Who Learned the Most from the New Yorker's Jonathan Ive Profile?

Earlier this week, in the New Yorker’s ninetieth anniversary double issue, Ian Parker and his editor, features director Daniel Zalewski, published a long-sought, in-depth profile of Apple’s senior vice president of design, Jonathan Ive, who rarely speaks publicly at any sort of length. The piece is nearly seventeen thousand words long, meaning that there are many words in it which are not facts. And why would a busy person on the internet want to read words that are not facts? Fortunately, a number of publications have come together in an occasional ritual to read the New Yorker’s piece for readers in order to separate the fact-wheat from the not-fact chaff. Here are the facts that they have gleaned, which is to say, learned.

Entrepreneur Magazine just learned 5 things about Apple visionary Jony Ive:

• Ive is painfully shy — but micromanages his public image.
• Apple’s design studio is cavernous and bare.
• Ive’s design team is illustrious — and largely anonymous.
• He reimagined the Star Wars lightsaber.
• He’s co-designing Apple’s new headquarters.

These facts were liked five hundred and sixty times, shared fifty-four times, and commented on thirty-five times on Facebook, and were tweeted a hundred and ninety-one times.

Mashable had six takeaways from that epic Jony Ive profile:

• Apple’s design studio is like a family
• Playmobil Ive
• Jony and Steve
• Ive’s famous friends
• The wrist, not the face
• The protruding iPhone 6 camera lens bothers Ive too

These facts were liked twice and shared seventy times on Facebook, and tweeted over sixteen hundred times.

The Independent thinks you need to know these things about Jony Ive:

• Skilled family
• Famous friends
• Sporty
• Design fanatic
• Or maybe that should be ‘design obsessive’
• Bad weather
• Star Wars
• Modest
• Steve Jobs’ legacy
• All work and no play

These facts were liked once and shared twice on Facebook, and tweeted over forty-three times.

Cult of Mac learned 12 things from the New Yorker’s profile of Jony Ive:

• Ive gets some unusual gifts.
• Ive is a car nut.
• The Apple Watch was Ive’s baby.
• The iPhone 6 Plus could have been even bigger.
• Ive is still British at heart.
• Ive has an impressive Rolodex of celebrity friends.
• Ive came up with some ideas for the new Star Wars movie.
• Ive hated the Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs biography.
• Ive knows how to fly in style.
• Ive and Jobs got on like a house on-fire.
• …Which isn’t to say that Jobs couldn’t be cutting.
• Ive is f*cking motivated.

These facts were liked a hundred and fifty-six times, shared twenty-five times, and commented on sixteen times on Facebook, and were tweeted a hundred and thirty-one times.

The Verge learned 15 things from The New Yorker’s Jony Ive profile:

• Ive has a Banksy poster in his office
• Ive helped J.J. Abrams design Star Wars’ new lightsaber
• Ive is into cars (and hates Toyotas)
• Ive doesn’t like Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography
• Ive (seemingly) isn’t thrilled about the iPhone 6’s camera bump
• Apple considered making a larger iPhone 4
• Ive doesn’t care for Google Glass (and neither does Tim Cook)
• Ive probably isn’t a fan of Moto Maker
• Tim Cook may not love Beats’ hardware design
• The Apple Watch still needs some work
• The Apple Watch may eventually come in more materials
• An Ultrasuede cloth may come with some models of the Apple Watch
• The Apple Watch was always going to be rectangular
• The Apple Watch prompted a store redesign
• The Apple Watch is more Ive’s than any previous Apple product

These facts were liked eight hundred and forty-four times, shared sixty-four times, and commented on a hundred and fifteen times on Facebook, and tweeted five hundred and sixteen times.

The Verge also noticed 18 famous people name-dropped in The New Yorker’s Jony Ive profile:

• Coldplay’s Chris Martin
• Stephen Fry
• Paul Smith
• JJ Abrams
• Paola Antonelli, curator at The Museum of Modern Art
• Massive Attack
• Ann Getty and Larry Ellison
• British DJ John Digweed
• Bono
• Prince Charles
• Yo-Yo Ma
• Rupert Murdoch
• Kevin Durant
• Marissa Mayer
• Sean Combs
• Lily Cole
• Olivier Zahm

These facts were liked two hundred and one times, shared twenty times, and commented on nine times on Facebook and tweeted a hundred and eighty-five times.

The Irish Examiner learned 21 things about Jony Ive and Apple:

• Showbiz friends
• Designers rule at Apple
• Ive had a resignation letter in his pocket at first meeting with Steve Jobs in 1997
• Jobs’ office is still untouched
• The future of Apple was hidden only by cloth on a table
• Ive has a Playmobil likeness of himself
• He’s a rugby fan
• And has a Banksy on his office wall
• There’s a cloth in the Apple Watch box
• He doesn’t like Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography
• He does love cars — but not the Toyota Echo
• He had an input on the design of the new lightsabre
• Apple Watch was an idea before Jobs died
• Ive doesn’t like Google Glass
• Tim Cook’s old-fashioned notifications
• Ive doesn’t like Moto Maker either
• The design team walked around with iPhone 6 prototype sizes in their pockets for weeks
• Tim Cook isn’t a fan of some Beats hardware
• Apple Stores are getting a redesign
• Ive doesn’t like the iPhone 6 camera sticking out
• Apple Watch still has glitches

No one liked or shared or tweeted these facts at all.

Fast Co.Design believes that there are 22 things you need to know about Apple’s Jonathan Ive:

• Designs that Ive hates
• His friends and colleagues describe his true style as a lot more blingy
• What’s on Ive’s bookshelves?
• Ive’s defining philosophy of industrial design
• According to friend Marc Newson, both he and Ive are primarily motivated by the lack of wealth they both experienced growing up
• Ive was first hired by Apple in the ’90s after designing a proto-iPad concept for the company
• Ive had played around with a very different concept for an all-in-one Mac
• When Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, he was prepared to replace Ive
• One early iteration of the MacBook featured an Apple icon that glowed on and off 12 times a minute
• In Apple’s design lab, the designers keep on hand a box of “interesting” custom parts
• Apple employees three recruiters whose sole task is to identify designers to work for the group
• Ive reads Apple criticism on the web
• They will often place the prototype alongside an early mock-up of what the next generation of the device will look like
• Ive has an inexplicable infatuation with Vertu
• Ive had to win a fight within Apple to make the Apple Watch a product
• Why the Apple Watch isn’t round
• Marc Newson worked on the design of the Apple Watch from the start.
• Products Ive may or may not be working on
• Expect Apple products to continue to take on softer, rounder, more organic forms
• Ive admits that the protruding camera lens on the iPhone 6 is something of a design kludge

These facts were liked two-hundred and eighty five times, shared seventy-two times, and commented on sixteen times on Facebook, and tweeted ninety-eight times.

The Guardian digested Apple’s Jony Ive and learned 23 things:

• Ive has a lot of famous friends
• He’s had a hand in the design of the new Star Wars lightsabers thanks to a boozy dinner with JJ Abrams
• Ive’s not unfamiliar with getting involved in making films
• Earlier in his career, things were less glamorous: Ive designed a bath, a sink and a toilet
• Now Ive has a 12-foot square glass-walled office
• Apple has three specialist recruiters who hire designers, and they only hire one a year
• When Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, Ive had his resignation letter in his pocket
• It was Jobs that brought in Apple’s skeuomorphism, and Ive never liked it
• Ive is (unsurprisingly) obsessive about the little things
• Especially about corners, rounded corners
• His obsession with detail means Apple campus is going to have awesome lift controls
• Lift controls are Ive’s domain because he’s also co-designing Apple’s new campus ( …and his own new house)
• Not even Ive could stop the protruding camera lens on the iPhone 6
• Apple employees tried to live with every 0.1in screen-sized prototypes of iPhones
• Ive pressed for the iPad before the iPhone
• Despite his line of work, he has strict screen time rules for his kids
• Ive has got a penchant for cars (so maybe those Apple Car rumours aren’t so far fetched after all)
• That slight tendency for bling says something about the design of the Apple Watch
• There’s a very good design reason as to why the Apple Watch’s ‘digital crown’ isn’t where you would expect it
• And of course the face isn’t round for a good reason too
• Talking of faces (and cover your ears, Google), the face is ‘the wrong place’ for technology
• And finally, at school Ive was nicknamed ‘Tiny’

These facts were liked three hundred and twenty times, shared eighty-six times, and commented on fifty-seven times on Facebook, and tweeted two hundred and seventy-one times.

So who learned the most the New Yorker’s profile of Jony Ive? It would seem to be clear that The Verge, with a combined fifteen hundred and fifty-three likes and eighty-four Facebook shares, learned more than anyone else from the profile. (As we all know, tweets do not count for much at all.) And yet, because the New Yorker now allows readers to read up to five pieces each month without subscribing — it previously chose one feature per week to unlock — perhaps it has learned the most of all, with nearly fifty-seven hundred likes, over two thousand shares and nearly seventeen hundred comments on Facebook, and nearly seven thousand tweets.