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.
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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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