Sir Jonathan Paul "Jony" Ive, KBE (born February 1967) is a British designer and the senior vice president of Industrial Design at Apple Inc. He is the lead designer and conceptual mind behind many of Apple's products, including the iMac, MacBook Air, iPod, iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. During Steve Jobs' tenure as CEO, Ive was given operational autonomy within the company, subject only to Jobs; he currently reports to CEO Tim Cook.

Jonathan Ive was born in Chingford, London. He was brought up by his teacher father and attended the Chingford Foundation School and went on to attend Walton High School in Stafford, then studied industrial design at Northumbria University (Newcastle Polytechnic at the time). Once enrolled in Walton, it became clear that he attained many technical and drawing skills through his father. Ive met his wife, Heather Pegg, while in secondary school. She is a year younger than Ive. They married in 1987, have twin sons and now live in San Francisco.

Ive has said that he knew he was interested in “drawing and making stuff” since around age 14. The idea of design was long in his mind, but he was unsure about exactly what he would design. His interests were very broad – from furniture and jewellery to boats and cars. He was never sure about where his interest would lead. It wasn’t until he met with various design experts that he was able to see some standard ground in wanting to further his study in product design.

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.