July 18, 2022 • 48 mins
Jony Ive, the genius designer who helped redefine Apple's identity, has recently cut ties with the company. Here we learn about his origins and journey to Apple during the company's most chaotic era.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how the tech are you? You know? Last week
I mentioned on a tech News episode that Johnny I've
(00:25):
a Sir Jonathan a k a. Jonathan Paul I've has
pretty much completely broken ties with Apple and that this
is a big deal at the very least, it's what
you would call an historic moment. So Johnny, who spells
his name j O n Y because of course he does,
(00:48):
first joined Apple way back in and had a hand
in designing tons of Apple products, from the iconic iPhone
to Apple's spaceship headquarters. He's had a hand in all
of that. His reputation is one of perfectionism and critical
attention to the smallest of details. He also earned a
(01:11):
reputation for being somewhat coddled by Apple. You know, you
could say that reputation might be unfairly earned, but he
has one, and some would even say he cared far
more about the form of a product than he did
for the function, and he certainly had issues with that
throughout his career. But today, I thought we would go
(01:33):
into a lot more detail on his life, In fact,
so much detail that it's going to require more than
one episode. So this is part one. And before I
really get started, I want to shout out a book
that I used as a primary source for this episode
or these episodes. That book is titled After Steve, How
(01:53):
Apple Became a trillion dollar Company and Lost its Soul,
And it's written by Trip Michael. Now, as that title suggests,
the book primarily focuses on what happened at Apple in
the wake of Steve Jobs's death in two thousand eleven,
and how folks like Tim Cook and Johnny I've would
change the course of the company and somewhat kind of
(02:17):
battle against each other in that process. It's a good book,
and while the title does indicate a particular perspective and
narrative there, it is not just an opinion piece. In fact,
Michael cites more than four hundred fourteen sources. I know
because the PDF that comes with the audio book has
sixty two pages. That's just a list of all the citations.
(02:40):
He also includes a bibliography of works that complement his own.
Those works include books and movies and more. It's really
impressive stuff. Anyway, I don't know Michael personally. I have
no connection to him. I don't have any connection to
this book. I just thought I would give it a
shout out if you are interested, because the information I'm
going to be talking about here a lot of it.
(03:02):
There's a lot more detail in the book. But it's
not the only source I used, but it is a
prime source. And also, like I said, I got the
audio book, so it's available on platforms like Audible. So
let's get to Johnny I've and Apple. Johnny I've was
born near London in nineteen sixty seven. His father was
(03:24):
a teacher who taught design and technology at what we
would consider the high school level. His mother taught theology
and later on became a therapist, and I've's grandfather was
a machinist and Johnny's father, in addition to his teaching job,
had also tried his hand at silversmith ing. So Johnny
quickly was attracted to the process of creating things, not
(03:49):
just designing them, but actually fabricating them. And like a
lot of kids who would later get into fields like engineering,
Johnny would take stuff up heart to learn how it worked.
I don't know what his success rate was for putting
it back together again, but he certainly took it apart
to understand how things worked. His father would teach him
(04:11):
how to sketch out ideas before committing to build them,
and I gave Johnny an appreciation of design. He would
ask his father endless questions about how things were built
and why they were built the way that they were so,
not just how did they put this together, but why
did they choose this method over some alternative method. When
(04:32):
he was still a child, his family relocated to a
rural neighborhood about two hours north of London. Johnny enrolled
in a school called Walton High School, where he continued
to develop his skills in art and design. He also
became active in various social issues like feminism and things
of that nature. Uh he wasn't nearly as strong in
(04:53):
most of the traditional curriculum at school, but that really
didn't concern him very much because from the beginning, his
plan was to attend a technical college after high school,
and a technical college wouldn't require high marks in those
classic subjects. I've also attended a summer program that had
a focus on design with I've learning more advanced drafting techniques,
(05:14):
as in like draftsmanship. So it married his love of
art with his love of design and engineering. And as
a senior project I've said about designing a working portable projector.
Uh So, the projectors that were being used in his
high school were these big heavy things. They're very clunky
and cumbersome. You couldn't easily move them from classroom to classroom.
(05:37):
So I've thought, here's a challenge. Here's here's something that
I can solve. I can create a projector that is portable,
that's easier to move around. So he made a projector that,
when it was in its collapsed form, was like a briefcase,
you know, pretty heavy one. And when it opened, hydraulic
arms would unfold the projector and it would immerge urge
(06:00):
into place as a fully working projector. And people who
saw it said that just watching it kind of unfold
itself was a very satisfying experience, like everything moved just so,
and it was like an early example of i've's attention
to detail and creating things that have a pleasing effect
(06:22):
on the person looking at them. Anyone who is familiar
with Apple products knows that that's a big selling point
for the stuff that's come out over the last couple
of decades. I've attended Newcastle Polytechnic largely thanks to a
scholarship that was provided by a guy named Philip Gray.
Philip Gray was a managing director for Robert's Weaver Group,
that's an architecture firm in the UK. And part of
(06:45):
this deal was that I've would agree to work at
Robert's Weaver Group as an intern while attending college, and
then would work there full time after graduation for some
amount of time. I'm not sure how much, but that
was all part the agreement. Now, one story Michael relays
in his book After Steve is particularly amusing. While he
(07:07):
was at college, I've was living on a pretty tight budget,
and he also had a long distance girlfriend whom he
would write to regularly. Now this is in, you know,
the mid nineteen eighties, before the real days of texting
and email, so we wrote letters to each other back
in those days, physical letters. Now I've decided to attempt
(07:29):
something somewhat cheeky. He didn't know if it was gonna work.
He drew the picture of a stamp on an envelope
and it was in all ways with a normal stamp
identical like he He copied it precisely and just drew
it directly on the envelope itself. Put a letter to
(07:49):
his girlfriend and there sent the letter off, and she
sent back a response which told I've that he could
sketch a convincing enough copy of an official stamp to
fool the post office into carrying the mail to its destination.
And I'm a little tickled that the guy who would
later be largely responsible for how popular certain apple products
(08:10):
would become was playing with counterfeiting back when he was
in college. There's more to that story, but I'm going
to leave that to Michael's book to flesh it out.
So if you want to hear more about that and
the silly turn it took, you should check out the book.
While the style at the time, as Grandpa Simpson would say,
was to favor a chaotic collection of shapes and bright colors,
(08:34):
that wasn't i've's preference. Now, if you don't know what
I'm talking about, in the nineteen eighties, things went a
bit haywire in the design world. All you have to
do just go on a search engine and search for
nineteen eighties style that's all you have to put in,
and you will see what I mean. It was a
troubled time of different shapes and and neon colors in
(08:58):
no particular organized form, and I've hated all of that chaos.
He preferred the more simple linear style of an earlier
art movement within art and architecture, and and uh products
even called bow House. Now that's not the band with
Peter Murphy in which we would learn that Bella legos
(09:20):
he is dead. That is an amazing song and a
phenomenal band. And if you don't know it, well, I
think I just out of myself as a goth. Anyway,
I'm talking more about an art and architectural movement that
originated in Germany. The focus in bau House was to
find a synthesis of aesthetic and function, and that's really
(09:42):
what I've preferred to just those weird shapes and colors
of the dominant nineteen eighties designs. He saw those as
being ugly and grotesque and superfluous and unnecessary. He he
felt that you really should have a product where everything
that is in that product is necessary for that product
(10:03):
in some way, that less is more. Meanwhile, I was
getting practical experience. As an intern at the Roberts Weaver
Group firm, he received assignments to create pitches for clients,
so he wasn't just you know, running errands or running
support for designers there. He was actually put in charge
(10:26):
of a few projects. I would bristle whenever someone would
ask him to compromise on his design, and he didn't
really like doing that. It was something that kind of
revealed to him that design consultant is a tough gig
because you are not the final voice on the approach
to design. Your your client has input, and that can
(10:49):
be a difficult thing. I could respect this because as
someone who is a writer, h there were times when
I would submit articles to an editor and received feedback,
and my first response was always to get angry at
the feedback. Not a mature response, but it was how
(11:12):
I would feel. I would think, like, oh, they don't
get what I'm going for here. Usually that wasn't really
the case, because I unlike I've am not brilliant. I've, however,
bristled because he felt that he really did have the
best idea and he hated having to compromise on that.
That also meant that some other folks over at the
Roberts Weaver Group felt that he probably wasn't a good
(11:33):
fit for the company because the secret to being a
great consultant is being adaptable and being able to, you know,
incorporate client feedback into designs. So they felt that maybe
this would not be the right fit for him. Now,
one thing that I've encountered around this time was an
Apple Macintosh computer. Those originally were launched in ninety four.
(11:58):
He admired the sign of the computer, and he loved
the marketing campaign that launched the Macintosh. Now, in case
y'all don't remember, I'm sure a lot of you are
familiar with this commercial because it was a famous commercial
directed by Ridley Scott, of all people, and it played
during the Super Bowl in so it really got a
(12:20):
lot of eyeballs on it. But in case that's well
before your time you don't know what I'm talking about,
the commercial played off the oppressive themes of George Orwell's
Night four, the novel. So in this commercial, everything looks
very gray and dim, and you have this group of
drone like employees are clad in this baggy gray clothing
(12:43):
shuffling into a theater and they're a film is playing
that consists of a closeup of a man's face, and
that man is yelling out essentially fascist propaganda that also
stresses that conformity is key. Then a woman runs in,
this athletic woman holding a sledgehammer, and she does a
(13:04):
hammer throw. She twirls around and throws the sledge hammer
through the screen. And then you hear a narrator say,
quote on January, Apple will introduce the Macintosh, and you'll
see why nine four won't be like four end quote.
And the commercial is again one of the most famous
(13:25):
of all time. It implied that the PC industry was
one of forced uniformity and there was no personality to
the products, and the ad didn't even show the Macintosh
computer itself. The Macintosh is nowhere to be seen in
this original version of the commercial. The ad just claimed
that Apple was going to forge a new path all
(13:47):
on its own, and I've absolutely loved the advertisement. Now,
before he would graduate Newcastle Polytechnic, I've had to present
what the college referred to as a blue Sky project.
This was meant to show off a design without having
to worry about the constraints of actually being able to
make the thing, so students were given a lot of
(14:10):
leeway they could they could propose things that weren't necessarily
technically possible at the time. I've thought up of a
way to pay for items using a medallion like device
that could, when brought into close contact with a point
of sale register, transmit payment wirelessly. So he was essentially
(14:31):
thinking about a way to replace credit cards and to
have a more elegant means of being able to transfer funds,
and it was a predecessor to contactless payment that would
evolve many many years later. I'ves design intrigued, the judge
invited to score students submissions, to the point where, according
(14:52):
to Michael's book, that judge so impressed asked how high
a score he could give I've And traditionally a seventy
would be considered an A, and the judge was told
he could score it however he thought was appropriate, so
he gave I've a ninety, when usually seventy would be
(15:13):
the top result, which is a big old yell zam.
Al Right, We've got a lot more to say about
Johnny ives early days, including his move to Apple, but
before we do that, let's take a quick break. Okay,
we're up to nine and that was a year that
(15:37):
would bring a big change to Johnny I've's life. The
Roberts Weaver Group folded. There was a big financial crisis
in the UK, a recession, and one of the victims
of that recession was this consulting firm, the Robert's Weaver Group.
So i was no longer obligated to work at this
company because the company had essentially gone away, So instead
(15:59):
he joined a design consultancy company called Tangerine lowercase tea
kind of funny that he would take on a gig
at a company named after one type of fruit, and
then would become famous for working at a different company
named after a different kind of fruit. In fact, he
would make the transfer from one directly to the other.
(16:19):
Clive Grenier, who had met I've a couple of years earlier,
was largely responsible for recruiting I've to join Tangerine, and
I've quickly got to work on several different projects, including
one that was to design sinks sinc basins. Really, that
one didn't go so well because i'ves very um remarkable
(16:44):
pitch was one that the company just wasn't comfortable adopting.
It was a little too aggressive in its departure from tradition.
And that's another case where i was getting a little
frustrated that as a consultant he couldn't necessarily design something
(17:04):
and have it stay his design and have it remained unchanged,
that he would have to bow to client wishes. So
he then was brought in on a project called Juggernaut,
and Juggernaut was a project that involved Grenier. It also
involved one of the co founders of the company and
(17:26):
I've and the client in this case was a tiny
little computer company called Apple. Juggernaut was a project aiming
to create some novel computer and tablet designs. I think
there were four devices in total, including a tablet with
a separate keyboard, a couple of portable computers, a couple
(17:47):
of desktop computers that kind of thing. I've was in
charge of, mainly working on the tablet concept, and he
was also given the task to pack up and ship
the prototypes which they made out of a phone, and
send those to Apple. So I've took meticulous care and
packaging these prototypes. You know, he wrapped each one very carefully.
(18:10):
He packed them into the box so that there'd be
no chance of them being damaged unless you know, something
crazy happened to the box. He even included some folded
Tangerine branded shirts in the box as well, And this
was a very early example of making the process of
unboxing a Johnny I've designed project a real experience. That
(18:35):
that it would show that there was an incredible amount
of consideration in just the packaging of the product, but
let alone the design of the product. This would be
something that Apple would embrace after I've would join the company,
largely really after I've joined the company and Steve Jobs
would return to it. Apple was impressed with this presentation
(18:56):
and the designs, and they invited the Tangerine t to
come out to California and to present their ideas in person.
So Johnny I've got to go to California. I think
that at that point it was his second time traveling
to California. He had already been there once and found
it really appealing. Well, while he was there, I've was
(19:17):
taken aside a couple of times by Apple executives and
essentially told that he had a job with Apple if
he wanted one, that he could come over and join
their team. His colleagues over at Tangerine would tell him
back in the UK that really he had no options.
He had to take up that offer. They were very
(19:38):
generous in saying, this is an incredible opportunity. You will
do amazing things there. You should take the job. So
in the fall of nineteen, I've would relocate, he would
change his home address from London to San Francisco and
he would join Apple. Now, the Apple of nineteen was
(20:02):
very different from the Apple of today thirty years later.
In fact, it was really different from the Apple of
two thousand seven, that's when the iPhone debut, or even
the Apple of two thousand one, when the company unveiled
the iPod. The Apple of n while founded by some
somewhat rebellious techno anarchist types, which might be going a
(20:25):
bit far, but Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniac both enjoyed
thumbing their noses that respectability and authority back in the day. Well,
now that company was in the hands of a different
set of leaders altogether. So it's probably a good idea
to do a quick rundown on what had happened at Apple,
because that's a very important component of this overall story.
(20:47):
So we're gonna give a cliffs notes version of Apple's
history leading up to nine and a little bit beyond. Actually,
so back in the nineteen seventies, Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak created a partnership and then later brought in another
person named Mike Markola to turn that partnership into Apple Incorporated. Now,
(21:10):
the first Apple model was really more of a hobbyist
kit than a out of the box computer. And while
hobbyists were interested in the Apple One, that really wasn't
a suitable product for the mainstream. And that would change
dramatically with the introduction of the Apple two line, a
fully built computer system, and ultimately the Apple Too line
(21:31):
would include numerous offshoots. You know, you'd be like the
Apple to see, the Apple to E, the Apple to G,
and the list goes on. The Apple Too would be
a truly enormous success for the young company. So Jobs
and Wozniak founded Apple, but neither of them would be
the person to lead the company. Mike Markola, who I
(21:53):
said earlier he was a primary investor in Apple. He
owned like twenty of Apple in the early days. He
brought in a guy named Michael Scott, not that one,
to serve as the first CEO for Apple because Markola
felt that neither Jobs nor Wozniak really had the experience
to lead a company. They they had the vision, but
(22:16):
not the know how, so Michael Scott would serve as
CEO until by then he had made some serious waves
in the company and and some pretty pretty big enemies
as well. In early one, he famously fired about half
the team responsible for designing the Apple Too because he
(22:36):
said they were redundant. He said, we don't need all
these people because the folks that we've got, like, we've
got twice as many as we need. Let's get rid
of them. He also made some pretty harsh comments about it.
He at one blind had said that as soon as
it stops being fun working for Apple, he was going
to quit, and instead he said, you know what, I've
rethought it now. I figure I'm going to keep firing people, uh,
(23:00):
in order to make it more fun to work at Apple,
Which that's pretty brutal like that. I'm sure it was
kind of an off the cuff, humorous remark, but it
comes across as as pretty nasty when you consider this
is the livelihood of people we're talking about here. So
he was effectively removed from power after making that statement,
(23:21):
though he would actually stay on for several more months
before officially retiring. Mark Coola would take over as CEO
duties for the time being, which would actually stretch on
for a couple of years, at which point in the
company would then bring on a man named John Scully
to be the new CEO and president, and it was
(23:42):
Scully's involvement that would lead to Steve Jobs leaving Apple.
So Jobs was already proving to be a marketing genius.
He was known more for his feel for design, his
vision of what could be popular, and his ability to
sell the designs, rather than as say an engineer or
(24:03):
a computer scientist. So he wasn't really thought of as
the person who can make stuff work. He was the
person who could see how a particular presentation of technology
could have a really powerful impact on customers. Jobs had
seen designs at the Xerox Park facility that's p a
(24:24):
r C. And those designs convinced him to incorporate some
of those ideas into Apple products. You could say that
Steve Jobs effectively he stole ideas like you know, the
computer mouse and the graphics user interface from things that
he saw at the Xerox Park facility, or you could
just say he was inspired by it. Really just depends
(24:44):
on your point of view and his work to to
do this, like his work to make this computer a thing,
made Jobs something of a target for Scully, who had
come over from PepsiCo in order to lead Apple. Jobs
had a reputation of being very difficult to work with,
and as he spearheaded projects that would evolve into a
(25:07):
very unsuccessful computer platform called Lisa. It was a very
expensive computer, didn't sell well at all, and was considered
a flop, an expensive flop at Apple. He also had
a real direct hand in the much more successful Macintosh platform.
But jobs involvement with Macintosh was really disruptive too. You
(25:27):
had the existing Macintosh team that had been working on
the computer system before Jobs essentially invaded and took over
the project, and this caused an enormous amount of disruption
within that team. Uh, those stories are pretty fascinating on
their own, but you know, it goes beyond what we
want to talk about today. So the Apple board of
(25:48):
directors became concerned about Steve Jobs because the projects he
was heading up were costing a huge amount of money,
but they had a questionable record when it came to
success in the actual marketplace, and Scully was told that
he needed to contain Jobs, and ultimately Scully would strip
Jobs of most of his authority, pushing him to the
(26:09):
periphery of Apple and Markola actually cited was Scully now
the guy who had originally invested in Jobs and Wosniacs
idea ended up siding with the new leader of Apple,
and Jobs, hurt and infuriated, left the company in nineteen.
There's some versions of the story that say that he
(26:29):
was effectively fired or at least given so little to
do that he had he was, at least in in
practical terms, no longer working for Apple. There are other
versions where he took a much more active stance and
and quit in um the company because of this this
(26:49):
opposition he faced. So it really again depends upon whom
you believe. The outcome is the same either way, and
I don't think it ultimately matters. UM. It does sound
Scully did Jobs dirty, but Jobs himself what didn't do
many favors for himself by being um somewhat difficult to
work with. Now let's flash forward to nine. We were
(27:12):
in eighty five when Jobs left the company by ninety two.
Apple had been operating without either of its co founders
for seven years because Wozniak had effectively left Apple in
nineteen eighty one after he had been severely injured in
a plane crash, and in a more official capacity he
left in nine eight five, but he to this day
remains an Apple employee in a largely symbolic capacity. So
(27:37):
would be the last full year of Scully leading Apple.
He had initiated a project to create what he called
a personal Digital Assistant or p d A, and yeah,
Scully or someone on his team was the first to
coin that term, and that would become the Apple Newton
Message Pad, a product that would later invite ridicule due
(27:58):
to overpromising an under delivering, particularly when it came to
handwriting recognition. Scully had also made the decision for Apple
to transition to run on the power PC microprocessor. That
was a decision that would send Apple down a very
rocky path. In fact, it was so rocky that ultimately
it would threaten to bankrupt the company. Now I've joined
(28:22):
Apple just as tensions in the company were growing, with
different leaders in different departments playing tug of war of
where the company should go. Scully would essentially get ushered
out of Apple in early and a German leader named
Michael Spindler came in to replace him. Not the time,
Apple was on unsteady financial ground, having sunk a lot
(28:45):
of money into the development of the Newton, which had
turned out to be a flop, and had also experimented
in other types of consumer hardware like digital cameras, and
those experiments had also largely failed. So Spindler made another
decision that further hurt the company. He allowed other companies
(29:05):
to build clones of Apple products. Now, until this point,
Apple was very careful to hold onto its own intellectual property.
The company took a totally different route than what IBM did. See,
IBM had used off the shelf components to build its
personal computers, but that meant that other companies could also
(29:25):
use those same components, plus get a licensed copy of
the same operating system or or nearly the same as
what IBM was using, and build IBM clones. There was
nothing to stop them. There was no reason because there
was nothing IBM trademarked on any of those things. They
were all products that you could just buy and assemble yourself.
(29:47):
The IBM clone market was largely responsible for convincing IBM
to get out the computer you know, the consumer computer space,
and Apple had dodged that problem by keeping everything in
house until spind came in and changed course. Spindler would
eventually get pushed out of Apple himself, and a new
CEO named gil Emilio would come in. I'll talk more
(30:10):
about him and his effects on Apple, and then how
this ties into Johnny I've as well. After we come
back from this break, Okay where we left off. Gil
Emilio had just become CEO, replacing Spindler, and Emilia was
(30:33):
known for rehabilitating companies that were in financial trouble, and
by this point Apple was starting to flirt with bankruptcy.
He would make more massive cuts to the budget, he
would hold layoffs across the company. UH he authorized projects
aimed at updating the operating system on Macintosh computers, and
those projects would end up languishing due to feature creep
(30:55):
and internal struggles in Apple. UH. It was another one
of those cases where something going on inside Apple had
the capacity to take the whole company down. Things looked
really grim, so Apple's board of directors decided that Apple
should acquire a little computer company called Next Big in
little E, big X big T. That company was founded
(31:18):
by drumroll please, Steve Jobs. The idea was that the
operating system for Next computers, which were really interesting computers,
but they were super expensive and they weren't really selling well,
but that the operating system would become the foundation for
the new mac Os, that the project that Amelio had launched,
(31:38):
which was kind of mired in internal politics, would get
pushed aside, and the Next operating system would be used
as the the bedrock for mac Os. That meant that
Steve Jobs came on board Apple as an advisor, but
he didn't stay an advisor for very long. Steve Jobs
was actually able to rest control of the company away
(32:01):
from Emilio. Technically there was another CEO between Emilio and Jobs,
but it's not really much point in talking about him.
So he he leveraged the company's terrible market performance into
an argument that only he, Steve Jobs, the co founder
of Apple, would be able to set the company right.
So Steve Jobs would become the interim CEO of Apple,
(32:24):
and not that long afterward he would become just the
plain old CEO. Like that, he would there be nothing
interim about it, he would become the CEO. Now I
give you that truncated history of Apple, because it's during
these tumultuous years, the end of Scullies leadership at the company,
the rise and fall of Spindler and Emilio, and the
(32:45):
return of Jobs that I've began to establish himself within
the company. And honestly, knowing what we do about what
was going on at Apple, and how talented I've is
as a person, it is more than a little bit
surprising that he actually endured all of that chaos and
that he stuck around long enough to have the opportunity
(33:06):
to help redefine Apple's place in computers and personal electronics
along with Steve Jobs's return. It's amazing he lasted that long.
So when I've started in he was just the ninth
member of Apple's design team. One of his first assignments
was to work on the design of the second generation
(33:26):
Newton message pad device. So I thought the first generation
of the Newton was really too bulky, it was too unusual,
it didn't feel good to hold, and then it lacked
an aesthetic appeal that would invite users to pick up
the device and actually use it. So i've's design would
win him tons of awards, Like he redesigned the Newton
(33:49):
message pad. He overhauled how it looked and how the
cover would work with the device. He turned it into
more like a uh spiral taw blit note book, you know,
like an actual physical notebook with paper in it, and
the lid of the Newton message pad, and this one
would flip over the top on a hinge and fold
(34:12):
against the back of the device, and in that hinge
you would nestle the stylus for the device because this
this is a tablet computer where you actually did have
to use a stylus in order to interact with the
tablet itself. And um, yeah, he got lots of accolades
for this design that people thought that it was a
(34:33):
brilliant approach. However, the products continuing issues with handwriting recognition
really plagued the device and it just it was really
raked over the coals critically. Now in case if you
don't remember, the news and the whole idea was that
you had a tablet computer that could accept your handwriting
as input, so you would use a stylus, you would
(34:55):
jot down notes on the screen, you know, writing it
out in Longhand, and the computer would detect the movements
of the stylist against the screen and interpret that as
letters and then create a text version of whatever it
was you were writing on the screen. But the handwriting
recognition wasn't very good, so using a Newton could be frustrating,
(35:16):
so frustrating that the Simpsons made a whole joke about
it in an episode Eat Up Martha instead of Beat
Up Martin. So I've had made the physical act of
holding a Newton more pleasing, but the operations still fell
far short, And to be clear, that was something that
was totally out of Ive's control. He was working on
the physical product design, not on the operating system or
(35:37):
the software. Now. Reportedly, I was initially frustrated, and by
some accounts he was miserable at Apple during this time period,
and I said that it was remarkable that he didn't
quit in those chaotic days. But by some accounts there
were numerous times where he did consider quitting and was
only convinced not to by his temp team leader, who
(36:01):
is a man named uh Robert Brunner. He was the
director of industrial design at the time, who was kind
of telling I've like you need to stick around because
things are going to change at this company, which was
truly prophetic. So under Spindler, Apple's process had shifted from
(36:22):
really focusing on aesthetics to focusing on performance, with more
of an emphasis on processor speed and less care given
to the design of the computers themselves. Really all about
efficiency and power, which is such a stereotypical thing to
associate with a German leader that I hesitated to even
(36:42):
talk about it because it does feed into a stereotype.
But in this case that actually was what was going on.
The idea was, oh, the actual physical design of these things,
the appearance of them, that doesn't matter as much as
how fast they are, how powerful they are, And I
imagine for I'VE that had to have been torture. The
design process was also chopped up. The team would have
(37:05):
about half the time to go through the design process
as they did before Spindler had become CEO. And like
I said, Robert Brunner was the director of Industrial Design
at the time and was the leader of the team,
and he would stay on with Apple until ninety six. Slash.
He was one of i've's mentors and really one of
(37:26):
the chief reasons why I've was brought over to Apple
in the first place, and he had a lot of
faith in I've, which was really evident with what Brunner
would then assign to I've. I was put in charge
of refining the design for a Macintosh celebrating Apple's twentieth anniversary,
(37:47):
the Anniversary McIntosh. In other words, I've plunged himself into
the project. He looked at leaders and products across different industries,
like products like speakers, to determine what designs were best
and how Apple could learn from and then even improve
upon the work that was being done by other companies.
(38:07):
And he began to evaluate everything from the curve of
the computer case to the materials that would be used
for the computer itself. And I've finished design was beyond opulent.
It was really taking design to the next level. The
keyboard featured leather pads upon which users could rest their
(38:30):
weary wrists. Uh. The keyboard was separate from the rest
of the computer, and so you just which was unusual
for Apple at the time because a lot of earlier
Apple products, not all of them, but a lot of
them had keyboards that were built directly into the computer
case itself. So it's all like one big unit. The
old Apple two's were like that. It also had a
(38:53):
track pad. It was sort of the first Macintosh to
have its own track pad. The computers was made out
of a mixture of metal in parts and plastic and
other parts, including plastic that had metal flaking inside the plastic.
It had a flat panel display. It was the first
Apple desktop to have a flat panel display. It was
(39:14):
an l c D display. In some ways, you could
see the foundation for what would become the iMac several
years later, lurking in Ive's design of this computer. It
also had a sideloading drive. It could have a floppy drive,
or it could have a CD ROM drive. It had
(39:35):
ports for television connectivity as well as ones that you
could use to connect to an external sound system. But
the computer itself sported prominent speakers to either side of
the display, as well as its own subwhiffer, and it
was a sound system that was designed and provided by Bows,
so it had a good reputation behind it. That sub
(39:57):
whiffer was separate from the rest of a computer. It
also served as the power source for the device, so
sort of like the power brick you might think of
it that way, i've's team had worked very hard to
make sure every single element was obviously intentional, that each
point on the computer system was the product of informed decisions.
(40:18):
The computer was attractive, It took up less space than
other desktop computers at the time. It used much higher
quality materials for everything from the chassis to the leather
on the keyboard to the fabric that was covering the speakers.
It had a cable management system built onto the back
of the computer display slash speakers, slash you know, drives,
(40:40):
and this was to help avoid the problem of having
this beautiful design marred by a rats nest of cables
behind it. So it was really a testament to Ive's
approach to design. That whole idea of less is more,
but less is more did not apply to the computer's
price tag. Apple identified the target audience for this premier
(41:00):
McIntosh the anniversary McIntosh as being the quote unquote executive market,
presumably because only executives would ever be able to afford it.
The retail price for the computer at the base model
was just under seven thousand, five hundred dollars. That, by
the way, was actually a markdown because the original price
(41:22):
was predicted to be nine thousand dollars. Now that's already
really expensive if we're just talking about how much you
would pay for a computer today. But we also need
to adjust for inflation because this was in on the
twentieth anniversary of Apples incorporation. So if we adjust those
figures for two thousand two dollars, we see that the
(41:45):
original predicted price, which had been said at nine thousand
dollars in today's dollars, that would be sixteen thousand, six
hundred bucks. The adjusted price, that seven thousand, five hundred
dollar price tag, that would be the more reasonable thousand,
eight hundred dollars for that computer. So this anniversary edition
of the Macintosh really the anniversary of Apple, not the
(42:09):
anniversary of the Macintosh, but the anniversary of the company
itself eight hundred bucks. As for the sales figures for
the anniversary edition of the Macintosh, you could probably guess
that that high price tag meant not very many units
were sold. According to Nichol's book, Apple sold around eleven
thousand units total. I'm actually shocked that it was that many.
(42:30):
Um Also, reviewers kind of really criticized this particular computer,
not for its physical design so much that wasn't really
where they were sticking the criticism. It was more on
the various functions of the computer and its features. They
said that it wasn't particularly sophisticated compared to other computers
(42:55):
at the time, that there were some technical, you know,
downfalls of this machine, and so it didn't It wasn't
considered a success, either financially or critically, although i've's approach
was really unique and like i said, it's set the
ground for future Apple products too. So Brunner, the director
(43:19):
of industrial design at Apple, would actually leave the company
while this anniversary edition of the Macintosh was still in development.
Brunner had grown tired of the meetings and the politics
within the company, so he recommended to his boss that
Johnny I've been named the new director of industrial design
at Apple. Apparently the original plan was to do a
(43:41):
talent search across top companies around the world to bring
in a new director, but Brunner warned that unless the
promotion happened from within the department, Apple would be in
danger of losing the whole design team, and ultimately I've
would get the job. This was a pretty remarkable rise.
I've had joined Apple in late and had become the
(44:05):
head of his department had become a director at the company.
This coincided with the lowest point in Apple's history prior
to the return of ce Jobs. The tumultuous years at
Apple under the rotating cast of CEOs was really destructive
to the company. The company's co founder, a man was
singular Vision was on the verge of coming back, and
(44:28):
I would end up having a prominent role in the
development of the company moving forward. But that was not
always a guarantee because when Jobs first came back, before
even becoming the interim CEO, he was at a meeting
where he criticized the company's output in front of other
Apple executives, including Johnny I've. He complained that the designs
(44:50):
had shifted to being these boring, utilitarian and unremarkable form factors,
something that was kind of hard to argue against because
that's really where the focus had in. He seemed intent
on overhauling Apple's entire design department, and that would include
cleaning house and getting rid of many of the designers
(45:10):
who were there, including potentially Johnny I've who had just
become the director. So I've, as the department's new director,
had to step up to justify the existence of his
team that consisted of top designers who had come to
Apple from some of the most prestigious design firms from
around the world. So i'vean this team were really worried
(45:32):
that they were soon to be replaced, and I've even
went so far as to float the idea to his
team about creating a design firm should they find themselves
unemployed in the near future. But he also stressed that
they should wait to hear Jobs as own decision about
that first, and so things were kind of left up
in the air until Jobs would pay a visit to
(45:54):
the design team's office, and that's where we're gonna leave
off for this episode. Now, I know that in the
grand scheme of things, that's not much of a cliffhanger,
because we all know Johnny I've would remain at Apple
and be instrumental in the company's fortunes moving forward. But
I figured we can at least pretend that there's some
sort of tension there, and at the very least you
(46:15):
can wonder how the heck did I've convince Steve Jobs
that the design team had a lot to contribute and
wasn't fully to blame for the bland products Apple was
known for prior to Steve Jobs. As return, We're gonna
leave that for the next episode, and we'll continue talking
about the role that Johnny I've played in some of
(46:37):
the most iconic products to come out of Apple, ones
that would reposition Apple in the mind of the public
and of the media, because at this point in Apple's history,
the company was really in danger of becoming a nonentity.
A lot of people had just written off the possibility
(46:58):
of Apple ever being relevant of her again. So there
was a remarkable turn of fortune that was to come.
And while a lot of people would lay that at
the feet of Steve Jobs, he was not the only
reason why Apple was able to make a truly amazing recovery.
We'll talk more about that in the next episode in
(47:18):
this series. If you have any suggestions for topics I
should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach
out to me. There are a couple of ways to
do that. One is you can download the I Heart
Radio app. It's free to download um and if you
navigate over to the tech Stuff part of that app,
you'll see a little microphone icon. Clicking on that will
(47:38):
let you record up to thirty seconds of a voice
message to me. You can even let me know if
I can use that voice message in a future episode,
and you can make requests there, or if you prefer,
you can reach out over Twitter. The handle for the
show is tech Stuff h SW and I'll talk to
you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
(48:04):
Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how the tech are you? You know? Last week
I mentioned on a tech News episode that Johnny I've
(00:25):
a Sir Jonathan a k a. Jonathan Paul I've has
pretty much completely broken ties with Apple and that this
is a big deal at the very least, it's what
you would call an historic moment. So Johnny, who spells
his name j O n Y because of course he does,
(00:48):
first joined Apple way back in and had a hand
in designing tons of Apple products, from the iconic iPhone
to Apple's spaceship headquarters. He's had a hand in all
of that. His reputation is one of perfectionism and critical
attention to the smallest of details. He also earned a
(01:11):
reputation for being somewhat coddled by Apple. You know, you
could say that reputation might be unfairly earned, but he
has one, and some would even say he cared far
more about the form of a product than he did
for the function, and he certainly had issues with that
throughout his career. But today, I thought we would go
(01:33):
into a lot more detail on his life, In fact,
so much detail that it's going to require more than
one episode. So this is part one. And before I
really get started, I want to shout out a book
that I used as a primary source for this episode
or these episodes. That book is titled After Steve, How
(01:53):
Apple Became a trillion dollar Company and Lost its Soul,
And it's written by Trip Michael. Now, as that title suggests,
the book primarily focuses on what happened at Apple in
the wake of Steve Jobs's death in two thousand eleven,
and how folks like Tim Cook and Johnny I've would
change the course of the company and somewhat kind of
(02:17):
battle against each other in that process. It's a good book,
and while the title does indicate a particular perspective and
narrative there, it is not just an opinion piece. In fact,
Michael cites more than four hundred fourteen sources. I know
because the PDF that comes with the audio book has
sixty two pages. That's just a list of all the citations.
(02:40):
He also includes a bibliography of works that complement his own.
Those works include books and movies and more. It's really
impressive stuff. Anyway, I don't know Michael personally. I have
no connection to him. I don't have any connection to
this book. I just thought I would give it a
shout out if you are interested, because the information I'm
going to be talking about here a lot of it.
(03:02):
There's a lot more detail in the book. But it's
not the only source I used, but it is a
prime source. And also, like I said, I got the
audio book, so it's available on platforms like Audible. So
let's get to Johnny I've and Apple. Johnny I've was
born near London in nineteen sixty seven. His father was
(03:24):
a teacher who taught design and technology at what we
would consider the high school level. His mother taught theology
and later on became a therapist, and I've's grandfather was
a machinist and Johnny's father, in addition to his teaching job,
had also tried his hand at silversmith ing. So Johnny
quickly was attracted to the process of creating things, not
(03:49):
just designing them, but actually fabricating them. And like a
lot of kids who would later get into fields like engineering,
Johnny would take stuff up heart to learn how it worked.
I don't know what his success rate was for putting
it back together again, but he certainly took it apart
to understand how things worked. His father would teach him
(04:11):
how to sketch out ideas before committing to build them,
and I gave Johnny an appreciation of design. He would
ask his father endless questions about how things were built
and why they were built the way that they were so,
not just how did they put this together, but why
did they choose this method over some alternative method. When
(04:32):
he was still a child, his family relocated to a
rural neighborhood about two hours north of London. Johnny enrolled
in a school called Walton High School, where he continued
to develop his skills in art and design. He also
became active in various social issues like feminism and things
of that nature. Uh he wasn't nearly as strong in
(04:53):
most of the traditional curriculum at school, but that really
didn't concern him very much because from the beginning, his
plan was to attend a technical college after high school,
and a technical college wouldn't require high marks in those
classic subjects. I've also attended a summer program that had
a focus on design with I've learning more advanced drafting techniques,
(05:14):
as in like draftsmanship. So it married his love of
art with his love of design and engineering. And as
a senior project I've said about designing a working portable projector.
Uh So, the projectors that were being used in his
high school were these big heavy things. They're very clunky
and cumbersome. You couldn't easily move them from classroom to classroom.
(05:37):
So I've thought, here's a challenge. Here's here's something that
I can solve. I can create a projector that is portable,
that's easier to move around. So he made a projector that,
when it was in its collapsed form, was like a briefcase,
you know, pretty heavy one. And when it opened, hydraulic
arms would unfold the projector and it would immerge urge
(06:00):
into place as a fully working projector. And people who
saw it said that just watching it kind of unfold
itself was a very satisfying experience, like everything moved just so,
and it was like an early example of i've's attention
to detail and creating things that have a pleasing effect
(06:22):
on the person looking at them. Anyone who is familiar
with Apple products knows that that's a big selling point
for the stuff that's come out over the last couple
of decades. I've attended Newcastle Polytechnic largely thanks to a
scholarship that was provided by a guy named Philip Gray.
Philip Gray was a managing director for Robert's Weaver Group,
that's an architecture firm in the UK. And part of
(06:45):
this deal was that I've would agree to work at
Robert's Weaver Group as an intern while attending college, and
then would work there full time after graduation for some
amount of time. I'm not sure how much, but that
was all part the agreement. Now, one story Michael relays
in his book After Steve is particularly amusing. While he
(07:07):
was at college, I've was living on a pretty tight budget,
and he also had a long distance girlfriend whom he
would write to regularly. Now this is in, you know,
the mid nineteen eighties, before the real days of texting
and email, so we wrote letters to each other back
in those days, physical letters. Now I've decided to attempt
(07:29):
something somewhat cheeky. He didn't know if it was gonna work.
He drew the picture of a stamp on an envelope
and it was in all ways with a normal stamp
identical like he He copied it precisely and just drew
it directly on the envelope itself. Put a letter to
(07:49):
his girlfriend and there sent the letter off, and she
sent back a response which told I've that he could
sketch a convincing enough copy of an official stamp to
fool the post office into carrying the mail to its destination.
And I'm a little tickled that the guy who would
later be largely responsible for how popular certain apple products
(08:10):
would become was playing with counterfeiting back when he was
in college. There's more to that story, but I'm going
to leave that to Michael's book to flesh it out.
So if you want to hear more about that and
the silly turn it took, you should check out the book.
While the style at the time, as Grandpa Simpson would say,
was to favor a chaotic collection of shapes and bright colors,
(08:34):
that wasn't i've's preference. Now, if you don't know what
I'm talking about, in the nineteen eighties, things went a
bit haywire in the design world. All you have to
do just go on a search engine and search for
nineteen eighties style that's all you have to put in,
and you will see what I mean. It was a
troubled time of different shapes and and neon colors in
(08:58):
no particular organized form, and I've hated all of that chaos.
He preferred the more simple linear style of an earlier
art movement within art and architecture, and and uh products
even called bow House. Now that's not the band with
Peter Murphy in which we would learn that Bella legos
(09:20):
he is dead. That is an amazing song and a
phenomenal band. And if you don't know it, well, I
think I just out of myself as a goth. Anyway,
I'm talking more about an art and architectural movement that
originated in Germany. The focus in bau House was to
find a synthesis of aesthetic and function, and that's really
(09:42):
what I've preferred to just those weird shapes and colors
of the dominant nineteen eighties designs. He saw those as
being ugly and grotesque and superfluous and unnecessary. He he
felt that you really should have a product where everything
that is in that product is necessary for that product
(10:03):
in some way, that less is more. Meanwhile, I was
getting practical experience. As an intern at the Roberts Weaver
Group firm, he received assignments to create pitches for clients,
so he wasn't just you know, running errands or running
support for designers there. He was actually put in charge
(10:26):
of a few projects. I would bristle whenever someone would
ask him to compromise on his design, and he didn't
really like doing that. It was something that kind of
revealed to him that design consultant is a tough gig
because you are not the final voice on the approach
to design. Your your client has input, and that can
(10:49):
be a difficult thing. I could respect this because as
someone who is a writer, h there were times when
I would submit articles to an editor and received feedback,
and my first response was always to get angry at
the feedback. Not a mature response, but it was how
(11:12):
I would feel. I would think, like, oh, they don't
get what I'm going for here. Usually that wasn't really
the case, because I unlike I've am not brilliant. I've, however,
bristled because he felt that he really did have the
best idea and he hated having to compromise on that.
That also meant that some other folks over at the
Roberts Weaver Group felt that he probably wasn't a good
(11:33):
fit for the company because the secret to being a
great consultant is being adaptable and being able to, you know,
incorporate client feedback into designs. So they felt that maybe
this would not be the right fit for him. Now,
one thing that I've encountered around this time was an
Apple Macintosh computer. Those originally were launched in ninety four.
(11:58):
He admired the sign of the computer, and he loved
the marketing campaign that launched the Macintosh. Now, in case
y'all don't remember, I'm sure a lot of you are
familiar with this commercial because it was a famous commercial
directed by Ridley Scott, of all people, and it played
during the Super Bowl in so it really got a
(12:20):
lot of eyeballs on it. But in case that's well
before your time you don't know what I'm talking about,
the commercial played off the oppressive themes of George Orwell's
Night four, the novel. So in this commercial, everything looks
very gray and dim, and you have this group of
drone like employees are clad in this baggy gray clothing
(12:43):
shuffling into a theater and they're a film is playing
that consists of a closeup of a man's face, and
that man is yelling out essentially fascist propaganda that also
stresses that conformity is key. Then a woman runs in,
this athletic woman holding a sledgehammer, and she does a
(13:04):
hammer throw. She twirls around and throws the sledge hammer
through the screen. And then you hear a narrator say,
quote on January, Apple will introduce the Macintosh, and you'll
see why nine four won't be like four end quote.
And the commercial is again one of the most famous
(13:25):
of all time. It implied that the PC industry was
one of forced uniformity and there was no personality to
the products, and the ad didn't even show the Macintosh
computer itself. The Macintosh is nowhere to be seen in
this original version of the commercial. The ad just claimed
that Apple was going to forge a new path all
(13:47):
on its own, and I've absolutely loved the advertisement. Now,
before he would graduate Newcastle Polytechnic, I've had to present
what the college referred to as a blue Sky project.
This was meant to show off a design without having
to worry about the constraints of actually being able to
make the thing, so students were given a lot of
(14:10):
leeway they could they could propose things that weren't necessarily
technically possible at the time. I've thought up of a
way to pay for items using a medallion like device
that could, when brought into close contact with a point
of sale register, transmit payment wirelessly. So he was essentially
(14:31):
thinking about a way to replace credit cards and to
have a more elegant means of being able to transfer funds,
and it was a predecessor to contactless payment that would
evolve many many years later. I'ves design intrigued, the judge
invited to score students submissions, to the point where, according
(14:52):
to Michael's book, that judge so impressed asked how high
a score he could give I've And traditionally a seventy
would be considered an A, and the judge was told
he could score it however he thought was appropriate, so
he gave I've a ninety, when usually seventy would be
(15:13):
the top result, which is a big old yell zam.
Al Right, We've got a lot more to say about
Johnny ives early days, including his move to Apple, but
before we do that, let's take a quick break. Okay,
we're up to nine and that was a year that
(15:37):
would bring a big change to Johnny I've's life. The
Roberts Weaver Group folded. There was a big financial crisis
in the UK, a recession, and one of the victims
of that recession was this consulting firm, the Robert's Weaver Group.
So i was no longer obligated to work at this
company because the company had essentially gone away, So instead
(15:59):
he joined a design consultancy company called Tangerine lowercase tea
kind of funny that he would take on a gig
at a company named after one type of fruit, and
then would become famous for working at a different company
named after a different kind of fruit. In fact, he
would make the transfer from one directly to the other.
(16:19):
Clive Grenier, who had met I've a couple of years earlier,
was largely responsible for recruiting I've to join Tangerine, and
I've quickly got to work on several different projects, including
one that was to design sinks sinc basins. Really, that
one didn't go so well because i'ves very um remarkable
(16:44):
pitch was one that the company just wasn't comfortable adopting.
It was a little too aggressive in its departure from tradition.
And that's another case where i was getting a little
frustrated that as a consultant he couldn't necessarily design something
(17:04):
and have it stay his design and have it remained unchanged,
that he would have to bow to client wishes. So
he then was brought in on a project called Juggernaut,
and Juggernaut was a project that involved Grenier. It also
involved one of the co founders of the company and
(17:26):
I've and the client in this case was a tiny
little computer company called Apple. Juggernaut was a project aiming
to create some novel computer and tablet designs. I think
there were four devices in total, including a tablet with
a separate keyboard, a couple of portable computers, a couple
(17:47):
of desktop computers that kind of thing. I've was in
charge of, mainly working on the tablet concept, and he
was also given the task to pack up and ship
the prototypes which they made out of a phone, and
send those to Apple. So I've took meticulous care and
packaging these prototypes. You know, he wrapped each one very carefully.
(18:10):
He packed them into the box so that there'd be
no chance of them being damaged unless you know, something
crazy happened to the box. He even included some folded
Tangerine branded shirts in the box as well, And this
was a very early example of making the process of
unboxing a Johnny I've designed project a real experience. That
(18:35):
that it would show that there was an incredible amount
of consideration in just the packaging of the product, but
let alone the design of the product. This would be
something that Apple would embrace after I've would join the company,
largely really after I've joined the company and Steve Jobs
would return to it. Apple was impressed with this presentation
(18:56):
and the designs, and they invited the Tangerine t to
come out to California and to present their ideas in person.
So Johnny I've got to go to California. I think
that at that point it was his second time traveling
to California. He had already been there once and found
it really appealing. Well, while he was there, I've was
(19:17):
taken aside a couple of times by Apple executives and
essentially told that he had a job with Apple if
he wanted one, that he could come over and join
their team. His colleagues over at Tangerine would tell him
back in the UK that really he had no options.
He had to take up that offer. They were very
(19:38):
generous in saying, this is an incredible opportunity. You will
do amazing things there. You should take the job. So
in the fall of nineteen, I've would relocate, he would
change his home address from London to San Francisco and
he would join Apple. Now, the Apple of nineteen was
(20:02):
very different from the Apple of today thirty years later.
In fact, it was really different from the Apple of
two thousand seven, that's when the iPhone debut, or even
the Apple of two thousand one, when the company unveiled
the iPod. The Apple of n while founded by some
somewhat rebellious techno anarchist types, which might be going a
(20:25):
bit far, but Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniac both enjoyed
thumbing their noses that respectability and authority back in the day. Well,
now that company was in the hands of a different
set of leaders altogether. So it's probably a good idea
to do a quick rundown on what had happened at Apple,
because that's a very important component of this overall story.
(20:47):
So we're gonna give a cliffs notes version of Apple's
history leading up to nine and a little bit beyond. Actually,
so back in the nineteen seventies, Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak created a partnership and then later brought in another
person named Mike Markola to turn that partnership into Apple Incorporated. Now,
(21:10):
the first Apple model was really more of a hobbyist
kit than a out of the box computer. And while
hobbyists were interested in the Apple One, that really wasn't
a suitable product for the mainstream. And that would change
dramatically with the introduction of the Apple two line, a
fully built computer system, and ultimately the Apple Too line
(21:31):
would include numerous offshoots. You know, you'd be like the
Apple to see, the Apple to E, the Apple to G,
and the list goes on. The Apple Too would be
a truly enormous success for the young company. So Jobs
and Wozniak founded Apple, but neither of them would be
the person to lead the company. Mike Markola, who I
(21:53):
said earlier he was a primary investor in Apple. He
owned like twenty of Apple in the early days. He
brought in a guy named Michael Scott, not that one,
to serve as the first CEO for Apple because Markola
felt that neither Jobs nor Wozniak really had the experience
to lead a company. They they had the vision, but
(22:16):
not the know how, so Michael Scott would serve as
CEO until by then he had made some serious waves
in the company and and some pretty pretty big enemies
as well. In early one, he famously fired about half
the team responsible for designing the Apple Too because he
(22:36):
said they were redundant. He said, we don't need all
these people because the folks that we've got, like, we've
got twice as many as we need. Let's get rid
of them. He also made some pretty harsh comments about it.
He at one blind had said that as soon as
it stops being fun working for Apple, he was going
to quit, and instead he said, you know what, I've
rethought it now. I figure I'm going to keep firing people, uh,
(23:00):
in order to make it more fun to work at Apple,
Which that's pretty brutal like that. I'm sure it was
kind of an off the cuff, humorous remark, but it
comes across as as pretty nasty when you consider this
is the livelihood of people we're talking about here. So
he was effectively removed from power after making that statement,
(23:21):
though he would actually stay on for several more months
before officially retiring. Mark Coola would take over as CEO
duties for the time being, which would actually stretch on
for a couple of years, at which point in the
company would then bring on a man named John Scully
to be the new CEO and president, and it was
(23:42):
Scully's involvement that would lead to Steve Jobs leaving Apple.
So Jobs was already proving to be a marketing genius.
He was known more for his feel for design, his
vision of what could be popular, and his ability to
sell the designs, rather than as say an engineer or
(24:03):
a computer scientist. So he wasn't really thought of as
the person who can make stuff work. He was the
person who could see how a particular presentation of technology
could have a really powerful impact on customers. Jobs had
seen designs at the Xerox Park facility that's p a
(24:24):
r C. And those designs convinced him to incorporate some
of those ideas into Apple products. You could say that
Steve Jobs effectively he stole ideas like you know, the
computer mouse and the graphics user interface from things that
he saw at the Xerox Park facility, or you could
just say he was inspired by it. Really just depends
(24:44):
on your point of view and his work to to
do this, like his work to make this computer a thing,
made Jobs something of a target for Scully, who had
come over from PepsiCo in order to lead Apple. Jobs
had a reputation of being very difficult to work with,
and as he spearheaded projects that would evolve into a
(25:07):
very unsuccessful computer platform called Lisa. It was a very
expensive computer, didn't sell well at all, and was considered
a flop, an expensive flop at Apple. He also had
a real direct hand in the much more successful Macintosh platform.
But jobs involvement with Macintosh was really disruptive too. You
(25:27):
had the existing Macintosh team that had been working on
the computer system before Jobs essentially invaded and took over
the project, and this caused an enormous amount of disruption
within that team. Uh, those stories are pretty fascinating on
their own, but you know, it goes beyond what we
want to talk about today. So the Apple board of
(25:48):
directors became concerned about Steve Jobs because the projects he
was heading up were costing a huge amount of money,
but they had a questionable record when it came to
success in the actual marketplace, and Scully was told that
he needed to contain Jobs, and ultimately Scully would strip
Jobs of most of his authority, pushing him to the
(26:09):
periphery of Apple and Markola actually cited was Scully now
the guy who had originally invested in Jobs and Wosniacs
idea ended up siding with the new leader of Apple,
and Jobs, hurt and infuriated, left the company in nineteen.
There's some versions of the story that say that he
(26:29):
was effectively fired or at least given so little to
do that he had he was, at least in in
practical terms, no longer working for Apple. There are other
versions where he took a much more active stance and
and quit in um the company because of this this
(26:49):
opposition he faced. So it really again depends upon whom
you believe. The outcome is the same either way, and
I don't think it ultimately matters. UM. It does sound
Scully did Jobs dirty, but Jobs himself what didn't do
many favors for himself by being um somewhat difficult to
work with. Now let's flash forward to nine. We were
(27:12):
in eighty five when Jobs left the company by ninety two.
Apple had been operating without either of its co founders
for seven years because Wozniak had effectively left Apple in
nineteen eighty one after he had been severely injured in
a plane crash, and in a more official capacity he
left in nine eight five, but he to this day
remains an Apple employee in a largely symbolic capacity. So
(27:37):
would be the last full year of Scully leading Apple.
He had initiated a project to create what he called
a personal Digital Assistant or p d A, and yeah,
Scully or someone on his team was the first to
coin that term, and that would become the Apple Newton
Message Pad, a product that would later invite ridicule due
(27:58):
to overpromising an under delivering, particularly when it came to
handwriting recognition. Scully had also made the decision for Apple
to transition to run on the power PC microprocessor. That
was a decision that would send Apple down a very
rocky path. In fact, it was so rocky that ultimately
it would threaten to bankrupt the company. Now I've joined
(28:22):
Apple just as tensions in the company were growing, with
different leaders in different departments playing tug of war of
where the company should go. Scully would essentially get ushered
out of Apple in early and a German leader named
Michael Spindler came in to replace him. Not the time,
Apple was on unsteady financial ground, having sunk a lot
(28:45):
of money into the development of the Newton, which had
turned out to be a flop, and had also experimented
in other types of consumer hardware like digital cameras, and
those experiments had also largely failed. So Spindler made another
decision that further hurt the company. He allowed other companies
(29:05):
to build clones of Apple products. Now, until this point,
Apple was very careful to hold onto its own intellectual property.
The company took a totally different route than what IBM did. See,
IBM had used off the shelf components to build its
personal computers, but that meant that other companies could also
(29:25):
use those same components, plus get a licensed copy of
the same operating system or or nearly the same as
what IBM was using, and build IBM clones. There was
nothing to stop them. There was no reason because there
was nothing IBM trademarked on any of those things. They
were all products that you could just buy and assemble yourself.
(29:47):
The IBM clone market was largely responsible for convincing IBM
to get out the computer you know, the consumer computer space,
and Apple had dodged that problem by keeping everything in
house until spind came in and changed course. Spindler would
eventually get pushed out of Apple himself, and a new
CEO named gil Emilio would come in. I'll talk more
(30:10):
about him and his effects on Apple, and then how
this ties into Johnny I've as well. After we come
back from this break, Okay where we left off. Gil
Emilio had just become CEO, replacing Spindler, and Emilia was
(30:33):
known for rehabilitating companies that were in financial trouble, and
by this point Apple was starting to flirt with bankruptcy.
He would make more massive cuts to the budget, he
would hold layoffs across the company. UH he authorized projects
aimed at updating the operating system on Macintosh computers, and
those projects would end up languishing due to feature creep
(30:55):
and internal struggles in Apple. UH. It was another one
of those cases where something going on inside Apple had
the capacity to take the whole company down. Things looked
really grim, so Apple's board of directors decided that Apple
should acquire a little computer company called Next Big in
little E, big X big T. That company was founded
(31:18):
by drumroll please, Steve Jobs. The idea was that the
operating system for Next computers, which were really interesting computers,
but they were super expensive and they weren't really selling well,
but that the operating system would become the foundation for
the new mac Os, that the project that Amelio had launched,
(31:38):
which was kind of mired in internal politics, would get
pushed aside, and the Next operating system would be used
as the the bedrock for mac Os. That meant that
Steve Jobs came on board Apple as an advisor, but
he didn't stay an advisor for very long. Steve Jobs
was actually able to rest control of the company away
(32:01):
from Emilio. Technically there was another CEO between Emilio and Jobs,
but it's not really much point in talking about him.
So he he leveraged the company's terrible market performance into
an argument that only he, Steve Jobs, the co founder
of Apple, would be able to set the company right.
So Steve Jobs would become the interim CEO of Apple,
(32:24):
and not that long afterward he would become just the
plain old CEO. Like that, he would there be nothing
interim about it, he would become the CEO. Now I
give you that truncated history of Apple, because it's during
these tumultuous years, the end of Scullies leadership at the company,
the rise and fall of Spindler and Emilio, and the
(32:45):
return of Jobs that I've began to establish himself within
the company. And honestly, knowing what we do about what
was going on at Apple, and how talented I've is
as a person, it is more than a little bit
surprising that he actually endured all of that chaos and
that he stuck around long enough to have the opportunity
(33:06):
to help redefine Apple's place in computers and personal electronics
along with Steve Jobs's return. It's amazing he lasted that long.
So when I've started in he was just the ninth
member of Apple's design team. One of his first assignments
was to work on the design of the second generation
(33:26):
Newton message pad device. So I thought the first generation
of the Newton was really too bulky, it was too unusual,
it didn't feel good to hold, and then it lacked
an aesthetic appeal that would invite users to pick up
the device and actually use it. So i've's design would
win him tons of awards, Like he redesigned the Newton
(33:49):
message pad. He overhauled how it looked and how the
cover would work with the device. He turned it into
more like a uh spiral taw blit note book, you know,
like an actual physical notebook with paper in it, and
the lid of the Newton message pad, and this one
would flip over the top on a hinge and fold
(34:12):
against the back of the device, and in that hinge
you would nestle the stylus for the device because this
this is a tablet computer where you actually did have
to use a stylus in order to interact with the
tablet itself. And um, yeah, he got lots of accolades
for this design that people thought that it was a
(34:33):
brilliant approach. However, the products continuing issues with handwriting recognition
really plagued the device and it just it was really
raked over the coals critically. Now in case if you
don't remember, the news and the whole idea was that
you had a tablet computer that could accept your handwriting
as input, so you would use a stylus, you would
(34:55):
jot down notes on the screen, you know, writing it
out in Longhand, and the computer would detect the movements
of the stylist against the screen and interpret that as
letters and then create a text version of whatever it
was you were writing on the screen. But the handwriting
recognition wasn't very good, so using a Newton could be frustrating,
(35:16):
so frustrating that the Simpsons made a whole joke about
it in an episode Eat Up Martha instead of Beat
Up Martin. So I've had made the physical act of
holding a Newton more pleasing, but the operations still fell
far short, And to be clear, that was something that
was totally out of Ive's control. He was working on
the physical product design, not on the operating system or
(35:37):
the software. Now. Reportedly, I was initially frustrated, and by
some accounts he was miserable at Apple during this time period,
and I said that it was remarkable that he didn't
quit in those chaotic days. But by some accounts there
were numerous times where he did consider quitting and was
only convinced not to by his temp team leader, who
(36:01):
is a man named uh Robert Brunner. He was the
director of industrial design at the time, who was kind
of telling I've like you need to stick around because
things are going to change at this company, which was
truly prophetic. So under Spindler, Apple's process had shifted from
(36:22):
really focusing on aesthetics to focusing on performance, with more
of an emphasis on processor speed and less care given
to the design of the computers themselves. Really all about
efficiency and power, which is such a stereotypical thing to
associate with a German leader that I hesitated to even
(36:42):
talk about it because it does feed into a stereotype.
But in this case that actually was what was going on.
The idea was, oh, the actual physical design of these things,
the appearance of them, that doesn't matter as much as
how fast they are, how powerful they are, And I
imagine for I'VE that had to have been torture. The
design process was also chopped up. The team would have
(37:05):
about half the time to go through the design process
as they did before Spindler had become CEO. And like
I said, Robert Brunner was the director of Industrial Design
at the time and was the leader of the team,
and he would stay on with Apple until ninety six. Slash.
He was one of i've's mentors and really one of
(37:26):
the chief reasons why I've was brought over to Apple
in the first place, and he had a lot of
faith in I've, which was really evident with what Brunner
would then assign to I've. I was put in charge
of refining the design for a Macintosh celebrating Apple's twentieth anniversary,
(37:47):
the Anniversary McIntosh. In other words, I've plunged himself into
the project. He looked at leaders and products across different industries,
like products like speakers, to determine what designs were best
and how Apple could learn from and then even improve
upon the work that was being done by other companies.
(38:07):
And he began to evaluate everything from the curve of
the computer case to the materials that would be used
for the computer itself. And I've finished design was beyond opulent.
It was really taking design to the next level. The
keyboard featured leather pads upon which users could rest their
(38:30):
weary wrists. Uh. The keyboard was separate from the rest
of the computer, and so you just which was unusual
for Apple at the time because a lot of earlier
Apple products, not all of them, but a lot of
them had keyboards that were built directly into the computer
case itself. So it's all like one big unit. The
old Apple two's were like that. It also had a
(38:53):
track pad. It was sort of the first Macintosh to
have its own track pad. The computers was made out
of a mixture of metal in parts and plastic and
other parts, including plastic that had metal flaking inside the plastic.
It had a flat panel display. It was the first
Apple desktop to have a flat panel display. It was
(39:14):
an l c D display. In some ways, you could
see the foundation for what would become the iMac several
years later, lurking in Ive's design of this computer. It
also had a sideloading drive. It could have a floppy drive,
or it could have a CD ROM drive. It had
(39:35):
ports for television connectivity as well as ones that you
could use to connect to an external sound system. But
the computer itself sported prominent speakers to either side of
the display, as well as its own subwhiffer, and it
was a sound system that was designed and provided by Bows,
so it had a good reputation behind it. That sub
(39:57):
whiffer was separate from the rest of a computer. It
also served as the power source for the device, so
sort of like the power brick you might think of
it that way, i've's team had worked very hard to
make sure every single element was obviously intentional, that each
point on the computer system was the product of informed decisions.
(40:18):
The computer was attractive, It took up less space than
other desktop computers at the time. It used much higher
quality materials for everything from the chassis to the leather
on the keyboard to the fabric that was covering the speakers.
It had a cable management system built onto the back
of the computer display slash speakers, slash you know, drives,
(40:40):
and this was to help avoid the problem of having
this beautiful design marred by a rats nest of cables
behind it. So it was really a testament to Ive's
approach to design. That whole idea of less is more,
but less is more did not apply to the computer's
price tag. Apple identified the target audience for this premier
(41:00):
McIntosh the anniversary McIntosh as being the quote unquote executive market,
presumably because only executives would ever be able to afford it.
The retail price for the computer at the base model
was just under seven thousand, five hundred dollars. That, by
the way, was actually a markdown because the original price
(41:22):
was predicted to be nine thousand dollars. Now that's already
really expensive if we're just talking about how much you
would pay for a computer today. But we also need
to adjust for inflation because this was in on the
twentieth anniversary of Apples incorporation. So if we adjust those
figures for two thousand two dollars, we see that the
(41:45):
original predicted price, which had been said at nine thousand
dollars in today's dollars, that would be sixteen thousand, six
hundred bucks. The adjusted price, that seven thousand, five hundred
dollar price tag, that would be the more reasonable thousand,
eight hundred dollars for that computer. So this anniversary edition
of the Macintosh really the anniversary of Apple, not the
(42:09):
anniversary of the Macintosh, but the anniversary of the company
itself eight hundred bucks. As for the sales figures for
the anniversary edition of the Macintosh, you could probably guess
that that high price tag meant not very many units
were sold. According to Nichol's book, Apple sold around eleven
thousand units total. I'm actually shocked that it was that many.
(42:30):
Um Also, reviewers kind of really criticized this particular computer,
not for its physical design so much that wasn't really
where they were sticking the criticism. It was more on
the various functions of the computer and its features. They
said that it wasn't particularly sophisticated compared to other computers
(42:55):
at the time, that there were some technical, you know,
downfalls of this machine, and so it didn't It wasn't
considered a success, either financially or critically, although i've's approach
was really unique and like i said, it's set the
ground for future Apple products too. So Brunner, the director
(43:19):
of industrial design at Apple, would actually leave the company
while this anniversary edition of the Macintosh was still in development.
Brunner had grown tired of the meetings and the politics
within the company, so he recommended to his boss that
Johnny I've been named the new director of industrial design
at Apple. Apparently the original plan was to do a
(43:41):
talent search across top companies around the world to bring
in a new director, but Brunner warned that unless the
promotion happened from within the department, Apple would be in
danger of losing the whole design team, and ultimately I've
would get the job. This was a pretty remarkable rise.
I've had joined Apple in late and had become the
(44:05):
head of his department had become a director at the company.
This coincided with the lowest point in Apple's history prior
to the return of ce Jobs. The tumultuous years at
Apple under the rotating cast of CEOs was really destructive
to the company. The company's co founder, a man was
singular Vision was on the verge of coming back, and
(44:28):
I would end up having a prominent role in the
development of the company moving forward. But that was not
always a guarantee because when Jobs first came back, before
even becoming the interim CEO, he was at a meeting
where he criticized the company's output in front of other
Apple executives, including Johnny I've. He complained that the designs
(44:50):
had shifted to being these boring, utilitarian and unremarkable form factors,
something that was kind of hard to argue against because
that's really where the focus had in. He seemed intent
on overhauling Apple's entire design department, and that would include
cleaning house and getting rid of many of the designers
(45:10):
who were there, including potentially Johnny I've who had just
become the director. So I've, as the department's new director,
had to step up to justify the existence of his
team that consisted of top designers who had come to
Apple from some of the most prestigious design firms from
around the world. So i'vean this team were really worried
(45:32):
that they were soon to be replaced, and I've even
went so far as to float the idea to his
team about creating a design firm should they find themselves
unemployed in the near future. But he also stressed that
they should wait to hear Jobs as own decision about
that first, and so things were kind of left up
in the air until Jobs would pay a visit to
(45:54):
the design team's office, and that's where we're gonna leave
off for this episode. Now, I know that in the
grand scheme of things, that's not much of a cliffhanger,
because we all know Johnny I've would remain at Apple
and be instrumental in the company's fortunes moving forward. But
I figured we can at least pretend that there's some
sort of tension there, and at the very least you
(46:15):
can wonder how the heck did I've convince Steve Jobs
that the design team had a lot to contribute and
wasn't fully to blame for the bland products Apple was
known for prior to Steve Jobs. As return, We're gonna
leave that for the next episode, and we'll continue talking
about the role that Johnny I've played in some of
(46:37):
the most iconic products to come out of Apple, ones
that would reposition Apple in the mind of the public
and of the media, because at this point in Apple's history,
the company was really in danger of becoming a nonentity.
A lot of people had just written off the possibility
(46:58):
of Apple ever being relevant of her again. So there
was a remarkable turn of fortune that was to come.
And while a lot of people would lay that at
the feet of Steve Jobs, he was not the only
reason why Apple was able to make a truly amazing recovery.
We'll talk more about that in the next episode in
(47:18):
this series. If you have any suggestions for topics I
should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach
out to me. There are a couple of ways to
do that. One is you can download the I Heart
Radio app. It's free to download um and if you
navigate over to the tech Stuff part of that app,
you'll see a little microphone icon. Clicking on that will
(47:38):
let you record up to thirty seconds of a voice
message to me. You can even let me know if
I can use that voice message in a future episode,
and you can make requests there, or if you prefer,
you can reach out over Twitter. The handle for the
show is tech Stuff h SW and I'll talk to
you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
(48:04):
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