Jonathan Ive gets CBE.

Jonathan Ive - Apple's Vice President of Industrial Design - has been awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours List by HRH Queen Lizzy II. Famous (amongst Apple geeks like myself anyway) for resurrecting Apple's fortunes with the design for the original iMac, he has been at Steve Jobs' right hand ever since. Ive is notoriously shy and rarely gives interviews.

Perhaps a lesser known fact, but one made obvious by todays announcemet, is that Ive was born in England and studied industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic - now known as Northumbria University, where I am currently studying law!

CBE stands for Commander of the Order of the British Empire and, consequently, I'm unsure how I feel about the honour given that the British Empire no longer exists and serves only as a reminder of Britain's questionable colonial years. But, the British Empire honours are the only ones we have so we just have to make do.

I'd be interested to know who put his name forward to the Queen. But then, maybe the Queen thought of him herself, it's a well known fact that the Queen owns an iPod.