Jony Ive will be on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ today, Sunday 23 February 2025. Press reports quote him saying that he feels responsible for the ‘not so positive consequences’ of the iPhone, but that he is still proud of his work.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Sir Jony said: “I celebrate and am encouraged by the very positive contribution (of the iPhone), the empowerment, the liberty that is provided to so many people in so many ways.
“Just because the not so positive consequences, I mean they weren’t intended, but that doesn’t matter relative to how I feel responsible, and that weighs, and is a contributor to decisions that I have made since, and decisions that I’m making in the future.”
Listen on the BBC Sounds web page or app from 10.00 London time, and the programme will be archived there to listen again for the next 28 days {EDIT: it’s actually available for at least a year]. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00289vf
Apart from hearing what he has to say about his work and about technology, it will also be interesting to hear which selection of records he would chose to have if he were marooned on a desert island.
EDIT: I’ve listened to the programme now. The first 25 minutes has interesting comments about the nature and philosophy of industrial design, how the design of any made object can be understood to reflect the intentions of the maker, the influence of his silversmith father and lots about his early life and training. Comments about joining Apple from around 27m 20s, relationship with Steve Jobs, working on the Apple Newton and the iMac. Why he left Apple and comments about the iPhone from 43m 20s, comments on his current work from 50m 40s. He does make the remarks quoted above and I was not at all surprised that the presenter, Lauren Laverne, didn’t press him on what he meant about the negative impacts he mentioned. In particular he expressed concern about the need for caution and personal discipline with the ubiquitous connectivity offered by smartphones and admitted that he struggles with that. I’d like to have heard a lot more about that, and there was nothing at all about privacy and data, but ultimately Desert Island Discs (which has been running more or less continuously since the 1940s) is not that kind of programme and never has been.
The iPhone was the first smartphone that hot insanely popular. It launched the app store model that’s now used on every mobile platform including Android. Those apps have gotten hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in India and China who are doing e-commerce and opening small businesses from their phones. That’s food on the table for the working class. They can earn money while looking after their children because they’re not chained to a desktop computer for internet access. People in remote areas can know instantly about natural disasters and the news, educating them and making them active citizens in a democracy.
People across the world can chat with each other for nearly free using messaging and social media apps, and won’t have to send letters or pay extra fees for long-distance calls. The iPhone got more people onto what formerly only Blackberry-owning business executive had.
It’s such a first world thing to belittle the impact of smartphone (an industry which the iPhone shaped tremendously), when it has so much tangible impact, especially to working people.
The closest i had to the smartphones we have today before my first gen ipod touch was a chinese MP4 player that had internet, apps and access to some other functions, the uncle of my brother’s girlfriend was selling. I paid $100 CAD for it at the time and it was overall pretty trash but it had a really good idea behind it. I probably used it for a year or 2 before the ipod touch came out wich i paid $500 CAD for. I was 12 and that was all my money XD
I am not belittling the impact of the smartphone, just being critical of the positioning around iPhone bringing “liberation” and “empowerment”. It has the capability to do that, but it also has the capability to enable less positive things.
There are also some inconsistencies in your story.
The iPhone launched without an app store and the app store concept existed even before iOS/Android.
From my experience living in developing countries, work type use cases do not use iPhones. If anything in developing countries an iPhone is exclusively a status symbol.
Claiming the iPhone alone was what got hundred millions of people out of poverty is a ridiculous statement. There are so many other factors at play here.