Sir Jony Ive Rocking a Rolex Daytona

...Rolex Coolness...

Sir Jony Ive

Rocking a Rolex Daytona

There are certain people you would love to see rocking a Rolex, but you think that it's just not possible. One such example is legendary former Apple Chief Designer, Jony Ive. Why do I say I never expected to ever see Sir Jony rocking a Rolex? Two reasons. 1. I never saw him wear one in the past, and 2., since he designed the Apple Watch, I thought that was it, but man was I wrong...

For the record, I once met Jony Ive, years ago when he and Steve Jobs, who I also knew, were opening the first Apple store in San Francisco, California. Ive was the most humble, sweet, unassuming man I think I have ever met, and Jobs was the literal antithesis, which may explain why they got along so marvelously.

Jony Ive left Apple years ago and started his own San Francisco based design firm named, Love From. Ive was recently interviewed, after having designed the highly polarizing new Ferrari Luce, and as a fellow designer, and design fanatic of the highest order, I was watching this fascinating video interview, which I have at the end of this story.

In the photo below we see Sir Jony Ive in the Ferrari archives with Piero Ferarri, who is the son of Ferrari founder, Enzo Ferrari, and we see him rocking a platinum Rolex Daytona. Piero Ferrai serves as the Vice Chairman and Non-Executive Director of the brand today, and he has long worn Rolex watches as well.

The model of Rolex I believe Jony Ive is rocking is a 40MM Platinum model with the Ice Blue dial, which carries the Reference of 116506, which is pictured below:

Speaking of Piero Ferrari and Rolex Daytona, we see him below rocking a special edition Le Mans Daytona.

In this next image, taken in 1987, we see a much younger Piero Ferrari with his father, Enzo Ferrari, who was the founder of the Ferrari brand, and he also wore a much earlier Rolex Chronograph model.

In this next set of images, we see Sir Jony Ive rocking his platinum Daytona, which you can really see the unmistakable sky blue dial detail on with the contrasting subdials, and dark bezel on.

FERRARI LUCE

The First All-Electric Ferrari 

Sir Jony Ive designed the all-new, all-electric Ferrari LUCE, which has been highly controversial. The LUCE is profound as it represents Ferrari's first all-electric vehicle they have ever made. It's extremely expensive at around $640,000, but is slower than a Tesla Plaid Model S. It's also the first 5 seat vehicle made by Ferrari.

As a hardcore Tesla Fanatic, and Publisher of TeslaMagazine.org, I would argue the Ferrari LUCE is a non-starter as it lacks any Full Self Driving technology, which would allow the vehicle to drive itself. Even the most basic, and least expensive Tesla that is around $40K, features FSD, which is a revolutionary game-changing technology.

Despite the fact the Ferrari LUCE has no appeal to me, I must give credit where it's due, but at the same time, my greatest constructive criticism is that Ferrari and Ive seemed to ignore the most important variable in the Ferrari recipes for success, which is to make cars that look great. 

The Ferrari LUCE reminds me of the famous Buckminster Fuller anecdote where a reporter once asked him if he always sets out to design beautiful objects, to which he retorted, "When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty...but when I've finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it's wrong."

One of the Supreme ironies is that under the skin, the Ferrari LUCE actually has a great shape as seen above. 

Essentially there is a cover/shell that covers the exoskeleton, which radically changes the lines.

 

I haven't seen a Ferrari LUCE in person, nor have I driven one, so I will reserve any final thoughts, but my initial observation is that it's not technologically innovative as it offers no new and meaningful features, while being ridiculously expensive

Below is the excellent video interview of Jony Ive where I noticed him Rocking his Platinum Rolex Daytona.