Apple of Mac's eye honoured

Jonathan Ive, the designer who refashioned the personal computer with his Apple iMac, has been awarded an honorary doctorate of civil law by the University of Northumbria.

Mr Ive, vice-president of industrial design at Apple, is pictured with Jon Rubenstein, the company's senior vice-president of engineering. Mr Ive graduated from Northumbria (then Newcastle Polytechnic) in 1989 with a first in design for industry.

His latest concept, a titanium PowerBook G4 laptop, was unveiled last week at the Macworld conference in San Francisco and at BETT2001 in London.

More than 2 million iMacs were sold in its first year of production, and it has collected various awards including Object of the Year from The Face magazine.

Details: www.apple.com