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Jonathan Ive on Design and Apple's Focus on Great Products Instead of Profits
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I'm guessing you've never worked for a product manufacturer. If you had, you'd realize that the selling price of any item is driven in part by what the market can and will bare. If your product falls into a category of products where the price range is $19.99 to $39.99, regardless of what it cost your product or other's products to make, you're going to sell your product within the range.
profits b4 design - pffft
Boss.king accurately points out:
I too call horse manure - what happened to the Xserve? the MacPro? I'll tell you, they didn't make enough profit. I had to buy a Dell multi-core genomics server b/c Apple has abandoned the Xserve and MacPro (even if Apple eventually releases a new MacPro it's way way too late). My students are all learning to process genomics data on a PC, and their students will in turn learn on a Dell and so on. Jobs is gone.
While I am ranting, I add more evidence of this lie: overseas manufacturing = more profit. Bring jobs to the US you greedy corporate pig.
eor (end of rant).
Boss.king accurately points out:
I too call horse manure - what happened to the Xserve? the MacPro? I'll tell you, they didn't make enough profit. I had to buy a Dell multi-core genomics server b/c Apple has abandoned the Xserve and MacPro (even if Apple eventually releases a new MacPro it's way way too late). My students are all learning to process genomics data on a PC, and their students will in turn learn on a Dell and so on. Jobs is gone.
While I am ranting, I add more evidence of this lie: overseas manufacturing = more profit. Bring jobs to the US you greedy corporate pig.
eor (end of rant).
You speak of the design as if it were fact. Apple would NEVER release such ahead of time.
Computers and software do a good job of making things look real, but these designs are done by OTHERS. IT'S A RUMOR!!!
It's a big lie. We have not seen any big design changes in years. Ive's 2 decade long tenure needs to come to an end if his team cannot come up with anything better than what they have been doing in years past. In fact i alwats felt iPhone 4 and 4s was a devolution from iPhone 3
So all these people with Bunnies Ears and Sushi cases are only concerned with functional issues? ;-)
C.O.S. (Crock of Sh....)
If this were truly so - then they would be doing other creative things besides the iPhone and iPad. Fact is - that's where their profit lies and that's where they focus all their energies. It's definitely about profits. Profits AND products. But the products that make money...
And this is why...
![wingsof-ipadstats.jpg]()
If this were truly so - then they would be doing other creative things besides the iPhone and iPad. Fact is - that's where their profit lies and that's where they focus all their energies. It's definitely about profits. Profits AND products. But the products that make money...
And this is why...
I haven't seen anyone comparing the price of a MacBook Pro to a cheap plastic Dell or HP laptop in this thread. Well apart from you raising the comparison and then moaning about others who do it.
What a few astute observers are pointing out is Apple's margins are approaching close to 50% on many of their most popular products. Apple's margins are the highest in the industry by far. It's something they boast about loudly and proudly in their earnings calls. They also spend a tiny portion of their profits on things like R&D. That's why they have so much cash stashed away in an ever increasing stockpile. There's nothing wrong with any of this. I think it's a wonderful success story to be celebrated.
What some people are pointing out is Apple could definitely price their products a lot more aggressively to take even more marketshare if they wanted. If they really wanted to get their products in the hands of as many people as possible, if they really did want to change the world above making money, they could go far, far lower on retail price. (I don't think they should at all, I'm just saying what they could do in theory!)
But they don't want to do that. They want to keep talking up margin. They want to drive the stock price higher. And they want to fulfil their legal responsibility of maximising shareholder value for investors.
Apple didn't achieve this astonishing profitability by accident. They didn't get here by lacking the desire to make a ton of money. What Ive says is cute, plays nice to their consumer friendly narrative, but it's definitely not the true story.
Apple got here not just by creating great, magical products that consumers want to buy. They got here by hiring some incredibly smart people to deal with manufacturing, supply chain bargaining, cost and the maintenance of meticulous stock controls. The processes Apple has implemented to drive up margin is almost as impressive to me as the products themselves. And they don't generally pass on these savings to us. They use these savings in costs to widen margins and make shareholders very happy.
Hit the nail on the head.
Nice post.
that what happens when it's a good design, it sticks around for a while.
you don't just change something just to make the customer feel like they need to upgrade to latest and greatest gadget. Apple is basically telling their customers to not upgrade from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4s (or 3G to 3Gs). That's what any decent company should do.
They should really look into designing a better OS because, as it sits, Jelly Bean dominates OS in every possible way.
The difference is Googles contributions to open source projects actually results in open source products. I can compile chrome and android myself and end up with a fully functional build of software. Apple just nabbed openbsd and khtml, released the parts they took as open source after years of be badgered that they were legally required to and turned them into closed products that you can't compile. Apple has no desire to be friendly to the open source community. Their involvement with webkit was a disaster and is one of the big reasons why they are now distanced from that project. Webkit is essentially a fork of khtml.
Complaining? No. Calling the statement PR drivel. To imply Apple doesn't focus on profits is ridiculous.
I haven't seen anyone comparing the price of a MacBook Pro to a cheap plastic Dell or HP laptop in this thread. Well apart from you raising the comparison and then moaning about others who do it.
What a few astute observers are pointing out is Apple's margins are approaching close to 50% on many of their most popular products. Apple's margins are the highest in the industry by far. It's something they boast about loudly and proudly in their earnings calls. They also spend a tiny portion of their profits on things like R&D. That's why they have so much cash stashed away in an ever increasing stockpile. There's nothing wrong with any of this. I think it's a wonderful success story to be celebrated.
What some people are pointing out is Apple could definitely price their products a lot more aggressively to take even more marketshare if they wanted. If they really wanted to get their products in the hands of as many people as possible, if they really did want to change the world above making money, they could go far, far lower on retail price. (I don't think they should at all, I'm just saying what they could do in theory!)
But they don't want to do that. They want to keep talking up margin. They want to drive the stock price higher. And they want to fulfil their legal responsibility of maximising shareholder value for investors.
Apple didn't achieve this astonishing profitability by accident. They didn't get here by lacking the desire to make a ton of money. What Ive says is cute, plays nice to their consumer friendly narrative, but it's definitely not the true story.
Apple got here not just by creating great, magical products that consumers want to buy. They got here by hiring some incredibly smart people to deal with manufacturing, supply chain bargaining, cost and the maintenance of meticulous stock controls. The processes Apple has implemented to drive up margin is almost as impressive to me as the products themselves. And they don't generally pass on these savings to us. They use these savings in costs to widen margins and make shareholders very happy.
[edited rest for brevity]
Bravo! Well written and spot on.
Aside from sitting on the biggest corporate pile of cash they aren't using to further their product innovations, they're using it to sue competition that develops a product that impeaches on one of their many ludicrous broadly sweeping "patents". Apple seems more focused on keeping others out of their market through legal strong arming in a long term strategy of patenting everything from "Slide to Unlock" and glass and metal industrial design. It's ridiculous. Apple devolved from "Think Different" to "Think Sue" by becoming the bully in the playground. Enough already! If you're so innovative Apple, start developing new products instead of coasting on OS's and designs through patents you shouldn't have been awarded in the first place. Be creative again, move beyond these legal suits and develop more. In the end, you're stifling competition and innovation by crying "Uncle!" in these suits that only benefit the legal staff. The consumer and professionals end up losing in the end. (and don't start with this "Apple invented it first" and "If X company is so great why didn't they patent it first?" non-sense, the courts will decide, and from early evidence it seems very much to be a thin argument)
Boy I bet Apple sure feels silly now that you exposed their desire to earn money.
I don't think anyone in their right mind would say Apple isn't out to make money. It's about what's prioritized. Hence the purpose of their article and what Ives says. If they design something to their liking and it makes them mad cash it's a plus on all sides.
Otherwise you'd see Apple producing bagel cutters and car lifts. There's a profit in those somewhere
That's a myth; I thought people had learned to stop repeating that by now. It was simply a cross-licensing agreement for $150M, and Apple still had well over $1 billion in cash at that point.
--Eric
That's a more complicated answer than just a "cost per worker" comparison.
I'd love for apple products to be made in the states however with some of the laws and union regulations we have here you'll most likely never see it in our life time.
Ive is not a 'genius'. That word is bandied about way too often. Albert Einstein was a genius. Beethoven was a genius. Nikola Tesla, genius.
Jonny Ive is a talented designer who was lucky enough to be in a conducive environment for his designs to shine through. Many people can come up with elegant designs, but invariably in a large corporate environment the design gets corrupted until it bears little resemblance to the initial idea. Ive was lucky to have Jobs around to make sure the elegance of the idea stayed true.
I'm flabbergasted by this news post. Like many before have said, is he aware of apples profit margins?
Probably because many of us are aware that Dell makes magnesium-cased Latitudes for the higher end markets, and those blow Apples away on every spec but "thin and light".
It's absurd to only compare $2500 Apples to $500 Dells, when the $2500 Dells put the $2500 Apples to shame.