It was a huge loss for Apple. See what happened without Ive: the notch taking over all products (a visual abomination), mouse that you can’t use while charging, it’s not Job’s Apple anymore. It’s run by Accountants, just like Boeing and Intel.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
'After Steve' Examines the Tensions That Led to Jony Ive's Departure From Apple
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Ive is clearly a one-in-a-generation industrial designer. Maybe even longer.
But it is now clear that he is a terrible marketing chief and software designer. I'm not running the guy down -- I can say with certainty I'll never achieve what he did, but he needed to be kept focused and contained, which clearly didn't happen at the end of his tenure.
But it is now clear that he is a terrible marketing chief and software designer. I'm not running the guy down -- I can say with certainty I'll never achieve what he did, but he needed to be kept focused and contained, which clearly didn't happen at the end of his tenure.
Interesting NYT opinion piece. Mine is that if Apple lost its soul, which is debatable, it happened when Jobs died, not when Ive quit.
Also, gotta love the name Tripp Mickle.
Also, gotta love the name Tripp Mickle.
Apple needed Ive when design was a key way to differentiate its products in the absence of processing power.
It certainly gets harder to innovate new successful products when broader products have been introduced.
Like the Ipod, it certainly filled void, being the first well designed mp3-player, but after the Iphone introduction it got obsolete, even if it still was a better music player.
The Ipad came after the Iphone and the laptop, from the beginning limited to a smaller niche in between.
Same with the Apple watch, who really needs it? Everyone have a smart phone, that function as a mobile phone, camera, computer, music player, watch, flashlight, map/compass, recorder, film camera, news paper, notebook, calendar, health app, book-library, bank, video conference, IRC, translator, remote controller, weather forecaster ........
Hard to beat that before direct brain interface.
...and no, I do not believe AR glasses will a big hit, neither so virtual reality.
Ive lead industrial design, he had no responsibility over the operating system.
Personally I like its simple and straight forward design, but sure, they could have done that.
Finding solutions is why they get paid. If they are incapable it is useless to pay them.
And how was this the responsibility of the design team?
Are you serious?
It is the management that decides what are the dynamics of replacement and price policies, not the design team!
????
Yeah - we peons already shell out enough of our $ to buy Apple products that meet our needs, due to their solid hardware. Apple's use of ultra-premium marketing, to push us down the money chain even further than we already can give, is insulting.
If the notch bothers you that much, I suggest you cease fixating on it and just use your phone for its stated purpose.
New MacBook Pro? Same applies.
If you say you consider your phone a piece of objet d'art, first, you better tell me you use your phone naked, because a case, any case, makes your iPhones aesthetic worse than any notch.
Secondly, if you do use it naked and still obsess over it's appearance, may I suggest you purchase some vastly overpriced jewellery or art to divert your attention?
I genuinely don't mean to sound insulting or aggressive, but perspective is needed here...it's a phone.
I repeat, what does this have to do with Ive?
If Intel makes you laugh at it's fault of choosing it as a supplier it's NOT Ive's.
Then on the fact that Apple products are full of problems I agree, but that the fault lies solely with the design team when in reality it is easier than both the engineering team and management is ridiculous.
Thinnest insanity is absolutely debatable, but I believe that iOS 7 was the right move at the right time.
While iOS 1-6 was a gorgeous work of visual art, iOS code was so brittle that any major changes (or feature additions) could only occur once per year - new version launch in the fall. iOS has been able to quickly adopt so many more power-user features ever since the great iOS 7 reinvention. I was with Ive on that one.
Anyways ... back to Ive's near-disastrous marketing idea for the Apple Watch....
Good luck shipping a product with the attitude of "the other team is at fault".
The design team imposes constraints on what the engineering team can do. If you want a device to be at most x millimeters thick, the engineers then have to figure out how to make thermals, keyboard, etc. work. Guess what? That didn't work out so great, and Apple suffered a huge reputation issue as a result. This, in the WSJ, four years after they introduced the butterfly keyboard, and three years after they brought it to their flagship laptop (and in fact their entire laptop lineup). Embarrassing, and if Jony Ive isn't the person responsible for it, then who is? The engineers who couldn't miraculously figure out a thinner keyboard?
If anything, the only criticism the engineers deserve is that they didn't push back harder.
Ive literally had a C-level title. How much more "management" can you get?
You are an engineer, you can tell by how reasons, like a machine. And as an engineer you defend the category.
In fact, the design team had the specifications provided by the engineering team, directly in communication with Intel, and had the constraints imposed by the marketing department regarding customer expectations and what market trends were. On this there are also the ambitions of management and shareholders who want to earn money.
It's easy for you to blame the design team, too bad that both the hw and the Apple sw sucker than 5 years ago and that 5 years ago sucked more than 10 years ago. Is it still Ive's fault, who no longer works at Apple, or does any of the engineers have to go looking for a job as a fisherman?
I own a Macbook pro 2016 15” and the latest 16” macbook pro. The second one has, without question, better hardware and greater practicality. And yet… the 2016 machine still looks like the newer, more modern design. Stunning even after 5 years.
I’m glad the Ive laptop era came to an end. I went through three busted screens and two failed keyboards on the 2016 model. But I can still appreciate what Ive achieved- it’s incredible the design worked at all, to the extent that it did. Now if only those laptops could just sit in a glass case looking pretty ….
I’m glad the Ive laptop era came to an end. I went through three busted screens and two failed keyboards on the 2016 model. But I can still appreciate what Ive achieved- it’s incredible the design worked at all, to the extent that it did. Now if only those laptops could just sit in a glass case looking pretty ….
Well, it's apparently equally easy for you to paint "the design team" as a victim of engineering and marketing. Funny how that works.
I guess Ive shouldn't have been "Chief Design Officer" but rather "random British dude who apparently cannot make any decisions of his own".
He had his moment in the sun. He should have left 10 years before he finally did. Apple FINALLY has it's soul back IMHO. Mx chips, Useful features for users instead of stupid quests to make a device as think as paper for no effing reason other than vanity.
Oddly enough, the Hermes partnership has not only thrived but has expanded to include the AirTag. I believe it was Ive who brought them in.
I've already pre-ordered the book on Audible as it seems like it will be interesting to check it out. I'm not big on that hyperbolic subtitle about Apple losing its soul however I would be interested to learn more about the departure of Jony Ive as I always saw him as a key member of Apple and I agree with his philosophy on designing products. I think people often of a total misunderstanding of what Ive attempts to do with a design. They see function over form as it doesn't matter if it's ugly so long as it has every port under the sun available on the off chance that you might need it. Ive was never about form over function, he distilled a product down to its essence always considering its function. "If something doesn't need to be there, it shouldn't be" I'm not sure if that's the exact quote but it's something like that. He wasn't above criticism either, if you look at the Mac Studio now you can see in a sense what they had in mind for the 2013 Mac Pro, it was just ahead of its time in that the thunderbolt 2 standard probably wasn't quick enough for what they had in mind and that the thermal design of the case didn't really allow it to be easily updated to whatever the next intel and AMD chips would be. He was around for the re-design in 2019 and you can see him proudly talking with people about the design solutions incorporated in that Mac.
While this is ultimately true, it is only true because Cook is not and will never be a visionary. Cook could never reign in Ive's ego. Ive saw Jobs as an equal and Cook not so much. Ive without Jobs makes Ive just another designer, when he thought he was so much more. Kind of like Jordan and Pippen.