by Jason Snell
When Stephen Fry met Jony Ive
Writer/actor/comedian Stephen Fry is a huge Apple fan from way back—he and Douglas Adams claimed to have bought the first two original Macs ever sold in the UK, and I’ve seen him at two Apple events in the past few years.
Now Fry’s making news with his interview with Jonathan Ive in the Telegraph, which reveals something interesting about Ive:
Until now, Ive’s job title has been Senior Vice President of Design. But I can reveal that he has just been promoted and is now Apple’s Chief Design Officer. It is therefore an especially exciting time for him.
Inside the fabled design studio (cloths over the long tables hiding the exciting new prototypes from prying eyes like mine) Jony has two people with him. They too have been promoted as part of Ive’s new role.
One is Richard Howarth, English as Vimto. “Richard is going to be our new head of Industrial Design,” says Jony. “And this is Alan Dye, the new head of User Interface.” Dye is a tall, amiable American.
I have no idea what this means about Ive’s job day to day, though I will say that this reads to me as more of an echo resulting from Ive being given control over software design. That was when Ive got a new job, basically. Presumably he needed trusted deputies to run that vast set of responsibilities, and now all of them are being recognized for the work they’ve been doing. That’s my guess, anyway.
In addition to breaking that news, Fry also relates the tour of the new Apple campus he got from Ive and Tim Cook. It’s good to be Stephen Fry.