Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

I enjoyed reading Jony Ive: The genius behind Apple's greatest products. It engaged with multiple diverse themes and captured the zeitgeist of the most successful company of the 2000-2020 period. It engaged multiple interests of mine.  

1. Design and art. Talked about the finishes and designs of various products from Jony Ive's stable, even from before Apple. For example, the customer centric design aspect of adding a 'fiddle factor' to products coz customers like to fiddle. 

2. Deep engineering and manufacturing. For example, the scaled up use of CNC in apple manufacturing. Adopting a 'bespoke' kind of process at scale. During my engineering at 2004-08, CNC was a key upcoming technology, integrating cutting edge IT with age-old manufacturing. Learnt about 'machining' process which Apple pioneered to enable the superb finish on its products. 

3. The familiar milieu of the corporate atmosphere. Pressure of deadlines, conference rooms smelling of pizzas

4. Content new enough to excite yet a old enough to get rich content. The author got a bird's eye view of the subject, talking to enough number of sources. 

5. Phones during 2005-20 changed dramatically and was my passion: Apple's biggest hit during this period was phones and I was quite passionately into phones during this period ; 2005-2020. I was early adopter with Sony Walkman, Nokia N series, 3 x Google Nexus. In fact, I avoided Apple because of the prices and also suspicion of walled-garden ecosystem. However, it was clear that Apple broke new ground with the iphone. Also, during this period, phone moved from being revolutionary (capacitive touch screen, app ecosystem, music player built in) to routine (latest iphones are evolutionary rather than revolutionary)

6. Apple was glamorous during this period, and the book goes underneath the hood of that luxury car. It depicts many glamorous moments ; for eg relationship between Apple and Foxconn.  

7. I've owned a bunch of Apple devices during this period, and the book talks about the processes that went into it. Starting with Shuffle (won at a competition in undergrad). iPod Nano bought at a best buy at NYC. iPad and Macbook air during B School days. Moved to iPhone around in 2021 after being a long time Android user.  And latest being the Air Pods Pro 2, which sure are a game changer. Evokes nostalgia! Of course, often been late to the Apple party- never snapped up one immediately on release. Also

8. Jony Ive's approach to customer centricity, embracing the 'emotions' which the devices activate in the user. A radical shift from the previous approach of just numbers and specs.

9. Wired has always been good for tech topics over the years , and the writer is a former Wired journalist. 

10. Apple is highly secretive, so this book seems like the secret is being revealed. 

11. Apple is now moving jobs to India en masse in a big moment for Indian manufacturing, especially important at a time when AI is likely to take away many service jobs. So was interesting to see how the Apple-Foxconn relationship developed and also how Foxconn works.

12. The book packs a few learnings for my work environment and the space we operate in.    

While Walter Isaacson's book was a lot about Steve Jobs the person and less about Apple the company and products, this book is indepth about the company and products.  

Labels: Books

# posted by Ashwin Ravikumar @ 4:19 PM