Jony Ive leaves Apple: the best devices from the designer’s 30-year career at Cupertino – and the worst

As the

As the British designer heads off to set up
his own company, we take a look back at his greatest hits – and the
ones he’d rather forget

In Depth

The British-born designer (pictured top, left) is leaving to set
up his own company, of which Apple will be “among its primary
clients”. 

Ive has been an instrumental figure at Apple since joining
in 1992, with a glowing portfolio of products that includes the
iPod and iPhone to name but two. His ability to carry out the
vision of Steve Jobs has produced some of the world’s most
influential devices, and earned Ive a knighthood in
2012. 

With his three-decade career at Cupertino due to come to
an end later this year, we take a look at the products that made
Ive’s name – and a couple that he’d rather forget. 

The best

The iPod

The iPod was by no means the first of Jony Ive’s gadgets,
nor was it the first portable MP3 player, but it was a game-changer
for the designer. 

What made the iPod such a user-friendly device was its “genius
scroll wheel” that let you “scan through a long song list quickly”,
while the intuitive interface “made it fun to use”, says CNet. The simple design proved to be a huge hit
with both gadget lovers and technophobes, too, especially when
later models were released in a variety of vibrant
colours. 

Ive’s next masterpiece, the iPhone, would “eventually
cannibalise the iPod”, the tech site says. But the MP3 player was
the must-have accessory for more than a decade and arguably turned
Apple into the company it is today. 

The iPhone

The device that started a revolution. The late Steve Jobs,
Apple’s co-founder and CEO, is often credited with the meteoric
success of the iPhone, but it was Ive’s elegant concept that turned
the phone into a must-have luxury accessory – and had rival tech
companies shaking in their boots. 

So how do you design a smartphone that will change the world?
Ive puts it down to “a fundamental conflict between two very
different ways of thinking”, The Independent reports. 

“It is the conflict between curiosity and the resolve and
focus that is necessary to solve problems,” he said at the
Cambridge Union in November. “Curiosity, while it fuels and
motivates, despite being utterly fundamental to the generation of
ideas, in isolation just culminates in lots of long lists, perhaps
some ideas, but alone that’s sort of where it ends.

“The necessary resolve to find solutions to the problems
that stand between a tentative thought and something substantial,
that resolve and that focus very often seems in direct conflict
with most creative behaviour,” said Ive. 

He describes his creative process as teetering on the
“utterly absurd”. Ive added that the shift between the two mindsets
“happens to me once or twice a day and that frequency of shifting
between two such different ways of seeing and thinking is
fantastically demanding”.

The “unibody” MacBook

Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Not only were the MacBooks of the late-2000s the most
aesthetically pleasing computers in a sea of black and grey plastic
rivals, they also featured a revolutionary design. 

The laptops, known as the “unibody”, are constructed around a
single piece of aluminium on to which the hardware is screwed,
explains TechRadar. The construction is “inherently
rigid”, yet its construction is significantly lighter than a
conventional laptop.

Apple also introduced its multi-touch glass trackpad on
its early unibody laptops, allowing users to control their laptop
with a host of gesture controls, the website adds.

The best part? Today’s MacBooks are all built around the
same unibody concept, making this one of Ive’s most timeless
designs. 

Apple Park

Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Yes, we’re well aware that the company’s Cupertino
headquarters isn’t a product, but it’s arguably one of Ive’s most
ambitious projects. 

The spaceship-like campus was completed early last year,
featuring glass walls and a garden in the centre of the facility.
Adjacent to the campus is the Steve Jobs Theatre, which has space
for 1,000 visitors and is often used for the company’s product
keynotes. 

But what makes the facility particularly impressive is that it
runs solely on sustainable energy, most of which is sourced from
solar panels that cover the roof, Wired reports.

And the worst

Mac Pro (2013)

Beautiful in design, flawed in execution. The Mac Pro was
radically different to any other desktop computer when it launched
in 2013, sporting a cylindrical silhouette as opposed to the
conventional “tower” design of other desktop
computers. 

Nicknamed the “trashcan”, it was designed to improve
cooling of the high-performance components. The machine’s board was
arranged in a triangular shape, with air being drawn from the
bottom of the unit and extracted through a circular
vent at the top. 

While CNet labelled the computer a “breakthrough” in design,
the Mac Pro’s “fantastic” form meant that it was somewhat difficult
to upgrade the internal components. That was a deal-breaker for
many professionals. 

Luckily for Apple-loving computer pros, the next Mac Pro
will revert to a more traditional – yet arguably just as beautiful
– tower design to make upgrading the workstation a little bit
easier. 

MacBook (2015)

“It’s an overpriced, underpowered, luxury laptop with only
one port that a lot of people have made fun of,” says Macworld of the 2015-spec
MacBook. 

The 12in MacBook certainly had a few fans scratching their
heads when the laptop was first announced at the “Spring Forward”
keynote in March 2015. On the surface, it looked like a
next-generation version of the £749 11in MacBook Air, yet it was
significantly more expensive at £1,249. 

The laptop was also powered by an Intel mobile processor,
rather than the i5 chips in the MacBook Air, and featured a
shallower “butterfly keyboard” that was prone to breaking. There
was only one USB-C port, too. The connection was almost completely
new to the industry, meaning there were barely any accessories on
the market that could make use of it.