Steve Jobs meets Jonathan Ive, the main designer at Apple, at least twice a day. I wonder how many FTSE 500 company CEOs do the same.
Though Steve Jobs is a stickler for design, he is so lucky that he has as his co-partner, the slightly shier Jonathan Ive. They couldn't be more difficult.
In 2006, I asked the Cabinet Office to give Jonathan a knighthood. In the dying days of Brown's premiership, I tried to persuade No.10 to award an honorary one to Steve Jobs. I failed on both counts. Jonathan received a CBE.... but nothing yet for Jobs.
I have been an Apple fan since 1991 when I was made redundant by Independent Image (for the second time in my life). I sued and won a generous out of court settlement and with my cheque I went out and bought a computer. Not just any computer but an Apple Performa with a built in cd-drive (remember them?). That evening, I signed up for Lexis Nexus and was just as quickly reading US city-based newspapers online like the LA Times and San Jose Mercury. I wondered where I had been for the last dozen years or so. A light bulb had exploded and I was never to recover.
I've met Jonathan Ive in Cupertino and at Imperial College; I've corresponded with Jobs but as yet not met him. He's the man I'd most like to spend some time with.
And so to the iFad which was launched in the UK three weeks ago and which has the yummiest adverts on the underground escalators, on posters and on television. They've made them as though they were not just any consumer good but a combination of a Magnum Blanco meets well a Magnum.
Jack, my son, keeps borrowing it to watch films in bed and listen to yet more music. I'm slowly being weaned off of my iPhone because the iFad is just such a gem of design. Whether or not I really need it has already been answered as I have binned the Dell Netbook. I'm back permanently on Mac or whatever they are now called.
iFad meets iPad. Yo.