Congress spending overhaul hits wall; Arkansas congressman criticizes panel for failing to do its job | Lexan Polycarbonate Embossed Sheet

Ive would prefer an unobserved life, but he likes nice things. He also has an Aston Martin DB4. He acquired his first Bentley, a two-door model, ten years ago, after an inner zigzag between doubt and self-justification. “I’ve always loved the big old-school square Bentleys,” he said. “The reasons are entirely design-based. But because of the other connotations I resisted and resisted, and then I thought, This is the most bizarre vanity, because I’m concerned that people will perceive me to be this way—I’m not. So I’m going to—” A pause. “And so I am uncomfortable about it.” Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice-president of operations, drives an old Toyota Camry. Ive’s verdict, according to Williams, is “Oh, God.”

The bright and sunny kitchen is a delight among granite counters, tile floor, wall oven, built-in microwave and generous storage and work space. French doors open to another one of the owner’s favorite features — an oversized screened porch that opens to the deck.

Even without the giant chrome-looking Under Armour logo on the top right, the UA Protect Verge does have a fitness-y look to it. It’s hard to explain, but the gray color, the clear buttons, and clear strips on the side give off that kind of vibe. Those strips aren’t just for show; they also allow the UA Connect mounting points to exist, and they do provide more protection. However, the UA Connect mounts are expensive. Of course, you don’t have to have that mount to use this case, but I’d imagine that most owners of this case will own at least one.

I had previously asked Ive about the rounded corners and edges that have long helped distinguish an Apple product from a ThinkPad or a book. (As Apple’s product range has narrowed to a series of flat rectangles, these transitions have become a surviving zone of pure industrial design.) On a day when Ive was so exhausted that it seemed possible he might fall asleep while talking, he became animated when describing the “primitive” design geometry that was usual before the computer era—essentially, two straight lines joined by a fragment of a circle. He then spoke of the opportunities that now exist, if the material permits, to take a more elegant path from one line to another; he talked of tangency breaks and Bézier surfaces. When I mentioned this to Powell Jobs, she cried out, “Yes! That is such a breakthrough, I forgot about that.” For each product, Jobs and Ive would discuss corners “for hours and hours.” She later noted that she and Ive share a taste for Josef Frank, the Austrian-Swedish designer of rounded furniture and floral fabrics, who once announced, in a lecture, “No hard corners: humans are soft and shapes should be, too.”

“In all my time living here I’ve never seen anything like this," Lee said of the progress made."

He was a few days from starting a three-week vacation, the longest of his career. The past year had been “the most difficult” he’d experienced since joining Apple, he said later that day, explaining that the weariness I’d sometimes seen wasn’t typical. Since our previous meeting, he’d had pneumonia. “I just burnt myself into not being very well,” he said. He had discouraged the thought that Newson’s appointment portended his own eventual departure, although when I spoke to Powell Jobs she wondered if “there might be a way where there’s a slightly different structure that’s a little more sustainable and sustaining.” Comparing the careers of her husband and Ive, she noted that “very few people ever get to do such things,” but added, “I do think there’s a toll.”

While the Covert 2 isn’t horrible, that’s not enough to distinguish it from the competition. It’s not the easiest on the eyes, it isn’t the best at any particular category, and $14.95 isn’t a bargain. It’s also only available at Ghostek’s site and not Amazon, which pretty much guarantees that nobody will buy it. And I don’t mean to sound harsh, but given the quality of other cases, I’m fine with that. It’s available in black, orange, pink, red, teal, and white.

The tables are made of birch wood and marble, and leather is used extensively on furniture, with minute attention paid to details of flaps and tufting. Crate wood panelling on the bar front, brightly coloured tiled floors, textured glass, embossed ceilings, and mild steel exposed to a natural rusting process, all evoke a feeling of comfort and timelessness.

X-Wood is described by Freefoam as a PVC-U exterior cladding that looks and handles like wood but without all the usual maintenance issues associated with timber. The company has used its manufacturing expertise to design and produce a 16mm, high-performance cladding board, comprised of three different layers – a heavy-duty, through coloured plastic foam core, covered with a durable plastic skin and then coated with Renolit film which creates a hard wearing, stable material with a subtle woodgrain effect finish.

Land Rover Chief Design Officer, Gerry McGovern, said: “We call the Velar the avant-garde Range Rover. It brings a new dimension of glamour, modernity and elegance to the brand. The Range Rover Velar changes everything.”

View from the northeast of the new “Torre,” a luminous tower of galleries designed for the Prada Foundation by Rem Koolhaas and OMA.CreditCreditAlessandro Grassani for The New York Times

Later that morning, Apple was announcing new products and services, at the kind of event that the company, like a fashion house, stages a few times a year. Of a thousand attendees expected, a few dozen had been invited to the backstage courtyard. Among the guests were Rupert Murdoch; Kevin Durant, of the Oklahoma City Thunder; Marissa Mayer, of Yahoo; Jimmy Iovine, the C.E.O. of Beats; and the rapper and entrepreneur Sean Combs. (Fry later referred, fondly, to “Snoop Seany Sean,” who was gracious when Fry nearly soaked him with a spilled drink.) That day, a hundred assembly lines in Zhengzhou, China, were turning out still secret new iPhones at a reported rate of seventy-five hundred an hour, and rumors about new Apple products, including a watch, were being posted online at nearly the same pace. Tim Cook, Apple’s C.E.O., was somewhere nearby, preparing to speak to a hall full of enthusiasts and reporters, and to millions online. But Ive’s role was limited largely to drinking coffee in misty sunshine. Jobs excused Ive from most public-speaking duties, and he has held on to the dispensation.