.
The iPhone was broadly dismissed. The iPod was broadly dismissed. The iPad was probably more copiously written off as a large iPod.
One person's car is another person's scenery.
We struggle with the right words to describe the design process at Apple. But it is very much about designing and prototyping and making.
When we started work on the iPhone, the motivation there was we all pretty much couldn't stand our phones, and we wanted a better phone.
Even in high school, I was keenly aware of this remarkable tradition that the U.K. had of designing and making.
When something's made in the smallest volume - as a one-off couture piece - or in large quantities, deep care is critical to determine authentic, successful design and, ultimately, manufacture.
Every new car, you open the door, and you look at all those internal mellifluous swoopy bits, and they have no meaning.
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.
It's easy to assume that just because you make something in small volumes, not using many tools, that there is integrity and care - that is a false assumption.
I'm always focussed on the actual work, and I think that's a much more succinct way to describe what you care about than any speech I could ever make.
That's just tragic, that you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three dimensional objects and not make one.
I think it's important that we learn how to draw and to make something and to do it directly. To understand the properties you're working with by manipulating them and transforming them yourself.
So much of my background is about making: physically doing it myself.
The thing with focus is that it's not this thing you aspire to, like, 'Oh, on Monday I'm going to be focused.' It's every single minute: 'Why are we talking about this when we're supposed to be talking about this?'
Unless we understand a certain material - metal or resin and plastic - understanding the processes that turn it from ore, for example - we can never develop and define form that's appropriate.
I feel that it's lovely when, as a user, you're not aware of the complexity.
The benefit of hindsight is we only really talk about those things that did work out.
Deep in the culture of Apple is this sense and understanding of design, developing, and making. Form and the material and process - they are beautifully intertwined - completely connected.
You cannot disconnect the form from the material - the material informs the form.
The form of computers has never been important, with speed and performance being the only things that mattered.
We try to develop products that seem somehow inevitable, that leave you with the sense that that's the only possible solution that makes sense.
Our goal isn't to make money. Our goal absolutely at Apple is not to make money. This may sound a little flippant, but it's the truth. Our goal, and what gets us excited, is to try to make great products.
It's easy to think that craft can't change but important to remember that all craft process was at some point new, at some point challenged convention - not to be contrary, but enabled by some breakthrough, some newly discovered principle, or sometimes some wonderful accident.
Manufactured objects testify to who made them; they describe values.
All I've ever wanted to do is design and make; it's what I love doing.
I don't know how we can compare the old watches we know with the functionality and the capability of the Apple Watch.
If you expect me to buy something where all I can sense is carelessness, actually I think that is personally offensive.
I always like when you start to use something with a little less reverence. You start to use it a little carelessly, and with a little less thought, because then, I think, you're using it very naturally.
When you feel that the way you interpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel somewhat ostracized and lonely.
When you're doing something for the first time, you don't know it's going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it's copied. I have to be honest: the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn't. I think it's theft, and it's lazy.
One of the things that is particularly precious about working at Apple is that many of us on the design team have worked together for 15-plus years, and there's a wonderful thing about learning as a group. A fundamental part of that is making mistakes together.
Often when I talk about what I do, making isn't just this inevitable function tacked on at the end.
Successful collaboration, in your mind, could be that your opinion is the most valuable and becomes the prevailing sort of direction. That's not collaborating.
If doing anything new, you're very used to having insurmountable obstacles.
There are some shocking cars on the road.
Our goal is simple objects, objects that you can't imagine any other way.
We knew that iMac was fast; we didn't need to make it ugly.
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.
Once, even the simple metal needle challenged the conventional thinking of a time.
With a father who is a fabulous craftsman, I was raised with the fundamental belief that it is only when you personally work with a material with your hands, that you come to understand its true nature, its characteristics, its attributes, and I think - very importantly - its potential.
Growing up, I enjoyed drawing, but it was always in the service of an idea. I drew all the time, and I enjoyed making.
We all use something - you can't drill holes with your fingers. Whether it's a knife, a needle, or a machine, we all need the help of a device.
