Jonathan Ive comes in as smartest designer

Apple's Steve Jobs has placed as the smartest CEO in a Fortune list of the 50 smartest people in technology. Jobs is credited with salvaging Apple from near-bankruptcy, and subsequently turning it into the most valuable tech company in the world. He is also described as having radically altered four different industries: music through iTunes, animated movies via Pixar, telecoms by way of the iPhone, and computers as a whole via the iPad.

Jobs is said to have the personality of "a visionary, a micromanager, and a showman," earning him pop culture status. This comes with downsides, however, in that it can allegedly "cause havoc" for partner companies. Fortune uses the example of Adobe Flash, which has been deliberately excluded from Apple handhelds, forcing many developers to suddenly learn new tools. "But Jobs' vision is also what gives these devices their elegance, causing consumers' hearts to flutter," the magazine comments.

The senior VP of industrial design at Apple, Jonathan Ive, has meanwhile been picked as tech's smartest designer. "Steve Jobs dreamed up the iPhone, but Jonathan Ive created it," Fortune writes. Ive is called "a perfectionist who leads a small team working in near secrecy," to the extent that most Apple workers aren't even allowed in his studio. "Ive has been able to translate his brilliance into designs that are loved by the masses -- and his demanding boss," the piece notes.

by MacNN Staff