iBooks for Mac.
A clear, simple brief.
Take a reading experience that already worked beautifully on iOS, and bring it to the Mac in a way that felt completely at home there. One of the first things I worked on after joining Apple, and a reminder that a sharp, well-scoped brief is its own kind of luxury.
A small project with a big ask.
iBooks on iOS had already found its audience. People knew the library, the page turns, the way a book felt in their hands on an iPad. The Mac was the missing piece. People wanted to keep reading, highlighting and buying books on the same device they were already working on all day.
This was one of the first things I picked up after joining Apple. The kind of project that could have been intimidating, except that the brief was generous in its clarity.
Make it feel like the iOS app, made for a Mac.
The ask was refreshingly direct. Take what was already loved on iOS, the bookshelf, the reader, the store, and bring it across to the Mac so that the two felt like one continuous experience. Pick up on iPhone, finish on Mac. Highlight on Mac, see it on iPad. Same library, same place in the chapter, same feeling.
No grand re-imagining. No competing direction. Just a successful pattern, applied cleanly to a new operating system.
A dream to translate.
Working from a strong, well thought out iOS app made the design work feel almost like an unlock. The library translated naturally into a windowed grid. The reader settled comfortably into a Mac window with proper margins, sensible widths and considered typography. The store was given the room a Mac display invites.
Most of the work was in the small, easily missed details. Selection behaviour, keyboard shortcuts, full-screen reading, window proportions, how a highlight looked in a wider line of text. The kind of details that nobody compliments when they are right and everybody notices when they are wrong.
Done. In weeks.
The design work landed within weeks. Because the brief was so clear and the existing pattern was already strong, the team could spend its energy on craft instead of debate. iBooks for Mac shipped feeling unmistakably like a Mac app, and unmistakably like the iBooks people already used.
Sometimes simple is the gift.
I love a simple brief. After bigger, more ambiguous projects, this one was a reminder that not every piece of work has to be a reinvention. A successful pattern, a clear destination and a short runway can produce some of the most enjoyable, focused design work you will ever do.
iBooks on the Mac.
