After two remarkably successful decades at Apple, Jony Ive is used to receiving honorary recognition. Sir Jonathan, who was born in Chingford in northeast London, was knighted for “services to design and enterprise” three years ago. This week, he gained the new title of chief design officer of what has become the world’s most valuable company, in large part due to his relentless efforts.在苹果(Apple)工作20多年、获得一系列卓越成就之后，约尼艾夫（Jony Ive，即乔纳森艾夫爵士(Sir Jonathan Ive)）对取得荣誉已习以为常。3年前，出生于伦敦东北部钦福特(Chingford)的他因“对设计和企业作出杰出贡献”获得封爵位。
上周，乔纳森爵士调任苹果首席设计官。苹果如今已沦为世界市值第一的公司，这在相当大程度上也归功于他孜孜不倦的希望。It hardly needed emphasising that Sir Jonathan is design supremo of Apple, and the decision to give him a grand title and promote two executives to run the industrial and software design divisions under him has divided Apple-watchers. Some regard it as a sign that Sir Jonathan is easing his way out, tired from producing a stream of innovative products such as the iPod and iPhone; others that he has accrued yet more authority.需要赘言，乔纳森爵士是苹果的设计大哥，给他这个奢华头衔、提高另外两名高管在他的领导下主管工业和软件设计业务的要求，让紧密注目苹果的人们分为了两派。
一些人指出，这表明乔纳森爵士厌烦了大大建构创意产品，比如iPod和iPhone，在为脱身离开了铺路；另一些人则指出，他取得了更高的权威。Either way, he is at least the second most powerful executive at Apple after Tim Cook, its chief executive. Some regard him as the most powerful, thanks to his symbiotic relationship with the late Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder, who once described Sir Jonathan as his “spiritual partner”. As Mr Cook put it in the official announcement of his new role: “Our reputation for world-class design differentiates Apple from every other company in the world.”无论如何，他现在最少是苹果的第二号人物，次于首席执行官蒂姆库克(Tim Cook)。一些人指出他是头号人物，理由是他与苹果创始人史蒂夫乔布斯(Steve Jobs)生前亲密无间的关系，后者曾将乔纳森爵士称作自己的“灵魂伴侣”。
如库克在宣告乔纳森爵士新的职位的月通告中所说：“一流的设计带来我们的口碑，将苹果与世界上所有其他公司区分出去。”Many other companies would like to match Apple by integrating design so deeply into the creation of new products and services that it outstrips functions such as sales and marketing. It has paid off for Apple to the tune of $760bn — its current market capitalisation. Who would not want to mimic that?许多其他公司想追上苹果，它们将设计深深带入新产品和新的服务的建构过程中，以至于设计的地位多达了销售、市场等其他功能。这种作法在苹果身上已体现出有了价值，为苹果带给了7600亿美元的市值。
谁想仿效这样的顺利？The problem is that it is incredibly hard, even if a company has an equally talented team of designers. Not only is making things with more than a design flourish applied to the outside expensive, but the scope of design has expanded radically since 1925, when Philips, the Dutch company, hired Louis Kalff to polish its advertising and named him head of “propaganda”.问题在于，这样的顺利较难仿效，即便一家公司享有一支某种程度富裕才华的设计师团队。不仅生产好比有华丽外观设计的产品必须代价高昂的成本，而且设计的范围如今很大地不断扩大了，远非1925年荷兰公司飞利浦(Philips)任命路易斯卡尔夫(Louis Kalff)为负责管理润色广告的“宣传”主管时比起。The cost of listening to what designers say is illustrated by one story in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs. Sir Jonathan wanted to place a recessed carrying handle in the brightly coloured iMacs that he designed in 1998, less for practical reasons than to make the machine seem friendlier to older buyers. Apple’s engineers protested that the handle would be expensive and impractical; Mr Jobs ignored them.沃尔特艾萨克森(Walter Isaacson)所著乔布斯传记中的一则故事，反映了听设计师的话要代价怎样的代价。
1998年，乔纳森爵士想在他设计的彩色iMac上加一个内陷的夹住，这主要不是为了简单考虑到，而是为了让这款电脑变得对年纪较小的顾客更加友好关系。苹果的工程师当时回应赞成，称之为这个夹住成本高昂又不简单。乔布斯当时对这些赞成置若罔闻。Good design runs deep. As James Dyson, the British inventor, argued in a recentinterview in the Financial Times, “If something looks designed on the outside but doesn’t work well, you hate it. It gives design a bad name.” Thus, designers have to work from the earliest stages on what a product is, and how it will be built, rather than making it look good once it is close to completion.好的设计必须了解产品的问世过程。
如英国发明家詹姆斯戴森(James Dyson)最近拒绝接受英国《金融时报》专访时所说：“如果某样东西外观上看上去经过了精心设计，但用于一起不流畅，你不会深感气愤。这不会让设计蒙上污名。”因此，设计师必需从初期就希望搞清楚一件产品是什么，将如何生产出来，而不是在产品相似成形时设法让它有漂亮的外观。
One of Sir Jonathan’s heroes is Dieter Rams, the designer of Braun products such as shavers and radios. Among Braun’s design mottos is: “Good design is as little design as possible.” The tradition of being low-key and yet elegant, without any distracting details, is evident in the slim, almost austere, aluminium MacBook.为博朗(Braun)设计过剃须刀和收音机等产品的设计师迪特尔拉姆斯(Dieter Rams)，是乔纳森爵士崇拜的人之一。博朗的设计信条之一就是：“好的设计要尽可能不露痕迹。”一贯的高调而高雅，没任何扎眼的细节，这种风格显著反映在简练、几近朴素的铝合金机身的MacBook上。
Apple does not solely follow the German functional style of industrial design. It also draws on a more exuberant US tradition, reaching back to mid-century designers such as Raymond Loewy and Harley Earl — the man who fitted fins to Cadillacs — in the colourful versions of iPods and other products. Sir Jonathan’s team somehow manages to blend the two approaches.苹果的工业设计并没几乎遵守德国式简单风格，它还从更为开朗的美国传统中吸取了启发。彩色版iPod和其他产品的设计风格可追溯至上世纪中期的一些美国设计师，比如雷蒙德洛伊(Raymond Loewy)、以及建构了凯迪拉克(Cadillac)的高尾鳍设计的哈利厄尔(Harley Earl)。乔纳森爵士的团队知道用了何种方法，竟然将两种有所不同的设计传统融合到了一起。
It is hard to remember now, but Jobs seemed to have set himself an almost impossible task on returning to Apple in the late 1990s — to resist the steady commoditisation of personal computers into a set of grey boxes containing software. By enlisting Mr Ive, he both achieved this and altered where value lay — in the integration of hardware, software and services.如今我们很难回忆起这一点，不过乔布斯在上世纪90年代末一返回苹果，或许就为自己原作了一个几近不有可能已完成的任务——杯葛把个人电脑变为一个个装有软件的灰色盒子的日益同质化的潮流。通过把艾夫拉屋苑，他不仅顺利地已完成了这一任务，还转变了个人电脑业务的价值所在——对硬件、软件和服务的统合，这就是价值所在。That makes the field of design more interesting, important, and difficult. Philips, for example, has 500 designers working in 18 global locations, whose work has shifted from making consumer devices to thinking about the way, for example, children in hospitals react to Philips-made body scanners. The more relaxed they feel, the less the need to sedate them.这使设计领域显得更加有意思、更加最重要、也更加艰难。
比如，飞利浦有500名设计师在全球18个地方工作，他们的工作已从生产消费设备转变成思维设备的工作方式，比如思维医院中的儿童如何与飞利浦生产的人体扫描仪对话。儿童深感就越放开，越大不必须让他们冷静下来。Sir Jonathan was given oversight of software as well as industrial design at Apple in 2012. He now has a hand in everything from the layout of Apple stores to the design of its new headquarters in Cupertino, California, and the furniture inside. Apple is working on a car — maybe a self-driving car — and he is helping to steer this project too.2012年，乔纳森爵士开始负责管理掌理苹果的软件和工业设计。他现在参予苹果的一切事务，从苹果门店的布置，到苹果坐落于加利福尼亚州库比蒂诺(Cupertino)的新总部的设计和内部家具。
苹果正在研发一款汽车，有可能是一款自动驾驶汽车，乔纳森爵士也参予指导这个项目。He has, in other words, made his job far bigger, extending his reach into aspects of production that an earlier generation of designers would not have dreamt of taking on. This could account for his tone of profound weariness in a recent profile in The New Yorker. He described himself as “deeply, deeply tired” and only half deflected the suggestion that he would like to return with his family to live in the UK.换句话说，乔纳森爵士很大地拓展了自己的工作范围，他的影响力在产品生产中的伸延之甚广，对于更加早于一代的设计师来说是不可想象的。这有可能也是在最近《纽约客》(The New Yorker)的一篇人物报导中，他的语气中具有深深的疲惫感的原因。
他说道自己“十分，十分疲惫”，对于他有可能想要与家人返回英国生活的猜测，他并没几乎坚称。“Apple’s most remarkable quality is discipline,” says Jonas Damon, executive creative director of Frog Design, a design agency. “From the top down, they dictate what the company puts its effort behind.” If being Apple’s great design dictator has become too much for Sir Jonathan, what chance do other companies have?“苹果最卓越的品质就是纪律，”设计公司Frog Design的继续执行创新总监乔纳斯戴蒙(Jonas Damon)说道，“上层从上至下要求公司把希望投放哪些地方。”如果乔纳森爵士深感作为苹果的设计大哥开销太重，其他公司还有什么机会？。
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