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0 pointscujo6y ago0 comments

I want to believe this, and as there is no evidence one way or the other, it sounds good enough that it makes me hopeful for future products.

My question is, what did Ive do that was truly great? I honestly don't know and his name is mostly brought up with respect to designs that didn't pan out. What did he do that everyone seems to respect him as an uber-designer?

I do think, for a while at least, apple's design was eye catching and cool. But for a long long time now it's been stagnant and copycatted all over the industry. So much so, that it doesn't really stand out any more. That's all fine, but it makes me wonder what Ive has been doing for the last 5-10 years, because not much has changed.

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8draco86y ago

Pretty much everything what Apple made since original iMac G3 was Ive design and I think the biggest thing that he did was that original iMac G3.

The story is pretty simple, Ive became Apple employee around 92 so before Jobs big comeback. Back in those days he had soft spot for translucent plastics. This showed beautifully in his first serious design for Apple, Apple Newton eMate. When Jobs came back to Apple he was looking for cool designs and he felt in love with Ives designs and translucent plastics (Jobs was crazy on making even PCB look good and idea of showing that work to the clients was appealing to him). So that's how arguably one of the biggest tech bromances started.

So yeah iMac was the design that brought back Apple to living. Other most notable designs was iPod, iPhone, iMac G4, MB, MBP, slim iMacs, list goes on and on. The difference is that all those designs was under supervision of Jobs. So ideas like charging port on Magic Mouse wouldn't fly under Jobs supervision (and they didn't) but when Jobs passed away then suddenly those ideas went into production.

The story of how they met is from Jobs and Ives biographies, I highly recommend reading at least Jobs biography by Isaacson

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