emily: there is a modern mythology of johnny ives as the apple design guide. how do you remember it? was it more of a team effort? sometimes the mythology leads people to believe. tony: when it comes to design, there is no right or wrong. there are opinions. different people had different opinions and let the charge for certain decisions. there was an effort between myself, johnny ives, the marketing team, we would talk about the future and what it looks like, grappling with those things, and there were certain decisions i can make myself, but there were certain things about what it might look like, and johnny had a big opinion on that. steve regardless of whether it , was me, johnny, or mark, steve always rendered the final opinion on almost anything that involved the customer. it was very much a team oriented thing. emily: is this a mythology that pits you and johnny against each other. as or any truth to that? tony: there were times when we saw eye to eye, and there were times that we didn't. that leads to a better product. whether tensions? sure. as a pers

emily: johnny ives said you had stolen his design. how do you respond to that? ♪ emily: you were born and raised in brazil. you got into computers and made it to m.i.t. you were class president. hugo: blame my mom for all of the above. she really is the one person who pushed me all along and still does by the way. emily: you founded your first company after college, a mobile speech recognition company that got bought by nuance communications. that powers apple's siri. hugo: there is some amount of code. we don't know how much that made its way to the software that powers siri today. emily: you joined google in london. you worked your way up through the ranks. what was that ride like? what was it like working for andy rubin? hugo: i worked for a few really amazing executives and mentors and andy, one of the most brilliant in tech ever, a man so incredibly knowledgeable, and whose intuition about technology, thinking years and years ahead. i was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. emily: how did you come across this company, xiaomi. hugo: it was star

emily: there is this modern mythology of johnny ives as the apple design guy. i wonder how do you remember it? was it more of a team effort than sometimes this mythology would lead people to believe? tony: when it comes to design, there is no right or wrong. there is opinion. different people had different opinions and led the charge for certain decisions. so there was a team effort between, you know, myself, johnny, the marketing team, steve. and we would talk about the features, feature sets, what it looks like, grappling with those things. and there were certain decisions i can make myself about how we were going to implement it. but there were certain things about what it might look like, and johnny had a big opinion on that. but steve, regardless of whether it was me, or johnny, or mark, steve always rendered the final opinion on almost anything that involved the customer. so it was very much a team oriented thing. emily: is this, sort of, mythology that pits you and johnny against each other, is there any truth to that? tony: like i said, creative tension

. >> so, bruce, is the issue perhaps that apple -- tim cook put johnny ive in charge of both hardwarel design, where they continue to excel, and software and user experience design. there used to be a tension there where, you know, neither side got everything that they wanted, but now that you've arguably got a hardware industrial design guy running softwares, is it skewing too much toward being pretty and too little towards being usable? >> absolutely. apple's primary function is to sell products, and to that end they are doing an absolute brilliant job. secondarily to that it would be nice if these products were usable, and that's where the problem is coming in. it is not a problem with the engineers or the designers. they're absolutely brilliant. the problem is they don't -- at the end of the process they don't -- or during the process they need to go back and find out whether these things are working. when you have that marriage of designing and testing and proto typing and testing and proto typing and testing, you come up with something that's much better. steve used to do that o