When the man who designed every Mac computer from the iMac on -- not to mention the iPhone and iPad -- says that Apple is currently working on its “most important and best work” to date, we’re likely to sit up and take notice.
It goes without saying that the death of Steve Jobs last year left a void at Apple, but thankfully the co-founder hand-picked the best team imaginable to follow in his footsteps, including industrial designer Jonathan Ive, who is back on his home turf in the U.K. this week to be knighted by the Queen (shown above).
While there, Ive spoke at length for a two-part interview with The Telegraph, and The Next Web has assembled some of the best bits of that interview. When asked which design he felt was his most important, Ive called up the spirit of Jobs himself to look forward, rather than into the past.
“It’s a really tough one,” Ive admits. “A lot does seem to come back to the fact that what we’re working on now feels like the most important and the best work we’ve done, and so it would be what we’re working on right now, which of course I can’t tell you about.”
That sort of answer is certainly going to stir the pot of already boiling rumors about an Apple television set, but given that Apple likes to amaze and surprise, the designer could be talking about anything, really.
Analysts predicting Apple’s decline in the post-Jobs era is one subject Ive had a more direct answer to.
“We’re developing products in exactly the same way that we were two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago,” Ive said. “It’s not that there are a few of us working in the same way: there is a large group of us working in the same way.
“We have become rather addicted to learning as a group of people and trying to solve very difficult problems as a team,” Ive concludes. “And we get enormous satisfaction from doing that. Particularly when you’re sat on a plane and it appears that the majority of people are using something that you’ve collectively agonised over. It’s a wonderful reward.”
On the subject of his knighthood this week, 45-year old Sir Jonathan Ive said he is "both humbled and sincerely grateful" for the "absolutely thrilling honour.” The entire two-part interview is well worth a complete read for Apple fans.
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(Image courtesy of BBC News U.K.)
