The first time Apple designer Jony Ive met Steve Jobs, he was carrying his resignation letter in his pocket.

In a profile in the New Yorker today, Ive recalls the scene at Apple in 1997, when Jobs rejoined the company he cofounded. Everybody was sure Apple was about to go out of business. Wired had just published an infamous cover featuring Apple's logo with a crown of barbed wire thorns and the single word "PRAY." 

So Ive was pretty sure he was going to be fired.

And in fact, Jobs had talked to Richard Sapper, who had designed IBM's ThinkPad, but Sapper didn't want to leave IBM for such a small struggling company.

But Jobs and Ive hit it off immediately. They were both a little bit "odd," Ive explains, and neither of them were used to such an immediate connection.

Ive proceeded to show Jobs some of the design work that had been happening in Apple's studio, and Jobs, in typically harsh fashion, said "Fuck, you’ve not been very effective, have you?"

But it wasn't an insult! Instead, Jobs was saying that the designs Ive had on display looked fresh and exciting, but Ive hadn't been able to get the rest of the company to pay much attention to his work. 

They began collaborating on the iMac that very day, Ive says. The iMac was the first in a long line of hit products that paved Apple's road to recovery, and eventually turned Apple into the most profitable company in the world.

Meanwhile, the two men became close friends and collaborators. Jobs died in 2011, and at his memorial service Ive called him his "closest and most loyal friend."

The full New Yorker profile of Ive is well worth a read. Check it out here>>

SEE ALSO: Why Steve Jobs was such a jerk to employees

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Apple design chief Jony Ive has worked with executive Angela Ahrendts to make Apple Stores feel like a more "natural" environment for the forthcoming Apple Watch, according to an extensive profile of Ive by Ian Parker in the New Yorker.

The as-yet unannounced redesign of the stores intends to make them "a more natural setting for vitrines filled with gold (and perhaps less welcoming, at least in some corners, to tourists and truants)," Parker writes.

We already knew there were some changes coming to Apple stores ahead of the Apple Watch's launch. Earlier this month, 9to5Mac reported that they will have custom-designed safes for storing the 18K gold devices. These safes will have chargers inside to ensure the watches remain powered-up at all times.

Apple is also working on special weight scales for measuring the Apple Watch. This is to stop customers buying the device, secretly removing or replacing the gold, and then returning it to the store after selling the precious metal on.

Prices for the Apple Watch aren't confirmed yet, but rumours peg the price point at somewhere between $1,200 and $5,000. The regular models are a bargain in comparison, starting at just $349. It's expected to launch at some point in April — though tester models are already being spotted in the wild.

Here's a promotional photo of the gold Apple Watch being worn:

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NOW WATCH: Apple Crashed A Paris Fashion Show To Promote Its Smartwatch

The design genius behind Apple's most popular products keeps a photo of a toy as the background on his iPhone's lock screen.

In a recent profile published in The New Yorker, Ive revealed that his design colleagues at Apple created a Playmobil figure of him that he received as a Christmas gift. 

Playmobil creates tiny customized figurines that look similar to Lego characters. 

The New Yorker article did not include a photo of the Playmobil figurine, but here is how it was described in Ian Parker's story:

He was maintaining a look captured in a Playmobil figure of him, which his design colleagues made as a Christmas present a few years ago. The seven-inch Ive had on sunglasses and carried an off-white Valextra briefcase. A photograph of the gift is the lock-screen image on Ive's iPhone.

Read the full story at The New Yorker here >>

SEE ALSO: Jony Ive carried a resignation letter in his pocket the first time he met Steve Jobs

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When the Apple Watch ships in April, it will be available in different sizes, styles, and colors. There's a rose gold edition, brightly-colored sports straps, and stainless steel options to choose from, just to name a few.

That level of variety is a bit unusual when it comes to smartwatches. Many companies, including Motorola and Samsung for instance, may offer their watches in different sizes or maybe a few different colors. But it's rare to see customization beyond that.

There's a reason Apple chose to offer so many choices, according to The New Yorker's recent profile of Apple's design chief Jony Ive. It boils down to one basic idea: people don't like to wear the same thing as someone else.

Here's what The New Yorker's Ian Parker wrote:

Ive’s position was that people were “O.K., or O.K. to a degree,” with carrying a phone that is identical to hundreds of millions of others, but they would not accept this in something that’s worn. The question, then, was “How do we create a huge range of products and still have a clear and singular opinion?”

Apple announced several different models of its watch during its unveiling in September, but Ive hinted that there may be more variations in the works.

"We've not stopped," he said to Parker when discussing the different types of materials and designs Apple offers for its watch.

The base model will start at $350, but some such as well-connected blogger John Gruber of Daring Fireball have speculated that high-end models could cost thousands of dollars. Smartwatches currently being made by other tech companies usually cost anywhere between $150-$300.

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Steve Jobs' legacy lives on at Apple in a very physical way: The company has left his top-floor, corner office completely untouched since his death. 

His name is still on the door. The inside hasn't been changed.  

The detail surfaced in an in-depth New Yorker profile of Apple designer Jony Ive. 

Ive and Jobs worked together extremely closely.

Jobs' office, in One Infinite Loop, connected to Ive's lab, in Two Infinite Loop, via a covered corridor. Those were the only two buildings on Apple's campus connected that way. 

The two were also very close friends. When Ive spoke at Jobs' memorial service in late 2011, he called his former boss his closest and most loyal friend. 

CEO Tim Cook also referenced Jobs' unchanged office in an interview with Charlie Rose last year, in which he also said he still thought about Jobs every day. 

"He is in my heart," Cook said. "His spirit will always be at the foundation of the company."

SEE ALSO: Tim Cook may have been hinting at an Apple car last year

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If any product is going to make it out of Apple's famously secretive design lab and into your hands, it needs to have passed a simple and profound test: inevitability. 

For head designer Jony Ive and his team, it's essential. 

"So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable,"Ive told the design magazine Icon in 2003. "You know, you think 'of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?' It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve."

But when it is achieved, Apple triumphs — to the tune of a record-breaking $700 million market cap. 

A recent New Yorker profile highlighted Ive's obsession with inevitability. 

Design team member Evans Hankey told the New Yorker that in the design lab, inevitability worked like this: 

An existing product is often set alongside a model of a potential successor, to see if "the one that we've been enjoying for a couple of years or so — if it just feels really old and kind of stodgy, and the new one feels just amazing." ... Once a new model feels "inevitable," Hankey said, "we know we have a lot to do, but at least the foundation is solid."

As consumers, that inevitability can be seen in the way Apple's products evolve: Every new iPhone feels somehow tighter and more robust than the one before it. With (almost) every iteration, the Apple mouse has become more elegant.

Ive has said that inevitability results from bringing simplicity, clarity, and order to products, so that Apple's offerings are more intuitive than everybody else's.

The point is to leave the user with "the sense that [the product] is the only possible solution that makes sense," Ive said.  

Think about when the first iPods came out back in 2001. Instead of going to the store and picking up albums or burning your favorite tracks to a mix CD, you could just download songs and transfer them to your iPod. 

In that single product, Apple changed an industry. 

When you look back, it seems inevitable.

SEE ALSO: This Bill Gates Quote Summarizes What The Tech World Thought Of Steve Jobs

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New details have emerged about Apple's circular "spaceship" campus which is currently under construction, and it sounds like the interior of the headquarters will be just as futuristic as its curved-glass exterior.

Apple designer Jony Ive discussed the extensive work that went into designing the new campus in a lengthy New Yorker profile, where he revealed that the floors and ceilings will be unified as "forty-four hundred precast-concrete units that will have a floor on one side, a ceiling on the other, and a cooling system between them."

Ive calls these custom floor and ceiling pieces "void slabs," all of which are currently being constructed in a factory built by Apple in Woodland, California.

"We’re assembling rather than building," Ive told The New Yorker.

Manufacturing these 4,400 concrete slabs is only one example of Apple's attention to detail. The new campus has faced delays and cost increases in the past due to lack of "fit and finish," mostly due to strict requirements put in place by Steve Jobs, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. 

Jobs reportedly insisted that gaps between surfaces be 1/32 of an inch instead of the standard 1/8 inch, and that the polished concrete ceilings be cast in a mold and hoisted into place to guarantee uniformity, which "left one person involved in the project speechless."

Ive appears to have continued Jobs' intense attention to detail, mentioning that he had "a big fight" in order to be able to simplify the control panels on the campus elevators. Ive also had a hand in the design of the interior staircases and signs.

When it's finished in 2016, Apple's Campus 2 will eventually feature curved glass panels, an underground parking lot, a private auditorium for keynotes and product launches, and a 360-degree view of nature. 

"This is something that Steve cared about passionately," Ive said of the campus to The New Yorker. "There is a bittersweetness here, because this is obviously about the future, but every time I come here it makes me think of the past as well — and just the sadness. I just wish he could have seen it."

You can check out a photo timeline of the project's construction progress right here.

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Motorola isn't too happy with comments made by Apple's lead designer Jony Ive in The New Yorker's recent profile of him.

Rick Osterloh, the president of Motorola, defended his company's smartphone strategy when speaking with the BBC on Wednesday while taking a shot at Apple's prices (via CNET)

Osterloh told the British news outlet that Motorola has a "different philosophy" than Apple, calling the company's prices "outrageous."

Here's what he said to the BBC's Leo Kelion:

We're making the entire product line accessible... And frankly, we're taking a directly opposite approach to them [Apple]...We do see a real dichotomy in this marketplace, where you've got people like Apple making so much money and charging such outrageous prices. We think that's not the future.

Osterloh's comments to the BBC were in response to Ive's criticism of Motorola's build-your-own device system it introduced with the Moto X in 2013. The New Yorker's Ian Parker was asked not to name the company Ive had referred to, but he described a strategy that sounds exactly like Motorola's Moto Maker. 

Here's the excerpt from Parker's New Yorker profile of Ive where he makes comments seemingly aimed at Motorola:

In one of our conversations, Ive was scathing about a rival’s product, after asking me not to name it: “Their value proposition was ‘Make it whatever you want. You can choose whatever color you want.’ And I believe that’s abdicating your responsibility as a designer.” 

When you look at both Motorola and Apple's product lineups, you'll see exactly what Osterloh means when he says his company is taking "a directly opposite approach" from Apple. Two of Motorola's key strengths are making phones that are customizable and insanely cheap. In fact, the company said last year that the entry-level inexpensive Moto G was one of its best-selling phones to date. 

Apple, comparatively, offers high-end premium phones for the most part. Its only cheap option, the iPhone 5c, is free if you sign up for a two-year carrier contract. But,you'll only get 8GB of storage and you'll have to pay the full price of $450 if you want it unlocked.

The newer Moto G, in contrast, only costs $179 off-contract. And other than choosing from the colors Apple offers, there's no real way to customize an iPhone, while Motorola allows you to combine different colors, accents, and build materials for its Moto X.

SEE ALSO: REVIEW: Motorola's new Moto X

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There's a new profile of Apple's design chief Jony Ive in the New Yorker, and it reveals new information about how he works.

As you might expect, Ive's office is filled with interesting things. There are shelves filled with sketchbooks, as well as a rugby ball.

But perhaps the most interesting thing inside Jony Ive's office is a motivational poster.

The New Yorker say that this poster hangs in Ive's office:

It was designed by Brian Buirge and Jason Bacher, at the studio "Good Fucking Design Advice."

Elsewhere in the office is this framed Banksy print:

You can read the full profile of Jony Ive here.

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NOW WATCH: Apple Crashed A Paris Fashion Show To Promote Its Smartwatch

Apple's new "spaceship" campus is officially designed by Foster + Partners, but Apple design guru Jony Ive has been advising the project, according to a New Yorker profile of Ive.

Although Ive doesn't usually do architecture projects — he did co-design his house in San Francisco's Pacific Heights — he and his disciples have worked alongside Foster + Partners on the new campus.

Ive's influence ranges from big things — like the 4400 concrete units that will make up the building's frame — down to little things like office signage, the slight curving of the floors as they intersect with the walls, and the control panels on the building's elevators.

Not all of Ive's preferences came easily. The New Yorker described Ive's demands on the building's elevators as "a big fight."

Of course, Ive is probably working on a lot of other projects with a lot more intensity than he is on Apple Campus 2.

But given his enormous clout at Apple — some think he's the most powerful person at the company — it's no surprise execs there gave him reign over the new headquarters.

SEE ALSO: Apple designer Jony Ive's favorite cars

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Will they or won't they?

For the past few weeks, everyone in the auto and technology industries has been wondering if Apple will build a car.

The company is definitely doing something in the transportation space. Whether that's an actual car with wheels and windows remains to be seen. Apple could just be developing new vehicle-related applications. 

But let's say Apple is building a real car. The Cupertino colossus couldn't have picked a better time to get into the business.

Here's why:

The US auto market is surging. Nearly 17 million new vehicles were sold here last year. Market experts and observers expect that number to rise in 2015 and potentially reach 20 million in a few years. What would be the main market for the Apple car has plenty of room to run.

Tesla has validated the electric-car concept. There's little doubt that if it happens, the Apple Car would be an electric vehicle. A decade ago, EVs were pretty much nowheresville. The EV-1, General Motors' failed effort at creating an EV in 1990s, was quite literally scrapped. And although Tesla has endured its share of ups and down, there's no question that it "mainstreamed" the idea that EVs aren't glorified golf carts — they're real cars. In Tesla's case, really good cars that go really, really fast and are worth a $100,000 price tag.

Cars and technology are converging. For decades, the auto industry has struggled to keep up with the pace of change in technology. Automobiles are infrequently updated, relative to consumer electronics. This was acceptable, if frustrating, in the Age Before Mobile. But now everyone expects their devices, especially their iPhones, to integrate seamlessly with their cars. The auto industry has largely run up the the white flag on this one. It would be happy to hand over the dashboard to Apple. And Apple already has an in-car infotainment system, CarPlay. Apple is ideally positioned to re-engineer the automobile, starting with the tech and building a car around that — probably with an eye toward creating a beautifully interfaced car that runs on electricity and can drive itself.

Automotive design is in a structural rut. Plenty of cars look incredibly cool. But they tend to be exotic, high-performance sports cars. When you consider the mass-market and even the upper-end of the core luxury market, the form of the car has become quite constraining. The unbridled excess of the 1950s doesn't apply anymore. Modern aerodynamics and the need to install lots of safety features has caused car design to converge around a limited visual vocabulary. No one expects Apple to radically reinvent the form of the car, but a guy like Jony Ive, Apple's design guru, could breathe new life into a rolling machine with a wheel at each of its four corners.

People have an emotional attachment to Apple products. A lot of people buy Apple stuff simply because it's Apple stuff. In the car world, people don't have such strong emotional connections to the vehicles they buy. But they could — because they have before. Nowadays, folks concentrate more on value and reliability. The moment is ripe to revive our emotional attachment to the automobile.

Apple would have plenty of challenges to contend with in a quest to create a car. But the ways things are going in the auto industry right now, the time is right.

SEE ALSO: Apple might build a car — but it will not be a hot car

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Apple design guru Jony Ive spent much of Sunday evening talking to Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Madonna's Oscars after party, according to an Apple Insider report.

A source told Apple Insider that the two men were "basically inseparable" for about half an hour. Ive and Musk reportedly left the party together around 5 am.

It's hard to be certain about whether they actually met on Sunday — they weren't photographed together — or what they talked about if they did meet. 

Ive spending time with Musk is especially interesting because of reports that Apple is working on its own electric car. Apple wants to start producing electric cars as early as 2020.

It's possible that Ive and Musk could have been talking about batteries. 

On Monday Samsung announced the acquisition of Magna International's battery division. Apple had reportedly been meeting with Magna's Austrian manufacturing subsidiary, Magna Steyr.

Tesla and Apple have been trying to poach employees from each other, so that could have come up as well. 

SEE ALSO: Apple designer Jony Ive's favorite cars

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After the late Steve Jobs, no one has had more influence on Apple than Jonathan Ive, the company's senior vice president of design.

Ive has worked at Apple for 22 years. In that time he has received countless awards and accolades for his ingenuity and commitment to Apple's minimalist design aesthetic.

He has also become quite famous. The London native is frequently spotted at clubs and lives in California, near Apple's headquarters in Cupertino.

Ive's success at Apple has made him a household name and catapulted him into conversations about popular culture.

He has also amassed a fortune.

Jonathan Ive was born on Feb. 27, 1967, in Chingford, a London suburb. His father was a silversmith. Ive recalls letting his imagination go wild in his father's workshop.

Ive studied industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic, now called Northumbria University.

Some of Ive's collegiate drawings have been exhibited at the London Design Museum.

People are fed up with short battery life on their devices, with 73% of respondents to a recent poll saying they would rather have a thicker smartphone if it meant they could have longer-lasting batteries. But Apple isn't buying it.

In a new interview with Nick Foulkes from the Financial Times, Apple design chief Jony Ive has defended the company's ever-thinner designs, even when they come at the expense of increased battery life. He says the company will not introduce a larger battery because it would make the devices more "cumbersome"and less "compelling":

"When the issue of the frequent need to charge the iPhone is raised,"Foulkes writes, "[Ive] answers that it's because it's so thin and light that we use it so much and therefore deplete the battery."

That said, battery life is clearly a serious concern for Apple. Developers we have spoken to say Apple is limiting the functionality of apps for the Apple Watch to maintain battery life. "Sensors take up a lot of battery, and they don't want every app out there on the Apple Watch using these sensors because of all of a sudden this watch will only give you four hours of battery life," developer Sumit Mehra said.

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NOW WATCH: Apple Crashed A Paris Fashion Show To Promote Its Smartwatch

Many have labeled the iPhone as one of the most revolutionary computing devices in history — it essentially popularized the modern smartphone. Now, the tech industry is looking to Apple to make a similar impact on the smartwatch industry.

The Apple Watch, while it very well may be the best smartwatch yet, isn't likely to be as monumental as the iPhone, but there is one significant difference between the two according to Jony Ive, Apple's senior vice president of design.

When Apple created the iPhone, the company hated cellphones and the way they worked at the time, Ive said when speaking with The Financial Times. But things are a bit different with the Apple Watch, as Ive explains:

It was different with the phone – all of us working on the first iPhone were driven by an absolute disdain for the cellphones we were using at the time. That’s not the case here. We’re a group of people who love our watches. So we’re working on something, yet have a high regard for what currently exists.

What's interesting, however, is that Ive seems to be referring to analog wristwatches here, not smartwatches like those made by Samsung, Motorola, and others. Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously said that he believes the Apple Watch will do for smartwatches what the iPad had done for tablets and the iPod had done for MP3 players.

He described MP3 players before the iPod as "fundamentally too hard to use" when speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology  and Internet Conference, and said he sees the "smartwatch category very much like that." 

Ive's comments are just another indication that Apple is pushing its watch as a luxury timepiece rather than a computerized watch. We expect to learn more details on Monday at Apple's press event. 

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Apple design guru Jony Ive described finding his passion in a recent Financial Times profile.

Ive studied design at Northumbria University, but his interest in making things goes back much earlier than that.

"I wasn’t sure what the activity was called, but when I was seven or eight, I knew that I enjoyed drawing and making, and that the drawing was in service of the making," he said. "I didn’t really know that this was called design."

Ive said his passion stemmed from asking about the purpose of objects and their construction.

"I was just fascinated by our physical environment and intrigued by why things were the way they were," he said. "‘Why is the handle on the top?’, ‘Why is the hinge that shape?’ I see design as a way you look at the world and as a thought process.”

Ive's love of drawing created a disdain for computers that's now kind of ironic given his career path.

"I was inherently sceptical and didn’t like using a computer at art school," he said. "I remember discovering the Mac just at the end of my course."

After university, Ive founded his own design studio. By 1992 he had joined Apple in Cupertino.

You can read the full FT profile here>>

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Still got cash to burn after dropping $17,000 on the high-end gold Apple Watch Edition? For $4,100, you can see Apple design chief Jony Ive discuss "the new 21st century definition of luxury" at Condé Nast International's first ever "Luxury Conference" in Florence, Italy.

As Cult Of Mac reports, Ive is to open the conference in April in conversation with Vogue International editor Suzy Menkes, and will also be joined by top Apple designer Marc Newson. The pair will be discussing "the new 21st century definition of luxury and their collaborative work to date."

It's a clear sign of how Apple is positioning itself as a luxury brand. The Apple Watch, its first foray into wearables, is launching in April. The gold version is going to retail for $10,000 and above — more than twice that of most pre-announcement estimates, which pegged it as around $4,000-5,000.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that the launch of the Apple Watch establishes Apple as "technology's luxury brand... crossing into high-end fashion, with a smartwatch that blurs the lines between jewellery and gadgetry." And Google Venture partner MG Siegler said that "it's about what the Watch stands for: a new Apple that is just as much about fashion as it is about function."

Even prior to the Apple Watch, the Cupertino company has increasingly become viewed as a luxury brand. In January 2015, its products officially became the top luxury gifts in China, unseating previous #1 Hermès, and beating out fashion brands including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Chanel.

"Apple is now a powerful part of the luxury industry,"Menkes said in an announcement about the Luxury Conference. "The iPhone, iPad, and the upcoming Apple Watch are in direct competition with handbags, timepieces and high end accessories. I want Jony Ive to tell the conference delegates where 21st century luxury is headed."

So what do you get for your $4,100? The conference will "focus on the future," says Menkes. "A new world, in which technology competes with hard luxury — watches and jewellery — and leather goods." In addition to Ive and Newson's conversation, speakers include Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld, Hermès CEO Axel Dumas, and fashion designer Jeremy Scott.

Attendees will also get "lunch and refreshments, on both days of the conference, a welcome reception, and a party," but accommodation and travel to Italy is not included.

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NOW WATCH: Steve Jobs' biographer says the Apple Watch makes perfect sense

As the world digests the news of a $17,000 Apple Watch, it's clear: Apple is now a luxury goods company.

Andreessen Horowitz analyst Benedict Evans wrote on Thursday that the high-end gold Apple Watch can be viewed as a kind of marketing tool. "Apple might only sell a few tens of thousands, but what impression does it create around the $1,000 watch, or the $350 watch?" he writes. "After all, the luxury goods market is full of companies who most visible products are extremely expensive, but whose revenue really comes from makeup perfume and accessories."

Yes, it's true: Apple stands to benefit from the luxury allure that comes from charging five-figures for a piece of smart jewellery. But this isn't the only reason that Apple has created such an expensive line of products. It's fast becoming clear that Apple doesn't think of itself as a consumer technology company any more — it is, in its mind, a luxury goods company.

And it's all down to Jony Ive.

For starters, it has flatly refused to move down-market for years, even when it seemed sensible for it to do so. As we said earlier this week, Apple defied expectations by charging $550 for the iPhone 5C — not the "cheap" phone people were widely expecting. "Apple made the exact right move," we wrote. "Apple stuck by its strategy to keep its prices high. If Apple had lowered the price of the phone, it would have killed what made Apple special."

But it's not just a drive to protect the cachet of a high-end technology brand. The company's senior management is increasingly filled by senior executives from the luxury goods industry, bringing with them a totally different mindset to the established technology industry.

The most prominent hire is Angela Ahrendts. Poached from luxury goods company Burberry in 2013, she's now Apple's SVP of retail and online stores. Ahrendts is one of Apple's most visible execs, and has been driving redesigns of Apple Stores, including the company's aggressive retail expansion in China.

But she's not the only one. In July 2013, Apple hired Yves Saint Laurent chief executive Paul Deneve to work as VP of "Special Projects," reporting directly to Tim Cook. Deneve had previously worked for Apple in the nineties before moving to the luxury industry, where he also worked for Lanvin and Nina Ricci. Media reports at the time of his rehire by Apple suggested he was going to be responsible for the the rumoured "iWatch."

Within a year, Deneve poached another senior figure from Yves Saint Laurent to work under him, 9to5Mac reported— YSL's Europe President and Retail Head Catharine Monier.

Also in 2014, Apple picked up Musa Tariq to lead its social media efforts. He'd previously worked at a senior level at both Nike and Burberry, where 9to5Mac reports he was Ahrendts' "confidant." She "loves [Tariq] to bits in a colleague kind of way," a source told the tech blog.

Ben Schaffer is another 2013 hire from the fashion industry — this time from Nike.

In July 2014, Apple hired Patrick Pruniaux away from luxury watch maker Tag Heuer, where he had been vice president for sales. His LinkedIn profile lists his as a "Senior Director" of Special Projects at Apple, so likely also working on the Apple Watch.

And then there's Marc Newson. A long-time friend of Apple design chief Jony Ive, Newson is a legendary designer, and was hired by Apple in September 2014. He has created numerous limited edition luxury products, including Leica cameras, speedboats, jetpacks, the interior of a concept spacecraft, and a a Beretta shotgun.

In some ways, Apple is similar to electric car manufacturer Tesla. Tesla actively hires Silicon Valley engineers as it takes lessons from the tech giants (in particular Apple). Tesla is an automobile company modelling itself as a tech company, while Apple is a tech company modelling itself as a luxury goods company.

This push to recruit senior figures from the luxury industry is likely down to the growing influence of Jony Ive, Apple's head of design. Google Ventures partner MG Siegler recently wrote that the Apple Watch stands for "a new Apple that is just as much about fashion as it is about function. This is no longer Steve Jobs' crossroad of technology and liberal arts. It's the fork in the road between technology, liberal arts, and fashion. Jony Ive's fork."

Ive has worked closely with Ahrendts on Apple Store redesigns. And a recent profile in the New Yorker of the designer reveals he was the one pushing so hard for a $10,000 Apple Watch— despite the concerns of others at Apple. A former colleague, Clive Grinyer, told the New Yorker that Ive has "always been a bit bling," and that he has "always wanted to do luxury."

We're seeing the results: In January, it was announced that Apple's products are now the most popular luxury gifts in China, beating out Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Chanel for the top spot.

The new Apple is a luxury goods company, and Jony Ive is its architect.

It's now been announced that Jony Ive — along with Marc Newson — will be appearing at Condé Nast International's first ever "Luxury Conference." They're going to be discussing "the new 21st century definition of luxury," as the conference explores the "new world, in which technology competes with hard luxury — watches and jewellery — and leather goods."

Vogue International editor Suzy Menkes said that "Apple is now a powerful part of the luxury industry. The iPhone, iPad, and the upcoming Apple Watch are in direct competition with handbags, timepieces and high end accessories."

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NOW WATCH: Steve Jobs' biographer says the Apple Watch makes perfect sense

Apple is getting serious about cars.

The tech giant is exploring development of its own electric car, and shareholders have even been urging Tim Cook to look at buying Tesla.

Freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace Freelancer.com has jumped on the opportunity to find out just what people think this new Apple car would look like.

In February it started a contest called the Titan Project to create the most innovative design for the Apple electric car.

So far it has attracted 135 entries that range from the amazing and amusing to downright weird.

Here are some of our favourites.

Entry #28 from redahaidour is a fast-looking design with blue back lights and futuristic-looking wheels.

Entry #38 from majick103 is a beautiful, sleek shape resembling standard Apple design features.

Entry #115 from GurMaster looks like the ultimate suburban ute for work and play.

Entry #97 from GraphiteLines has sleek lines and an awesome glass roof that would enable 360 degree viewing.

Entry #55 from gauravvermacse looks like it three-wheeled, one-man vehicle. Maybe not practical but definitely cool.

Entry #108 by alastaircrewe is called iBuggy and was inspired by the original iMac.

Entry #129 from mi1en reminds us of the gold iPhone but we’re not quite sure how you’d get in.

Entry #100 from maximchernysh has the Apple logo on the wheels which look like they might light up the an Apple laptop.

Entry #110 from MSabor16 has designed a futuristic mini-van, the same model Apple is rumoured to be thinking about.

SEE ALSO: US News: Here are the best family cars of the 2015

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