Apple Design Chief Jony Ive has been awarded the 2018 Stephen Hawking Fellowship, the Cambridge Union announced on Tuesday.
Charles Connor, Cambridge Union Society President, said Ive was one of the "most influential individuals in modern technology" when announcing the award.
Ive will speak during the Michaelmas term (the first academic term) at Cambridge University's Debating Chamber, where he is expected to offer "reflection on his career, split with a more general reflection on technology and design as a whole."
The fellowship, which is an honorary scholarship to recognize the recipients' contributions to STEM fields and social discourse, was created by the Cambridge Union Society in partnership with professor Stephen Hawking in 2017.
Stephen Hawking delivered the Inaugural Fellowship Lecture in November of 2017 after the Union Society approached him about the creation of a fellowship in his name. It was one of his last public appearances before his death in 2018.
Top Rated Comments
Sure, making them look good is fine, but not at the expense of functionality and some of the thinness over function decisions have been poor. If the MacBook Pro is 1/2 inch thicker but more functional or the Mac Pro is the old cheese grater design, those are fine for the markets for which they are designed.
Ive (apply Ive accent): " Well, the first try was smooth, but not smooth enough. So I told them Smoother! And they used this metal stuff, and it was smoother. Then the curves, I told the engineers, can you make it curvier? You know, sexy sassy curvy. And then they said they couldn't, and I said You Must! And sure enough, it was curvier. Then I said...."
It's going to be an engaging reflection time! Hawking would have been proud! God help us when our proudest human achievement is immersive phone design.