Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products - Biography of Apple's Legendary Designer | Perfect for Tech Enthusiasts & Design Lovers

I was excited to see a book on Jonathan Ive, the head of Industrial Design at Apple. He is a living legend – with the Queen’s knighthood no less - with the string of runaway hits Apple has had. Stories abound of how the finer things in life from forging of samurai swords to examples from marine biology influence his design thinking. Author Leander Kahney summarizes his enduring legacy with this comment “(Ive) introduced the concept of fashion to an industry previously preoccupied with speeds and feeds”I was also a bit concerned Kahney would fall into traps authors often fall into when they profile tech executives as I wrote recently – speculation without direct access to the subject, and a chronological version of the subject’s life. Kahney does but it does not affect this book as much. He focuses more on the huge product hits – the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and iPad and uses his long term watching of Apple (he publishes the Cult of Mac) to use alumni and other contacts to weave enough of Ive into the descriptions. And unlike Walter Isaacson with Steve Jobs, he does not focus much on Ive’s youth other than to show the influence his dad and his consulting days in the UK had on his aesthetic sense.There is plenty of detail to savor – like the Daler Rowney sketchbooks preferred by the ID team, Bondi Blue translucence of the first iMac and Ive's minimalist stamp on the new iOS7. Apple fans will particularly relish these details of two decades of products they have enjoyed. Personally, I liked the design culture Kahney describes that Robert Brunner, IDEO, frog and others brought to the Valley in the 90s that have reshaped so many of our devices since. I also liked the fact he invokes anecdotes from auto, furniture and other product design from Italy, Japan and elsewhere.I would have liked to seen more on the “industrial” part of ID. The marvel of Apple is it can scale to millions of units within weeks of launch of what appear to be complex, lovingly man-made products. He talks a bit about the Unibody manufacturing process and the Foxconn contract manufacturing role but the majority of the focus is on individual product features.I also thought there is some hero worship where he describes Ive as irreplaceable at Apple, even more than Jobs was. Apple is a multi-dimensional phenomenon with its retail store experience, its massive apps ecosystem, its impressive supply chain and memorable marketing all as important as the product elegance.Overall, though I found it an enjoyable read. He fills in some of the gaps in other recent books about Apple. This comment in the chapter detailing the super secret ID studio is telling: “Walter Isaacson was given a tour (of the studio) but he only described the presentation tables in his biography of Jobs”