When you're trying to solve a problem on a new product type, you become completely focused on problems that seem a number of steps removed from the main product. That problem solving can appear a little abstract, and it is easy to lose sight of the product.
I think that we're on a path that Apple was determined to be on since the '70s, which was to try and make technology relevant and personal.
It's easy to assume that just because you make something in small volumes, not using many tools, that there is integrity and care - that is a false assumption.
Why is it when we have a bad experience with a product, we assume it is us, but a bad experience with food, we blame the food?!
Innovation at Apple has always been a team game. It has always been a case where you have a number of small groups working together.
We knew that iMac was fast; we didn't need to make it ugly.
There are some shocking cars on the road.
I find that when I write, I need things to be quiet, but when I design, I can't bear it if it's quiet.
We shouldn't be afraid to fail- if we are not failing we are not pushing. 80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work. If something is not good enough, stop doing it.
Unless we understand a certain material - metal or resin and plastic - understanding the processes that turn it from ore, for example - we can never develop and define form that's appropriate.
The thing with focus is that it's not this thing you aspire to, like, 'Oh, on Monday I'm going to be focused.' It's every single minute: 'Why are we talking about this when we're supposed to be talking about this?'
I left London in 1992, but I'm there 3-4 times a year, and love visiting.
Eight years of work can be copied in six months. It wasn't inevitable that it was going to work. A stolen design is stolen time.
Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural - it's so hard!
I am very aware that I'm the product of growing up in England and the tradition of designing and making, of England industrialising first.
There was a 'Wired' cover that had a big Apple logo with a crown of barbed wire as thorns, and underneath it just said, 'Pray.' I remember this because of how upsetting it was. Basically saying either it's going to just go out of business or be bought.
When something's made in the smallest volume - as a one-off couture piece - or in large quantities, deep care is critical to determine authentic, successful design and, ultimately, manufacture.
There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively.
We all use something - you can't drill holes with your fingers. Whether it's a knife, a needle, or a machine, we all need the help of a device.
Make each product the best it can be. Focus on form and materials. What we don't include is as important as what we do include.
One person's car is another person's scenery.
There's no other product that changes function like the computer.
Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.
One of the things that is particularly precious about working at Apple is that many of us on the design team have worked together for 15-plus years, and there's a wonderful thing about learning as a group. A fundamental part of that is making mistakes together.
When you're doing something for the first time, you don't know it's going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it's copied. I have to be honest: the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn't. I think it's theft, and it's lazy.
I discovered at an early age that all I've ever wanted to do is design.
Deep in the culture of Apple is this sense and understanding of design, developing, and making. Form and the material and process - they are beautifully intertwined - completely connected.
What I think is remarkable is the force of habit and the fact that while we can have a practice for doing something that has been repetitive and established over many, many years, it doesn't actually mean there's any virtue to doing it that way at all.
True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, 'Yeah, well, of course.' Where there's no rational alternative.
Once, even the simple metal needle challenged the conventional thinking of a time.
With a father who is a fabulous craftsman, I was raised with the fundamental belief that it is only when you personally work with a material with your hands, that you come to understand its true nature, its characteristics, its attributes, and I think - very importantly - its potential.
People's interest is in the product, not in its authorship.
If doing anything new, you're very used to having insurmountable obstacles.
At the start of the process the idea is just a thought - very fragile and exclusive. When the first physical manifestation is created everything changes. It is no longer exclusive, now it involves a lot of people.
There is a clear goal and it isn't to make money. The goal is to desperately try to make the best products we can. We are not naive - if you trust it, people like it, they buy it and we make money. This is a consequence.
Different' and 'new' is relatively easy. Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard.
It never ceases to amaze me what it takes to develop and bring to mass production a product.
When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.
I think subconsciously people are remarkably discerning. I think that they can sense care.
I don't know how we can compare the old watches we know with the functionality and the capability of the Apple Watch.
We struggle with the right words to describe the design process at Apple. But it is very much about designing and prototyping and making.
When you feel that the way you interpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel somewhat ostracized and lonely.
To design something really new and innovative you have to reject reason.
We won't be different for different's sake. Different is easy... make it pink and fluffy! Better is harder. Making something different often has a marketing and corporate agenda.
Apple's Industrial Design team is harder to get into than the Illuminati, and part of the reason is because no one leaves. In the last 15 years, not one of the 18 designers has ditched Apple for greener pastures.
The iPhone was broadly dismissed. The iPod was broadly dismissed. The iPad was probably more copiously written off as a large iPod.
I feel that it's lovely when, as a user, you're not aware of the complexity.
That's just tragic, that you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three dimensional objects and not make one.
The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring.
