THE afternoon sun is spilling through the living room windows of this house perched on a hill overlooking the city where the computer designer Jonathan Ive is talking about creating computers based on what he calls ''emotional human forms.''

There is a fireplace in the sparsely appointed interior and a tiny television sitting atop an upscale stereo with a turntable, and virtually all the furniture is on wheels. The room is lighted by a futuristic lamp, which appears to hang like a red orb, but there isn't a personal computer in sight.

Which is probably a relief, because the 30-year-old Mr. Ive, a British industrial designer, has some radical ideas about the future of computing and little good to say about today's machines. In fact, he's emphatic about it. The majority of personal computers -- including many from his own employer Apple Computer Inc. -- are to him sad, chunky, gray boxes. ''The curse of computing is that it's generic,'' he said with a sigh.

That may be true, but there is nothing generic about the vision that the man who directs the industrial design studio at Apple Computer has for a new generation of machines, whose appearance will have little in common with the boxes that now litter American homes and offices.