Ive got a knighthood

A massive Chingford ‘welcome back’ to old boy and FMK pin-up Jony Ive. 

Apple’s lead designer, who was born and bred here, is temporarily back across the pond receiving a knighthood.

And according to an interview on BBC Radio’s Today programme, the obsession with beautiful practical design that produced the iPod, iPhone and iPad can be traced back to his formative years. 

‘I realised I really loved drawing and making things,’ he told Jim Naughtie. ‘I was fascinated by objects and what they could do and how they were made - probably by the time I was seven.’ 

Following graduation from Newcastle Poly Jony put this fascination to work at London design agency Tangerine. Here he was, apparently, unsuccessful at selling his ideas for sanitary ware. Then Apple became a customer and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Ive, though he always credits his design team, oversaw the change in computing from grey boxes to colourful, witty, engaging toys and Apple has gone from strength to strength on the back of them. 

Behind the gloss, though, Ive is keen to stress that Apple’s design policy is not to cynically separate the commercial from the beautiful but to successfully combine the two.

‘It’s industrial design - and the form of design that I’m involved in and practice is part fine art and part engineering. It’s quite challenging in the fact that it involves so many different area of expertise,’ he said in the interview.

‘Our goal is to make the very best products we can. Then we trust that if we manage to do that that people will like the product, hopefully they will buy the product, and then we’ll make some money.’

We say thank you Apple and thank you Jony Ive for enabling our customers to do what they do and to them for asking us to help them do it. Long may your obsession continue to produce the - beautiful and practical -goods. 

PS Any chance you might come up with a new Xserve? 

(Written on an iMac 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM) 

To buy any of our Jony's wonderful designs for your museum or desktop, call us on 020 8524 3595

This month we've been mainly...

• Rolling out Google mail to 85 users in the non-profit sector
• Implementing a backup and archive strategy for a major UK brand agency and international monthly magazine
• Deploying an enterprise SQL database and server
• Setting up advanced user configuration in Google Apps for a top theatrical agent
• Reconfiguring Universal Type Server for a prestige UK book publisher
• Data recovery for a client in the museums sector
• Plus recovering crashed servers, sorting out mail problems, installing group printers and avoiding the rain

Adobe CS6 takes software distribution into the cloud

Adobe has released its next generation version of the widely popular Creative Suite of applications, now rocking up at version 6. Alongside the launch of CS6, Adobe has also unleashed Creative Cloud - Adobe's jewel in the crown - giving everyone affordable access to the latest and greatest creative tools. 

CS6 sees a host of notable improvements as well as an overhaul of the look and feel of the applications which now feature customisable "dark look" - which helps your eyes focus on the work that's important rather than having the menu and tool bars glaring back at you.

CS6 has been rebuilt specifically with Mac users in mind meaning apps and features run in 64-bit, improving speed, performance and reliability - ultimately resulting in a more productive, cost effective work force. Thanks to the Mercury Graphics engine, all graphics intense actions such as 3D renders and lighting affects will now have direct access to the Mac's GPU.

Although Adobe has decided against supporting OS X Lion's document saving platform "Versions", it has implemented what it deems as an appropriate alternative. All documents will auto-save themselves every couple of minutes to a separate backup file. In the event of a system crash when you relaunch the Adobe application it recognises that the system crashed and opens up the latest version of that backup - instantly.

CS6 pricing varies according to which applications you require as part of the set. This ranges from £1227.54 to £2644.50 for a new license or £260.76 to £471.09 for an upgrade license. Creative Cloud essentially gives you access to everything Adobe - including their iPad applications. It includes 25GB of online storage allowing users to collaborate on the same workflow or even start editing a photo on the iPad and then resume where they left off on their iMac in the office. 

Creative Cloud has a monthly subscription cost of £46.88 for new customers or £27.34 for existing customers. Key benefits to moving away from buying the software as physical media is that, provided you remain subscribed, you are always using the latest version of CS rather than been stuck on outdated versions. 

Apple unveils new iPad with HD display

Apple has announced the new iPad (it's stopped numbering them) with the much expected  Retina display with a 2048x1536 resolution, 44 per cent greater colour saturation and an astounding 3.1 million pixels — in the same 9.7-inch space. 

The Retina display on the new iPad wouldn’t be possible without the new and powerful A5X chip. And its quad-core graphics processing makes everything you do on iPad feel incredibly responsive. From the little things like swiping, scrolling and pinching to the big things like editing photos, applying filters and transitions in iMovie and, of course, playing games. There's a new 5 megapixel camera too which will record HD video in full 1080p. The price remains the same at £399 for the base model. 

On the software side, iPhoto comes to the iPad, with simple touch actions to make a blue sky bluer or a landscape greener. 

Mountain Lion 10.8 beta under test

We're testing a beta of OSX 10.8, Mountain Lion and the initial impression is good. Software update now runs via the App Store (which, I suppose, makes sense) but on our Beta at least, does not update.

Otherwise Google, Office 2011, Adobe CS4 all appear to work fine. Will update on progress later. Not sure about the Notification Centre which opens on the right of the screen... is it going to be essential or one of those 'Dasboard' features no-one uses? The jury's out at FMK.