Legendary iPhone designer Jony Ive opens up about what it was like working with Steve Jobs

• Former Apple design chief Jony Ive reminisced about his time with creative partner Steve Jobs.
• Ive said the pair instantly clicked when they met in 1997.
• They remained close until Jobs' death in 2011.

Former Apple design chief Jony Ive spent decades at the tech titan, but he said his best years were with late cofounder Steve Jobs.

Ive was interviewed on the "Life in Seven Songs" podcast and spoke about how his upbringing shaped his creative mind leading up to his Apple tenure, where he was responsible for the look and feel of iPhones, iPads, AirPods, and Macbooks.

Although Ive started at Apple in 1992 during the time when Jobs had stepped away from the company, he said that the creative spark was instant when the pair finally met five years later.

"The time before Steve came back, I learned so much, but at that time of learning, it wasn't clear I was learning. All it was was painful," Ive said in the podcast interview, which was released Tuesday.

But, those "very difficult years" were necessary for him to become the renowned designer he is today, according to Ive.

"It's a feeling I think that we both had, which was just this remarkable click," he said.

Ive described his time working with Jobs at Apple from 1997 to 2011 as "the most joyful and extraordinary 15 years of my life." Unlike his first few years without Jobs, he said that learning at Apple became clearer and more focused on "what we were creating" with Jobs at the helm.

"Here was somebody who could almost without thought — and made it appear effortless — to describe really complex feelings and perceptions of ideas and opportunities," Ive said about Jobs.

Jobs stepped down as CEO in 2011 and later died the same year, which Ive described as a "pretty comprehensive loss." Ive stayed on at Apple until 2019 when he left to pursue his own design firm.

"I felt I lost somebody who epitomized, embodied a way of thinking about creating, a way of thinking about the importance of culture and people and society," Ive said.

Still, Ive said he values the time they had together.

"There's not a day that I'm not aware of him or aware of the loss," he said. "There's not a day where I'm not grateful for the time, you know, that we got together and for what I learned and what we discovered."