Fantastic, in-depth profile of Jony Ive by Ian Parker of the New Yorker. You’ll want plenty of time to sit down and read this one; it’s nearly 17,000 words.
In recent months, Sir Jonathan Ive, the forty-seven-year-old senior vice-president of design at Applewho used to play rugby in secondary school, and still has a bench-pressing bulk that he carries a little sheepishly, as if it belonged to someone elsehas described himself as both deeply, deeply tired and always anxious. When he sits down, on an aluminum stool in Apples design studio, or in the cream leather back seat of his Bentley Mulsanne, a car for a head of state, he is likely to emit a soft, half-ironic groan. His manner suggests the burden of being fully appreciated. There were times, during the past two decades, when he considered leaving Apple, but he stayed, becoming an intimate friend of Steve Jobs and establishing the build and the finish of the iMac, the MacBook, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. He is now one of the two most powerful people in the worlds most valuable company.