Design is a word that's come to mean so much that it's also a word that has come to mean nothing.
In our quest to quickly make three-dimensional objects, we can miss out on the experience of making something that helps give us our first understandings of form and material, of the way a material behaves--'I press too hard here, and it breaks here' and so on. Some of the digital rendering tools are impressive, but it's important that people still really try and figure out a way of gaining direct experience with the materials.
And I said couldn't we be more moderate? And he said why? And I said because I care about the team. And he said, 'No Jony, you're just really vain. You just want people to like you. I'm surprised at you, because I thought you really held the work up as the most important and not how you are perceived by people.' People misunderstand Steve because he was so focused.
That's just tragic, that you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three dimensional objects and not make one.
We are really pleased with our revenues but our goal isn't to make money. It sounds a little flippant, but it's the truth. Our goal and what makes us excited is to make great products. If we are successful people will like them and if we are operationally competent, we will make money.
The computer industry is creatively bankrupt.
My father was a very good craftsman. He made furniture, he made silverware and he had an incredible gift in terms of how you can make something yourself.
But one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I'm aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.
The memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.
The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.
I get an incredible thrill and satisfaction from seeing somebody with Apple’s tell-tale white earbuds. But I’m constantly haunted by thoughts of, is it good enough? Is there any way we could have made it better?
When our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.
I think it’s a wonderful view that care was important – but I think you can make a one-off and not care and you can make a million of something and care. Whether you really care or not is not driven by how many of the products you’re going to make.
It feels like each time we are beginning at the beginning, in a really exciting way.
At the start of the process the idea is just a thought - very fragile and exclusive. When the first physical manifestation is created everything changes. It is no longer exclusive, now it involves a lot of people.
We have always thought about design as being so much more than just the way something looks. It's the whole thing: the way something works on so many different levels. Ultimately, of course, design defines so much of our experience.
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.
I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making.
Perhaps I'd like to design cars, but I don't think I'd be much good at it.
I left London in 1992, but I'm there 3-4 times a year, and love visiting.
Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural - it's so hard!
Apple's goal isn't to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products.
We’re keenly aware that when we develop and make something and bring it to market that it really does speak to a set of values. And what preoccupies us is that sense of care, and what our products will not speak to is a schedule, what our products will not speak to is trying to respond to some corporate or competitive agenda. We’re very genuinely designing the best products that we can for people.
It became an exercise to reduce and reduce, but it makes it easier to build an easier for people to work with.
Titles or organizational structures, that’s not the lens through which we see our peers.
