The London Evening Standard interviews Jonathan Ive

In a rare interview published earlier today by the London Evening Standard, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive discusses life in California, the creative process at Apple, and why he thinks the company’s competitors struggle to make better products.

Here are some of the highlights from the interview, which took place at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California:

Q: What are your goals when setting out to build a new product?

A: Our goals are very simple – to design and make better products. If we can’t make something that is better, we won’t do it.

Q: Why has Apple’s competition struggled to do that?

A: That’s quite unusual, most of our competitors are interesting in doing something different, or want to appear new – I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better.

Q: Users have become incredibly attached, almost obsessively so, to Apple’s products – why is this?

A: It sound so obvious, but I remember being shocked to use a Mac, and somehow have this sense I was having a keen awareness of the people and values of those who made it.

I think that people’s emotional connection to our products is that they sense our care, and the amount of work that has gone into creating it.

Ive, who was born in Chingford Essex, and recently received a Knighthood for services to design, doesn’t tend to do many interviews, so make sure you read the full version of this one on the London Evening Standard’s website.