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Afterwards, he co-founded Tangerine, a small independent design consultancy in London, where he worked on everything from toilets to televisions. But he found it frustrating because by the time he was brought in, most decisions about how the product should work had been made. So when one of his clients, Apple, offered him a job, he felt it might offer him real influence. He would be working at the cutting edge of technology, designing products never seen before, with a company that seemed to share his high standards.

It didn’t work out that way at first. When he joined the company, Apple was in trouble as a brand: sales were lacklustre, and many felt it had lost its way. He assembled his team, they began working on designs – but none of them was implemented. It was, he says, a humbling experience. Then Apple co-founder Steve Jobs returned to the company and overnight, everything changed. Jobs asked them to start work on an easy-to-use, all-in-one home computer.

Launched in 1998, the iMac was revolutionary. A gorgeous, retro-styled, colourful object that was a pleasure to use and a pleasure to look at, it transformed the computer from boring beige box to stylish home accessory. It turned round Apple’s ailing fortunes.

Since then, Ive’s team has consistently produced beautiful products that set new standards in computers and pioneer new manufacturing techniques that spread still further. What they specialise in is simplicity. Which, Ive points out, is harder than it looks. Take the iPod. There were digital music players before it. Trashy-looking plastic things with lots of buttons to operate and cables to connect, they appealed mainly to gadget-obsessed lads. Then came Apple’s sleek, substantial version, which was controlled by a rather lovely click wheel on the front. As a feat of engineering it was breathtaking, but that’s not what you noticed as a consumer. What you noticed was what it could do, which was store huge amounts of music and allow you to access and play it quickly and easily.

It was puzzling at first because no one had seen anything like it, but as soon as you held it you intuitively knew how to use it: the fact that its front looked something like a stereo speaker even told you, on a subliminal level, what it was for. You quickly understood that here was a light device that fitted into the palm of your hand but could contain your entire CD collection. If you cared about music, you also knew you had to have one.

Ive’s products are often shockingly new in this way, but also strangely familiar. Once you get over the initial surprise, everything about them seems natural, inevitable – which is why it’s so hard for Apple’s competitors to do anything but make imitations of them. Earlier this year he was given the President’s Award at the prestigious annual D&AD awards – the design world’s equivalent of a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars. Summing up Ive’s talent, eminent product designer Richard Seymour said this: “It doesn’t start with objects, it starts with people. And it starts with a very profound understanding of what makes us tick, how we think.”

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