Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.
Jonathan IveApple was very close to bankruptcy and to irrelevance [but] you learn a lot about life through death, and I learnt a lot about vital corporations by experiencing a non-vital corporation. You would have thought that, when what stands between you and bankruptcy is some money, your focus would be on making some money, but that was not [Steve Jobsโ] preoccupation. His observation was that the products werenโt good enough and his resolve was, we need to make better products. That stood in stark contrast to the previous attempts to turn the company around.
Jonathan Ive