MARCH 2014 - AudioFile
Simon Vance gives dramatic momentum to what might otherwise be a dry life story. Author Kahney provides the 411 on Jony Ive, the visionary designer of Apple products, a modest man with an unerring ability to find the story behind each new design. "’Different’ and ‘new’ are relatively easy,” says Ive. "Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard." Vance's reading is classy and flawless, much like Ive's designs. Try listening to this audiobook on an iPhone or iPad, so you can examine Ive's handiwork up close. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
12/02/2013
Supported by essential, insider research, Kahney (Inside Steve's Brain), who has covered Apple for over a dozen years and is now editor of CultofMac.com, puts the spotlight on Jony Ive, one of the most significant designer minds behind Apple's remarkable products. Ive grew up fascinated with taking things apart and, after a rebellious goth stage in the 1980s, showed excellent design skills at school. Following an apprenticeship at the prestigious Roberts Weaver Group, Ive teamed with another London designer, Martin Darbyshire to found Tangerine Design, and it was those cutting-edge designs that brought him to the attention of Apple's Bob Brenner. Apple tried to recruit Ive several times before they landed him in 1992, putting his maverick creativity to work on a wide of products such as iMac, iBook, Power Mac, and iPod. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple before his death, he said of Ive: " has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me." It is the powerful message of unbridled creativity and a rebel spirit of Ive that Kahney captures so ably in this respectful tribute to the man. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
An adulating biography of Apple’s left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology.”
—Kirkus Reviews
MARCH 2014 - AudioFile
Simon Vance gives dramatic momentum to what might otherwise be a dry life story. Author Kahney provides the 411 on Jony Ive, the visionary designer of Apple products, a modest man with an unerring ability to find the story behind each new design. "’Different’ and ‘new’ are relatively easy,” says Ive. "Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard." Vance's reading is classy and flawless, much like Ive's designs. Try listening to this audiobook on an iPhone or iPad, so you can examine Ive's handiwork up close. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2013-11-03
The life and creative influence of Apple's unassuming design savant. Former Wired.com news editor and Apple authority Kahney (Inside Steve's Brain, 2008) examines the company's senior vice president of industrial design, Jonathan "Jony" Paul Ive, a 46-year-old British expatriate and technological whiz. Born in a conservative London suburb and raised by an intuitive, innovative silversmith father and a psychotherapist mother, Ive's penchant for tinkering wasn't hampered by a dyslexia diagnosis in his teens (a dysfunction shared with Steve Jobs, the author notes). Emboldened by his father, Ive excelled in drawing and sophisticated technical design throughout college and, upon bonding with the Apple's Mac platform, worked through an escalating series of high-profile assignments and co-partnered his own firm. In 1991, he scored an Apple consultancy and induction into then–Chief of Industrial Design Bob Brunner's "dream team." Ive's induction into the computer hardware culture was seamless since he had already taken several exploratory jaunts to northern California, an area that attracted him for its embrace and cultivation of emerging tech talent. Through an impressive roster of interviews with a variety of authors, design experts, and former and current Apple employees, Kahney conveys the urgency and the demand for Ive's immense talent within the tech universe. In the endnotes, the author takes delicious delight in describing Apple's notoriously steely reputation for secrecy and remarks that while those same forthcoming interviewees are more than likely bound by Apple's stringent nondisclosure agreement, the book wouldn't have been possible without their risky participation. From his award-winning work with the Newton MessagePad to the iMac, iPad Mini and a seventh-generation operating system, Ive has become an indirect preceptor on how the world exchanges information. An adulating biography of Apple's left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology.
