A new interview with Jony Ive sheds light on his team’s thought process as they created the new MacBook Pro and its innovative Touch Bar.
Ive addresses the history of the Touch Bar project, touches on his rationale for ruling out a touchscreen Mac, and explains why thinking different is easy — but doing so is only a small part of the innovation battle.
“Doing something that’s different is actually relatively easy and relatively fast, and that’s tempting,” Ive says. “We don’t limit ourselves in how we will push — if it’s to a better place. What we won’t do is just do something different that’s no better.”
It’s a comment that reminds me very much of Tim Cook’s comment on an Apple earnings call back in 2012, in which he said that, “You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.”
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Or, to put it another way, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Ive doesn’t single out any of Apple’s rivals in the new interview with CNET. But his comments could certainly apply to several of them.
He noted that this way of thinking is the reason Apple “many, many years ago” decided not to add a touchscreen to the Mac. “We just didn’t feel that [the Mac] was the right place for that,” he said. “It wasn’t particularly useful or an appropriate application of multitouch.”
Ive also talks about how the Touch Bar grew out of an open-ended research project to create a “larger, haptic-rich trackpad.”
As with many interviews with senior Apple execs, it’s not always the most revealing talk. However, it does offer interesting insight into Apple’s problem-solving approach. Particularly if you know anyone who talks about Apple being out of ideas, it’s interesting to be reminded that — as Steve Jobs was keen on noting — saying “no” to certain ideas is just as important as saying “yes” to others.
You can check out the entire CNET interview here.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
5 responses to “Jony Ive: Thinking different is easy”
“What we won’t do is just do something different that’s no better.” I think fans of MagSafe would disagree.
I think the MagSafe was a brilliant idea and highly practical. I’m a bit shocked that Apple has abandoned it.
Hey Jony, making a square watch with rounded corners IS NOT Thinking Different.
Making “Dynamic Function Keys” isn’t Thinking Different. It’s the next logical step in it’s evolution.
Sometimes something that seems so logical only appears that way after it’s been done. Some of the best innovations are ones that leave you thinking that, that’s so obvious.
Thinking different doesn’t necessarily mean being radical.
I can understand the idea of not making a touch mac because frankly reaching out to a screen is tiring and leaving prints all over the screen makes me cringe. I have my phone/tablet for that.