When you’ve designed some of the most successful consumer electronics in modern history, where else can you look but up?

One of the many interesting tidbits in The New Yorker’s 17,000-word profile of Jony Ive surrounds his fascination with the Apollo space program and, yes, designing spacesuits. It doesn’t sound like the spacesuit itself was what inspired Apple’s top designer as much as the process that went into it.

Ive mentions he’s been watching the old Discovery channel series Moon Machine about the challenges facing the Apollo program. NASA designers had no idea what goals they even needed to meet for the suit, but built up to the final design with invention after invention until they got it right.

An anecdote from The New Yorker’s time in Ive’s hallowed design studio (emphasis added):

Computer users of a certain age remember the Commodore 64. Millions brought the future into their homes with this, their first personal computer.

And if you still have a Commodore 64, dust it off and make sure it’s not a Commodore 65. A model with the higher digit sold on eBay Sunday for close to $23,000.

The 64 still holds sales records. It outsold IBM and Apple during the early 1980s, in part because it sold in retail stores and not just electronics or computer stores.

But the 65? It never made into the stores.

In what may be the longest magazine feature yet dedicated to Apple’s industrial design guru, the New Yorker has just published a sprawling 16,000 word profile of Jony Ive — taking readers from his early meetings with Steve Jobs up to the present day.

It’s jam-packed with fascinating tidbits about Ive, his secretive design studio, and Apple’s past and future. While I’d thoroughly recommend reading the whole article, here are the details that really leaped out:

Everyone might be tripping over themselves to talk about the possible Apple Car, but there’s a much-more imminent Apple device rumored to be on the way: the 12-inch+ “iPad Pro” tablet.

Over the weekend, French Apple-watching website Nowhereelse.fr shared a handful of new pictures of the mythical plus-sized iPad, claiming to be photos of a third-party case for the device.

The photos give some indication of just how big the iPad Pro would look alongside today’s iPad Air 2. As with existing current iPad cases, the iPad Pro case features cutout sections for a Lightning connector, microphone, volume rocker, mute switch, rear-facing camera, and power button. It’s not clear from the picture whether the tablet will boast a 12.2-inch screen or a 12.9-inch one: both of which have been rumored so far.

Check out another picture — and additional information — after the jump.

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Three-and-a-half years after the debut of Siri, virtual assistants haven’t yet become a user interface element on par with, say, the mouse cursor — but that’s not through any lack of trying.

According to a new study carried out for Venture Beat, Siri not only defeats Microsoft rival Cortana and Google’s Google Now automated assistants in understanding English; it absolutely slays them when it comes to other languages.

¡Viva Siri!

Silicon Valley’s top CEOs snubbed President Barack Obama’s appearance at Stanford University today for the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, but Apple CEO Tim Cook used his invite to make the case for improving security.

Cook addressed attendees before Obama took the stage and reaffirmed Apple’s belief that everyone has a right to privacy and security. In part of his speech, the Apple CEO warned of “dire consequences” if the proper balance between security and privacy isn’t maintained.

“We must get this right!” Cook told the audience.  “History has shown us that sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences.”

To use hip hop parlance, Canadian rapper hip hop artist Drake has “dropped” a new surprise mixtape on iTunes. The precursor to his next studio album, “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” is a 17-track opus — announced late Thursday via Drake’s Twitter.

Boasting guest appearances from Lil Wayne, Travi$ Scott, and PARTYNEXTDOOR, the mixtape is expected to be the artist’s last under his current contract with label Cash Money Records.

However, while hip hop-heads will no doubt see the release as the big news here (and, if you’re a Drake fan, check out the track “You & The 6”), for Apple-watchers it’s significant for another reason.

Let’s face it: Freemium games and games with an inordinate number of in-app purchases are out of control on the App Store. To a certain extent, that’s understandable: Developers are hard-pressed to get anyone to download their games if they charge money for them, which means it’s all a race to the bottom. The only way to get any visibility is for developers to release their games free, then hope they can make money later.

In a refreshing move, though, Apple is trying to do something about its freemium problem, by highlighting “Pay Once & Play” games that charge players once upfront, then never bug them for more money again.

Apple is making iMessage and FaceTime harder to hack by turning on two-step verification for both services in an effort to tighten security for iOS and Mac users.

The extra security goes into effect today and gives users an extra layer of protection against hackers or anyone else trying to log in to your iMessage account to either impersonate you or steal data.