Interface designer Bas Ording is one of those little-known Apple employees who has had a huge influence on our digital lives. Ording is the brains behind the “rubber band” effect — the iconic touchscreen animation that convinced Steve Jobs to build the iPhone. During a 15-year career at Apple, Ording was responsible for a big chunk of Apple’s computing interfaces — from macOS to iOS.
You can read about his career in Unsung Apple Hero, a Cult of Mac e-book detailing his career at Apple. Just sign up for Cult of Mac Today, our free daily newsletter, or Weekender, our weekly email, and we’ll email you a copy.
Bas Ording: An Unsung Apple Hero
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Unsung Apple Hero details Ording’s long career building key parts of the iPhone and Mac software.
The book describes what it was like to work at Apple and to work closely with Steve Jobs, where he got his ideas from, and how he worked through problems like the rubber band effect.
It takes a deep dive into his methodology with lessons for all designers.
A key architect of iOS and Mac interfaces
Ording should be better known. Walter Isaacson’s mentioned Ording in his biography of Jobs. And Ording is described as a “wizard” and a “god” in another book, Becoming Steve Jobs.
In the 15 years he worked at Apple, he served as one of the leading designers of the iOS and Mac interfaces we use every day.
In addition to the iPhone’s rubber band-like scrolling, Ording developed OS X’s Dock magnification effect, Expose and many more.
Ording holds hundreds of patents and was a key witness in the Apple-Samsung trials. Yet practically nobody knows who Ording is because of Apple’s super-strict secrecy policies.
Until now. Sign up to get a free copy of Unsung Apple Hero, and we’ll email you a copy. (You can read an extract from Unsung Apple Hero here.)
If you prefer to buy the e-book, it is available for $9.99 from the Cult of Mac store or Apple Books.
Note: The book is available in EPUB format, which is compatible with lots of e-book readers, including Apple’s Books app.
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Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
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