Jony Ive Details Apple Design Process, iPhone 6 Design Choices in New Interview

Apple’s head of design Jony Ive today gave a live interview at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco. In the interview, which BusinessInsider attended, Ive gave some rare insight into the design process at Apple and some of the design choices the team made with the iPhone 6.

According to Ive, he has a great design team that’s quite small, numbering 16 or 17 employees. During a typical day, Ive says that designers gather around tables like those in the Apple Store to draw. The team meets three or four times a week.

One of the major advantages of being part of a design team that’s been together so long is that it’s given them time to develop a design process. Ideas, Ive says, don’t really come along until the design team has created a physical object from their drawings. “It really galvanizes and focuses our team,” said Ive.

When asked whether or not he had experienced a “eureka moment” in a design meeting, Ive pointed towards the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus, saying that there’s a “special moment” when there’s an object you can touch. He says he’s surprised and thrilled every time he gets to see a new first model.

On the iPhone 6’s rounded edges, Ive says that Apple opted to go back to rounded edges because they were necessary to make the device feel less wide. Apple made bigger-screened prototypes years before, but they were “clunky.”

Ive also shared details on Steve Jobs, saying that Jobs was “the most focused person” he’d met in his life. “It’s terrifying that when you really truly focus, it seems a bit illegal. You can achieve so much.” Ive went on to say that focus means saying “no with every bone in your body” to something you know is a good idea, but impossible because “you’re focused on something else.”

During audience questions, Ive also gave some interesting thoughts on Xiaomi, the Chinese manufacturer that closely copies Apple’s designs. Ive says what Xiaomi is doing is theft, not flattery.

There is a danger…I don’t see it as flattery. I see it as theft. (Talking about copying designs in general). When you’re doing something for the first time and you don’t know it’s going to work. I have to be honest the last thing I think is “Oh, that is flattering. All those weekends I could’ve been home with my family…I think it’s theft and lazy. I don’t think it’s OK at all.”

The full paraphrased text of Ive’s interview, where he also shares why he chose to be an industrial designer, what he thought was well designed as a kid, how he came to work at Apple, and his thoughts on Steve Jobs, can be found over at BusinessInsider. Both TechCrunch and The Verge have shared details on the interview as well.

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Apple to Live Stream Upcoming October 16 iPad Event

Apple has plans to offer a live stream of its October 16 event, according to a source that spoke to MacRumors. As with its September 9 iPhone event, Apple will likely offer a stream of the event both on its website and through a dedicated channel on the Apple TV.

Invitations for the October 16 event, which will be held at the Town Hall auditorium on the company’s Cupertino campus at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, went out earlier this week with the tagline “It’s been way too long.”

At the event, Apple is expected to introduce an updated iPad Air and possibly a new Retina iPad mini, as well as updated iMacs with a 27-inch model that has a high-resolution Retina display. OS X Yosemite is also likely to be previewed one more time before its public launch, and updated Mac minis, which are rumored to be in the works, might possibly see an announcement at the event.

In addition to Apple’s live stream, MacRumors will be providing its own live coverage of the event, both on MacRumors.com and on the MacRumorsLive Twitter account.

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​U2’s free album spread to 81 million iTunes users

So, just how far did U2’s Songs of Innocence spread during its tenure as a free, exclusive iTunes album? Pretty far: according to Eddy Cue, Apple senior VP of internist software and services, 81 billion customers heard at least one song from the album during its free period. While those numbers represent just partial downloads of the album, Cue told Billboard that 26 million iTunes users nabbed the whole thing. Those are huge numbers — he told the publication that before the promotion, only 14 million iTunes customers had purchase the band’s music since 2003.

Giving away the album for free doesn’t necessarily mean that the band lost physical sales, however — a deluxe edition of the album is available in stores that features 10 more songs than the free release as well as a handful of other bonus features. Those numbers also don’t account for people who downloaded the album by mistake, though it does set an interesting precedent for the future of music distribution. Will freebie albums become the new trend in the music industry? We’ll let you know once we see how things pan out with that new music format Bono says Apple’s working on.

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Source: Billboard

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GT Advanced Asks Court for Permission to ‘Wind Down’ Operations at Sapphire Plant

After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this week, Apple sapphire partner GT Advanced has asked for the court’s permission to “wind down” operations at its Mesa, Arizona manufacturing plant, reports Re/code and The Wall Street Journal.

GT is said to be filing motions to get expedited hearings to cease certain operations and get out of both contracts and leases connected to those operations.

The facility, which was purchased and outfitted by Apple and run by GT Advanced, has operated for less than a year. Approximately 700 employees are employed at the manufacturing plant, where GT Advanced was rumored to be creating sapphire for use in Apple products like the Apple Watch and the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Furnaces for sapphire production
Little information about the reasoning behind GT Advanced’s bankruptcy filing is available as the company has asked for a non-disclosure in its bankruptcy proceedings. GT is subjected to a confidentiality agreement with an unnamed third party (confirmed to be Apple by a courtroom reference) that has prevented it from disclosing details about the bankruptcy. The company could be fined up to $50 million per violation for breaking the agreements.

GT’s bankruptcy filing took both Apple and Wall Street by surprise. Apple has reportedly been working with GT Advanced to help it remain solvent and to help it receive its final $139 million payment, but it is unclear how this latest request will impact the relationship between the two companies.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the deal between GT Advanced and Apple may have crumbled following the former’s failure to deliver sapphire iPhone screens for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Apple was widely expected to use sapphire screens in at least some models, but both the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus continue to feature Gorilla Glass displays.

GT Advanced will again appear in court on October 15 at a hearing related to its wind-down request. Apple, for its part, has again said that it plans to focus on “preserving jobs” in Arizona and that it will “work with state and local officials” as it considers its next steps.

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San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Fined $10k for Defying No Beats Headphones Rule

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been fined $10,000 for wearing Apple’s Beats by Dre headphones following a ban on the brand after the NFL signed an exclusive deal with Bose.

Kaepernick opted to wear bright pink Beats by Dre headphones following last Sunday’s game against the Chiefs, in order to “pay homage to Breast Cancer Awareness.” Kaepernick declined to say whether Beats paid his fine, saying “I’m going to let that be unanswered.”

Kaepernick, along with a number of other high-profile NFL players, has an endorsement deal with Beats. Last year, he starred in a popular Beats ad that depicted him tuning out the negative comments and boos of opposing fans by wearing Beats noise-canceling headphones.

Bose and the NFL signed a sponsorship agreement before the season began, but last week the NFL decided to ban players from wearing Beats headphones in front of television cameras to support its sponsor. Players are not allowed to wear them when conducting interviews during training camp, during practice sessions, or on game day, from before the event until 90 minutes after play has ended.

This is the second time Beats headphones have been banned from major sporting events. Earlier this year, World Cup headphone sponsor Sony banned soccer players from wearing Beats headphones within stadiums, and during the London Olympics, the International Olympic Committee ended up banning Beats headphones after a guerrilla marketing campaign because the company was not an official sponsor.

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Apple Releases Third OS X Yosemite Golden Master Candidate to Developers

Apple today released a third golden master candidate of OS X Yosemite to developers, just two days after releasing the second candidate golden master and the fifth public beta. The first golden master candidate was seeded to developers on September 30.

The latest Yosemite update can be downloaded from the Mac App Store and through Apple’s Mac Developer Center.

OS X Yosemite brings a flatter, more modern look to OS X, with an emphasis on translucency and redesigned dock, windows, and more. It also includes a multitude of new features, such as improved integration with iOS 8 through Continuity, a new “Today” view in Notification Center that offers integration with third-party apps, a retooled Spotlight search with new data sources, and several new features for apps like Mail, Safari, and Messages.

Over the course of the beta testing period, each Developer Preview has added new features and refined the look and performance of OS X Yosemite, although changes have become less obvious in more recent builds as Apple begins finalizing Yosemite ahead of its public release, which is expected in late October.

The current build, like the previous golden master candidate, may not be the final version of OS X Yosemite, depending on the outcome of final testing. Last year, Apple seeded multiple golden master versions of OS X Mavericks, with the final version coming a couple of days ahead of the software’s public release.

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Apple Watch to be Featured in November Issue of Vogue China

Earlier this month, Chinese model Liu Wen hinted that she might be involved in a fashion-oriented advertising campaign for the Apple Watch. As it turns out, Liu Wen will be featured in Vogue China’s November issue, wearing the Apple Watch on the cover of the magazine.

Wen appears to be wearing the 18-karat yellow gold Edition Apple Watch, which features a red Modern Buckle Band. She’s also featured wearing other Apple Watch models on a spread inside the magazine.

In an interview with The Business of Fashion, Vogue China editor-in-chief Angelica Cheung has revealed the details behind the partnership between Vogue and Apple that led to the device being featured on the popular magazine’s cover. According to Cheung, she met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and design head Jony Ive ahead of the device’s September 9 unveiling.

Cheung says that the duo walked her through the development of the Apple Watch, which left her “impressed by their thoughts and passion for the project.” Cheung said that she thought the watches “combined technology, style, and functionality and were very modern,” making them a good fit for Vogue China.

Cheung believes that Cook and Ive opted to give the Apple Watch its editiorial debut in Vogue China due to China’s willingness to embrace new technology.

“Chinese people are actually very digitally minded and we embrace new technology and digital products more easily than perhaps people elsewhere,” said Ms Cheung. “We are an ancient country but at the same time a very young country when it comes to fashion and new products. We love to embrace everything that is new, modern and positive,” she added. “All these convince us that the intersection of fashion and technology is a natural progression, not something alien.”

Apple’s choice to show off the Apple Watch in Vogue China speaks to how important the country has become to the company. China marks an opportunity for significant growth for Apple and earlier this year, China’s largest cell phone carrier, China Mobile, began offering the iPhone in what Tim Cook called a watershed moment. Cook visited China several times in 2013, and Apple has opened several new retail stores in the country in 2014, including locations in Wuxi, Chongqing, and Beijing.

The Apple Watch marks Apple’s first foray into the fashion world, and the company has been working to position it as a high-fashion accessory. In addition to getting its editorial debut in Vogue China, the Apple Watch saw its retail debut at French luxury boutique Colette in late September.

Apple is likely to hold additional fashion-oriented events as the Apple Watch’s early 2015 debut date approaches, aiming to promote the device as much as possible. Apple may also take a variety of approaches in its Apple Watch advertising, to reach a wide range of potential customers. June rumors suggested the Apple Watch was also being tested with multiple professional athletes that could also take part in future advertisements.

The Apple Watch is expected to launch in early 2015 and the device will be available in a wide range of materials and at several different price points. On the lower end, the Sport version of the device will retail for $349, and rumors have suggested the higher-end solid gold Edition models could sell for thousands of dollars.

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