Jony Ive has one of the coolest, most suave voices among Apple’s executive leadership team. I could listen to him pronounce “aluminium” and “metallurgists” all day. Now, thanks to a creepy new soundboard, you can make Apple’s chief design officer say pretty much anything you want.
Wow. That was a big deal. For a mere “s” upgrade, Apple went way above and beyond with today’s big product showcase. Three major product lines have been not just upgraded, but reinvented, and finally there’s a reason to buy the one that has been languishing — the Apple TV, which is now a gaming console as well as an entertainment center.
Maybe I’ve drunk too much Kool-Aid, but I thought this morning’s presentation was one for the history books.
From the iPhone to the iPad to the Apple TV, Cupertino’s constellation of magical devices just got a little more magical.
Did you expect all that Apple goodness? Most of what we heard today already churned through the rumor mill: the plus-size iPad Pro; new Apple Watch finishes and bands; a refreshed Apple TV with games, apps and Siri functionality. And, oh yeah, the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus with a whole new level of Force Touch, called 3D Touch.
There were even a few surprises, like the iPad Pro’s new Smart Keyboard and the iPad stylus, dubbed the Apple Pencil. But throughout today’s keynote by Tim Cook and his lieutenants, the series of under-the-hood upgrades they revealed promise to push all Apple products forward into the future.
Let’s take a moment to boil down all two hours and 10 minutes of this incredibly dense and surprisingly succinct Apple event.
Congratulations — it’s iPhone Day 2015!
Tim Cook is already up and tweeting about the big Apple keynote that will go down today in San Francisco. We’ll be here liveblogging the entire thing, mixing all the dull wit and pithy snark we can muster for the iPhone 6s. The event starts at 10 a.m. Pacific but we’ll be getting started well before that — and we won’t stop until every last new iPad and iPhone has been announced.
For a quick recap of what to expect from today’s keynote, check out our roundup of all the announcements Apple will make, including the long-awaited iPad Pro.
Today’s event promises to be Apple’s biggest event of the year, so turn on the stream on your Apple TV and join us in the liveblog below:
Jony Ive seemed embarrassed when Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter started their interview by calling Ive the “greatest industrial designer in the world right now.”
The Apple design guru closed his eyes, rubbed his head, and then provided a soft-spoken but enlightening 25-minute peek inside his head during 2014’s Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit. Wonder what he’ll say this year?
With international acclaim, plenty of celebrity admirers, and a new, improved job title, Jony Ive has certainly got plenty going in his favor here in 2015.
Now Vanity Fair has added one more: naming Apple’s premier design genius one of its international best-dressed men of the year.
No doubt down to his choice of smartwatch, surely.
The annual race car festival at Goodwood is underway this year, with 100,000 attendees all clamoring to see the hot rods and race cars speed their way to the top of the uphill course.
Avowed gear-head Jony Ive travels to the South of England each year to see the festtival; chances are he’s there now ogling the sweet lines of a fancy race car or taking in some ideas for the rumored Apple car.
Check out some of the cool rides from this year’s festival below.
Apple’s new store in New York’s Upper East Side might be the most posh retail location the iPhone-maker has ever opened, but according to a new report, Jony Ive and Angela Ahrendts have tag-teamed some new design changes for other stores that will give them more of a ‘premium feel.’
Download the latest Cult of Mac Magazine to find out what we’re all expecting from next week’s WWDC 2015, why we’re waiting for HomeKit’s killer app, what Kahney’s Korner has to say about the big Jony Ive promotion, a bit on our epic journey from hacked Facebook page to recovery, and check out an ‘Apple Watch Song’ fanboy anthem for the ages.
All that, plus product reviews, helpful tips, and more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine.
Can’t Apple’s design guru catch a break? After Jony Ive received a well-deserved promotion to become Apple’s chief design officer, some pundits misinterpreted the happy news as a bad omen.
Our own Leander Kahney reads the tea leaves completely differently: Ive’s promotion is nothing but good news for Apple.
This week: Jony Ive’s big promotion has him handing over the keys to Apple’s legendary industral design lab, so we have to wonder… is this step one in an Ive succession plan? Plus: the surprising suitability of Ive’s replacement, Richard Howarth; Apple VP Jeff Williams lets some curious Apple car comments slip; why Apple Watch will get a lot faster come fall; Leander reveals his fetish for the weird whispering women of Youtube; and stay tuned till the end for a very romantic Get To Know Ur Cultist!
Our thanks to CultCloth for supporting this episode. If you’re obsessive about keeping your iPhone, iPad, Mac, DSLR, glasses, and other gadgets in sparkling clean condition, you’ll love ‘em. Use code “CultCast” at checkout to score a free 8×8 CleanCloth.
Why is Jony Ive’s big promotion so great for Apple? Find out what Leander thinks in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine. In addition, meet the men filling the design guru’s shoes, see how Apple Watch apps will get a speed boost, learn how to beat the Unicode of Death and a ton more iPhone and Apple Watch tips, and see just how Google is challenging Apple on its own turf.
All this, and much more, in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine.
This is Richard Howarth, Apple’s newly appointed vice president of industrial design, and the man who has to fill Jony Ive’s (calf-leather) shoes.
Ive has been promoted to chief design officer to do more “blue sky thinking,” leaving Howarth to run the legendary Industrial Design studio that has been Apple’s ideas factory and product foundry for more than two decades.
Howarth is no stranger to the studio. He’s worked there for 20 years, heading up the design of the iPod, iPhone and a string of MacBooks, among many other products. He’s African-born, London-educated and has been Ive’s second-in-command for some time, earning a reputation among colleagues as a “badass.”
Jony Ive received a nice gift for the Memorial Day weekend: a promotion to the role of Chief Design Officer at Apple, which will broaden his design duties at Apple while handing day-to-day running of the design team to long-time Apple employees Alan Dye and Richard Howarth.
Congrats, Jony!
Apple’s influence on the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens extends far beyond Kylo Ren’s ugly crossguard lightsaber.
The Force Awakens costume designer Michael Kaplan has designed costumes on movies like Blade Runner and Fight Club, but when it came time to redesign the new stormtrooper armor for director J.J. Abrams, Kaplan said he looked to Apple as his biggest inspiration on how to perfect the stormtrooper’s white, plastic-y armor.
Apple Watch is hands down the most beautiful smart watch you can buy, but it doesn’t have a gorgeous round face like the original Apple Watches did. Jony Ive never even considered using a round design because “a circle doesn’t make any sense” for a list-based interface, but the crazy tech pranksters at Peripatetic Pandas are ready to show him how wrong he was.
Using a metal grinder to round out the Apple Watch’s corners, the guys who also solved the iPhone 6’s protruding lens problem have also devised an ingenious way to get a custom round Apple Watch. Sure, their method will void your warranty, but it’s pretty amazing that the watch still works after the beating it receives.
Watch the gory video below:
With its small screen and 0.46-inch thickness, the original iPhone from 2007 looks like an antique these days. Put it next to the Apple Watch, however, and it’s remarkable how similar the two devices look in terms of their design language.
At 0.45 inches, the Apple Watch is ever so slightly thinner, but its rounded edges, color and overall aesthetic certainly appear reminiscent of the first-generation Apple handset, don’t you think?
Apple and Star Wars are forces to be reckoned with. These two cultural powerhouses deliver endless entertainment and inspire extreme fandom.
Mash the two of them together and you’ve got the technocultural equivalent of an atom smasher. Or a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Or something.
With its roly-poly looks and infectious personality, new droid BB-8 looks primed to be a real scene-stealer when Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters at the end of the year.
And now we know what the ballsy little bot would look like if Jony Ive replaced its orange-and-white color scheme with something a little more subtle.
Jony Ive and his BFF Marc Newson launched Apple into the luxury market this week with the Apple Watch, which expertly straddles the line between gadget and fashion accessory.
Apple’s dynamic designing duo sat down with Vogue’s Suzy Meeks this week to talk about their first foray into the fashion world — as well as what inspired them to create the Apple Watch. We rounded up the top 8 revelations from the pair’s appearance earlier this week, but Vogue just made the full interview available online, and it’s full of juicy insights into Jony and Marc’s thought processes.
Watch the full interview below:
One magical piece of wearable technology, two radically different parody videos.
The first takes a jab at the seemingly never-ending supply of superlatives Jony Ive uses to describe the Apple Watch. The other reminds us just how precious watches are to people determined to pass them along as keepsakes at all costs. See them both below.
Apple Watch might be the most controversial product Cupertino’s ever launched, but according to Jony Ive, Apple’s been on this path since the Jobs and Woz founded the company.
The Apple design boss and Marc Newson opened the inaugural Condé Nast International Luxury Conference today in Florence, Italy, to talk about their smartwatch that’s part fashion item, part tech gadget. Ive and Newson sat down with conference host Suzy Menkes and explained how they approached the development of Apple WAtch.
“We don’t look at the world through predetermined market opportunities,” said Ive. “What we’ve done fairly consistently is try to invest tremendous care in the development of our products.”
Here are the eight most important bits we learned about the Apple Watch’s development:
As part of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, Jony Ive penned a short essay praising Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky for creating a “remarkable startup.”
“The service that Brian and his partners imagined is soaringly ambitious and utterly practical,” said Ive, who didn’t make Time’s list himself this year.
Being pals with Jony Ive definitely has its benefits. Just ask J.J. Abrams, the director of the upcoming Star Wars movie.
Apple is starting to toss Apple Watches at celebrities like the wearables are Viagra at the Playboy Mansion. Fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld just flashed his custom gold link bracelet on Instagram, and now Sam Smith is showing off his new timepiece — which was hand-delivered by Jony Ive himself.