Jony Ive , or Sir Jony Ive as he is known in his native United Kingdom, is widely regarded as the man behind some of Apple’s most iconic designs. Once described by Steve Jobs as the man with the most power and influence within the fruit company besides himself, he is responsible for the look of everything from the MacBook air to the market-defining iPad.
Usually quiet – confined to his hideout within the Cupertino base, Ive is a rather mysterious fellow, which only adds to his aura of genius. Like most Apple employees, he isn’t one to speak about upcoming products, leaving the tech world to anxiously wait, trying desperately to ascertain what it has up its sleeve.
That said, Apple has been shaken up recently by the Trojan outbreaks on its self-proclaimed water-tight Macs, as well as the news that not only has Samsung overtaken it as the number one smartphone manufacturer, but the Chinese market – the largest in the world by a country mile – now seems to be favoring Microsoft’s up-and-coming Windows Phone ecosystem.
While the above may not directly be the cause of Ive’s broken silence, it’s a likely contributing factor, and Sir Jony has delivered the encouraging news to Apple enthusiasts anyway by stating that the company’s current project will not only be the most important of arguably the company’s history, but also the best.
Whether he’s referring to the next iPhone or a possible move toward the connected TV fray remains unknown, although his mentor Jobs was famously also rather giddy about the progress towards the television market, as per his biography by Walter Isaacson.
Ive, currently in his homeland to receive that knighthood from the Queen for "services to design and enterprise," took time out to speak with The Telegraph, and when pressed to name a design that he would be remembered for, he stated
What we’re working on now feels like the most important and the best work we’ve done, and so it would be what we’re working on right now, which of course I can’t tell you about.
Of course, it’s the kind of answer one would expect from Ive, but even so, it will certainly have chins wagging in the greater gadgetsphere, and although we would have loved for him to have slipped out of his comfort zone and revealed more, that’s just not the Apple way.
Speaking of the Apple way, Ive also hit back at critics who believe Tim Cook has brought a whole new ethos to the company, thus leading to the eventual decline of Apple as we know it. He said that the Cupertino outfit is developing its products "in exactly the same way that [it was] two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago."
He and the rest of his team get a buzz from seeing people using MacBooks, and iPads everywhere they go, and the dedication will not falter even without the great leader.
