Apple Design Chief Jony Ive Talks His Future, Secrecy at Apple, Device Addiction and More

Apple design boss Jony Ive says he’s got plenty left to do at Apple that will keep him there for the foreseeable future.

LONDON, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 17: Jonathan Ive attends the front row for the Burberry Prorsum show on day 4 of London Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2013 on September 17, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage)

Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour on Monday asked Ive if he’s planning to stay at Apple for much longer. Ive said he’s still learning a lot and has more to do.

“I’m actually feeling quite antsy and feeling like there’s an awful lot to do and an awful lot of opportunity, particularly just in the area of different expertise collaborating together,” Ive said at the Wired25 conference at the SFJazz Center in San Francisco. He said the design team just moved into the company’s new Apple Park campus and that the team’s expertise is “absolutely without precedent.”

“The energy and vitality and sense of opportunity … it’s extraordinary and it’s very exciting,” Ive said. “It’s a little heady because we’re trying to resolve what opportunities there are to pursue.”

Ive also opened up about the Cupertino company‘s notorious secrecy in regards to products it develops.

“Why is Apple so secretive?” Wintour asked Ive in front of a crowd of 500 tech industry insiders.

“I think it would be bizarre not to be,” Ive replied. “I don’t know many creatives who want to talk about what they’re doing when they’re halfway through it…I’ve been doing this for long enough where I actually feel a responsibility to not confuse or add more noise about what’s being worked on because I know that sometimes it does not work out. And so I think it’s just in our nature.”

Device addition also came up during the interview, during which Ive said device addiction itself isn’t the problem, but rather the way interactions need to become less transactional.

“It’s good to be connected,” he said. “The real issue is what you do with that connection. I think the nature of innovating is that you cannot predict all the consequences. In my experience, there have been surprising consequences — some fabulous and some less so.”

Jony Ive, who came to the US from England in the early 1990s also lamented the “divisive” state of the country today.

“I moved to the US because I loved the sense of optimism. You could try things … and fail without criticism,” he said. “Good stuff comes from collaboration, much less good stuff comes from division.”