Investoris Business Daily (IBD), of all publications, has published an editorial all about Jonathan Ive, and how he helped save Apple. Actually, IBD says that Mr. Ive "almost single handedly" saved Apple with his design work on the iMac. Jonathan Ive is Appleis chief designer, and leads the team that developed the industrial design for the iMac (both versions), the Cube, the iPod, the iBook, the PowerBook, the Power Mac, and most of Appleis other recent products. IBD is, as its name suggests, a daily newspaper focused exclusively on the financial world. Much of the article is comprised of quotes culled from other publicationis interviews with Mr. Ive, but IBD also offers their own take on some things. From IBD:
Despite his vision, Ive found himself frustrated with PCs. For all their vaunted abilities, they werenit easy for the uninitiated to understand. Ive felt technically inept.
Then he encountered a Macintosh. He understood how it worked. It let him design on screen what he saw in his head. He fell in love.
The more he learned about the company that made it, the more he wanted to join it.
In 1992, Ive decided to make the jump from designing other products to designing one he truly believed in.
Heis relied on his principle of "simpler is more" for the Apple products heis designed since, including the iPod digital music player, the Macintosh G4 Cube, the sleek titanium PowerBook laptops and the new flat-panel iMacs.
An old joke about Fordis Model T was that buyers could get it in any color — as long as it was black. Replace "black" with "beige" and you have a good picture of the computer industry at the time.
Thereis a lot more in the full article at IBDis Web site, and we recommend it as an interesting read.