Flatly contradicting a Sunday Times report in February that claimed Jonathan Ive was leaving Apple (which I commented on in an article on this blog), the Daily Mail yesterday posted a lengthy profile on the designer, with a very different viewpoint:

It is hard to know what is the greater intrigue: recent conjecture that he is preparing to walk away from Apple to relocate to his beautiful Grade II-listed mansion in Somerset so his children can be educated in the UK (false – he is not, and the property is now standing empty); that he will step out of the shadows and assume Steve Jobs’ role when the great man stands down (highly doubtful); or what – or perhaps more accurately who – propelled him to leave for the U.S. in the first place and deny Britain the talents of one of the most influential designers of the modern age.

And the usual unnamed source weighs in with:

Speculation that Ive would leave Apple to return to the UK is also false, says a former colleague: “I’m not sure there is any truth he wants to come back. My last conversations with him were that he was planning to sell his house in the UK.”

Until Ive himself officially makes a statement one way or the other, no-one will know for sure what the designer plans to do, but I still maintain that him leaving Apple seems unlikely, and that, in order to stay at the Cupertino giant, he won’t be moving back to the UK.

If that’s the case, that also means that I’m agreeing with the Daily Mail, which makes me want to scrub my brain clean with a wire brush.