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Jonathan Ive gave an interview to The Independent in which he discusses the challenge of creating new versions of a product, how the iPad has evolved or what can make a product "magical".
Reinventing a product
Do you feel invested with special responsibility when you embark on the redesign of a popular product that has sold very well, asks the journalist first.
I think your responsibility really goes further than that. It starts with the desire not to fall into the trap of simply changing things. When a product is highly valued, people want a new design. I think one of the most important things is to change it, not to make it different, but to make it better.
If you make changes to improve something, you do not need to convince people to fall in love with the result. […] In my experience, if we strive to make material improvements, people notice them quickly and re-establish the kind of connection they had with the product.
As an illustration of this principle, he further cites the new aluminum alloy developed for the MacBook Air Retina and iPad Pro chbadis. Their skeleton is now made from 100% recycled aluminum:
This is a great example of how we can solve a problem, not to do something different in an artificial way, but to do it, sincerely, better.
The "magic" of a product
AirPods yesterday, Pencil 2 today, Apple likes to say of some of its products that they have a little magical side, in their operation. Do we obtain these results after a long work or is there sometimes a genius idea, a kind of Eureka! ?
It's primarily a combination of factors, says Ive, some advances have become possible by technologies that take years to mature, the decision to go in one direction is then stopped very early. Face ID, he says, is the sum of several sophisticated technologies, it's not something that has been designed with one goal in mind.
As for what can make a product "magical" it relates to an indefinable feeling: " Attributes that are more difficult to describe. Of those you can not put your finger on to explain them. "
iPad Pro
He then discusses the evolution of the iPad Pro, with Face ID instead of a home button and a chbadis completely transformed in its lines.
One of the things we had been striving for for a long time was that the product no longer has a main direction of orientation and a secondary one.
The first iPad betrayed the fact that it was designed primarily for use in portrait mode, while being able to switch landscape. It also gave the feeling that it was a combination of different components. What Ive more detail about speaking form of the screen.
With the iPad Pro 2018, Apple has been able to go after his desire to make the iPad a tablet without specific orientation (also read iPad Pro: what happens when a finger hides Face ID?):
What to my taste makes the iPad Pro quite special is that it has no particular focus. He has speakers all around his perimeter. By getting rid of the Home button and using Face ID, the tablet is able to work in all directions.
The design of the new iPad's chbadis also changes, losing its beveled shape for a straight profile and rounded corners. Rounded like the corners of the screen. After the iPhone 2018 and the Apple Watch Series 4 is the turn of the iPad to erase the angles:
Traditional screens are completely straight. When you look at the angles, they are essentially square. I have always regretted that the screen stands out as a separate element with square corners, inserted into a design that rarely has square corners.
If you look at the iPad Pro, conversely, you will see how the radius, the curve in the corner of the screen, is concentric and accompanies the frame. It seems natural, you feel that it is not an badembly of several elements. It is a homogeneous product, and unequivocal.
We can wonder if future generations of iPhone will not go in the direction of the iPad Pro. With a chbadis reminiscent of the iPhone 5 and SE.
For Ive, a user will not necessarily point this detail of the screen corners to explain its appeal for this iPad " but [je] believe that we are capable of feeling certain things, much more than we are able to articulate in what we like ".
He then explains that Apple has been able to completely flatten the edge of this iPad because, quite simply, the engineering team was able to miniaturize and make more thin what previously prevented to do so.
Pencil
He then talks about the Pencil 2, which combines its attachment to the iPad by an invisible magnetic surface. Until then nothing new, but in addition, the Pencil is recharged by induction in this position. This kind of evolution involves looking for new ways of solving challenges and offering things that people have not necessarily thought about, or even realized they needed them:
By definition, you do not know there is a problem, until you find a new and better way to do things.
When you have been fixing a problem in a certain way for a long time, the very idea that there might be a better way to do it may seem almost a sacrilege. This may seem extremely improbable, so you have to work by considering it as an act of faith.
A faith based on the following reflection: "I have already been there many times before, and each time we have found a way to do things differently and better". And you just have to believe that's still the case and you keep moving forward.
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