Jony Ive’s memory of Steve Jobs has changed in the four years since Jobs’s death, Ive said at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit on Wednesday. What remains, and has become more prominent in Ive’s recollection, is the late Apple founder’s “very simple focus on trying to make something beautiful and great.”

Director J.J. Abrams and producer Brian Grazer appeared with Ive on a panel titled “Changing Worlds, Inventing Worlds.” The Apple design chief also spoke about the care that he said goes into the company’s products. ”We are always conscious that we are making tools,” Ive said, noting that he can only “hope” that consumers appreciate the many years that can go into a single product’s development at the tech giant.

“You could’ve had somebody who didn’t ever argue, but you wouldn’t have the phones you have now,” Ive said of Jobs’s reputation of being difficult.

“Tortured doesn’t even get at it,” Ive said, laughing, when asked whether it’s challenging to innovate. Still, it isn’t all struggle: “I haven’t felt this happy and creative in years.”

A transcript of Ive’s complete comments about Jobs is available below.

I was talking to a friend of Steve’s and a friend of mine earlier in the week, on the day that marked the fourth anniversary of his death. What struck me, four years ago, is that I was faced with this wall of grief. A lot of messy—a whole series of multiple feelings. In thinking of him then, there was this incredible complexity of all his attributes. What has been very surprising, is that over the four years that have passed, so much of that noise, and so many of his attributes, they’ve ended up essentially receding. And what’s left is . . . just him.

Quite honestly, what’s remained, I never would have predicted four years ago. What’s remained is almost unremarkable, but what’s remained is his very simple focus on trying to make something beautiful and great. And it really was simple. There wasn’t a grand plan of winning, or a very complicated agenda. That simplicity seemed almost childlike in its purity. And it’s true.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so happy as I saw him—this very simple kind of joy—when he would realize, “This is actually working out. This could be great.” It was just the simplicity of that.

That stands in such contrast, obviously, to how he’s being frequently and popularly portrayed at the moment. The lack of agenda.

He certainly had a sense of a civic responsibility to make something good, as a way of somehow making a contribution to humanity, and to culture.