Jony Ive returns to tech design with $60,000 record player

(Image credit: Linn)

Jony Ive is Apple's most famous product designer and since leaving the company in 2019 has focused on his independent design firm, LoveFrom, and projects like a Red Nose Day clown nose. But he's now back designing tech products, starting with a $60,000 record player.

The Sondeck LP12-50 designed by LoveFrom is a 50th-anniversary edition of audio brand Linn's iconic record player and it looks exactly like you'd expect an Ive-designed record player would.

Ive describes the LP12-50 as "a very gentle and modest project for us that was really motivated by our love and respect for Linn," and you can see the Apple influence straight away.

Ive told Fast Company, “I’ve owned multiple Linn products over the years, and music has always been profoundly important to me,”

"I think the first consequential music player that I designed was the first iPod, and that began a journey of multiple generations of iPod, and multiple Airpods and music accessories. I feel really fortunate to have gone the full circle . . . so many years on from my first visit to the factory."

Jony Ive's $60,000 record player

Linn Ceo Gilad Tiefenbrun received an email from Ive's assistant on LinkedIn asking to talk that he initially thought was spam. Luckily Tiefenbrun changed his mind and replied back, which led to a phone call with Ive, who was looking for a new Linn turntable.

In that call, Tiefenbrun mentioned the upcoming Linn anniversary. "By the next morning, I had an email from him saying, ‘I’d love to work with you on a special edition.’”

While very few of us will ever be in the market for a $60,000 record player it's a beautiful piece of equipment that resonates with every Apple fan out there thanks to its simple yet elegant design. The project between Linn and LoveFrom took a year of development and now we get to see the fruits of that labor, stunning.

John-Anthony Disotto is the How To Editor of iMore, ensuring you can get the most from your Apple products and helping fix things when your technology isn’t behaving itself. Living in Scotland, where he worked for Apple as a technician focused on iOS and iPhone repairs at the Genius Bar, John-Anthony has used the Apple ecosystem for over a decade and prides himself in his ability to complete his Apple Watch activity rings. John-Anthony has previously worked in editorial for collectable TCG websites and graduated from The University of Strathclyde where he won the Scottish Student Journalism Award for Website of the Year as Editor-in-Chief of his university paper. He is also an avid film geek, having previously written film reviews and received the Edinburgh International Film Festival Student Critics award in 2019. John-Anthony also loves to tinker with other non-Apple technology and enjoys playing around with game emulation and Linux on his Steam Deck.

In his spare time, John-Anthony can be found watching any sport under the sun from football to darts, taking the term “Lego house” far too literally as he runs out of space to display any more plastic bricks, or chilling on the couch with his French Bulldog, Kermit.