Angela Ahrendts: the woman aiming to make Apple a luxury brand | Observer profile

Confirmed last week as the tech giant's highest-paid executive, the ex Burberry chief is charged with making the Apple 'experience' even sleeker. It might also mean larger profits

In Danny Boyle's gripping Steve Jobs film, the talkie action is set before a series of product launches. The issue that's repeatedly revisited by the Jobs character is the prime importance of technical development. In a tech company such as Apple, that's hardly a surprising position, but there's a sense in which that emphasis now seems a tiny bit old hat.

Jobs was also a stickler for design and in recent years a great deal of attention has been focused on Jonathan Ive, the British designer responsible for the style of the MacBook , iPad and iPhone, among other products. What sets Apple apart from its competitors, runs the consensus opinion, is the elegance and simplicity of the way its products look. But perhaps in Apple's natural history, the design phase too has been replaced by a new stage of corporate evolution: the marketing stage.

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