30 Years of Apple: Jonathan Ive and His Next Anniversary Surprise

Most won’t recognize the name Jonathan Ive but nearly every one will know his design: the iPod. Ive has a long, very long, list of credits to his name while at Apple for the past sixteen years which includes designing the original TiBook (Titanium PowerBook G4), iBook, the 22” Cinema Display, PowerMac G4 Tower, the Mac mini and his most well known work, the aforementioned iPod to name but just a few.

Most noted on Ive’s resume, however, is the computer he designed that turned Apple around that began what many call the “new Apple”. That computer was the iMac. Presenting the world with not just one dull looking all-in-one computer, but rather a fruit bowl of choice, it was the translucent colored computer that brought Apple out of the Gil Amelio slump and into the Steve Jobs turtle neck boom. New, bright, and just so darn curious looking, it wasn’t hard to find even the stanchest PC fan paying it compliments.

When Ive came to Apple in 1992 from his own London-based company, Tangerine, he was thrown into a project that would become the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM). The computer surprised many, using many laptop components for a home computer, and excited the Mac community. It was definitely thinking different.

It would be another 8 years before Ive did something as “odd” as the TAM (the iMac wasn’t odd, really, just brilliant) and 8 seemed to be the magic number for his creation the Power Mac G4 Cube. Fitted in a metal case measuring 8 inches by 8 inches by 8 inches housed in a clear Plexiglas box that lifted it 2 inches for air flow, the Cube was a remarkable design. Like the iMac, it shattered all notions of what a computer was to be like. What Michael Dell must have been thinking when he saw the first pictures of the Cube. And while the Cube had its shortcomings, it did stand above the rest in the crowed PC crowd as something like none other. Even though it was released over fifteen seven years ago, it can run the latest Mac operating system, OS X. I can’t think of a single PC half that age that could claim that about Windows XP.

So what’s the guy that designed all these cool products going to have for Apple’s 30th Anniversary tomorrow? Maybe an iPod video that we keep hearing about? An updated iBook? Maybe this media center Mac that keeps finding life in the rumor mill? I’m putting my chips on the iPod since that’s where Ive seems to live of late. But whatever it may turn out to really be, if Ive had anything to do with it, it will be an immediate success.

Update: Thanx Ben for the math help. :)

[tags]jonathan ive,twentieth anniversary macintosh,30 year anniversary,surprise?[/tags]