What about the Apple Watch and AirPods? Both are pretty successful products. Then there’s the M chips which blow away intel.
Another Ive-Era Designer Leaves Apple
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Spot on!
What's sooo funny, is that it was not that long ago Ive got massive blame for making Apple products too thin, and of course blame for the butterfly keyboard (even though he was not the mechanical engineer who designed it).
Now... anytime a designer/project manager/HR person/etc. leaves Apple to pursue an interesting/unique opportunity (what is not at all unusual in Silicon Valley and happens everyday), it's the usual hackneyed whine about Apple going downhill, can't innovate, it's Cook's fault, and the "bean counters" have taken over.
People now say he was a saint. Funny how people change their tune to justify an agenda.
The fundamental law of human nature: people love to complain.
A corollary: People will always remember the past more fondly than the present and will complain about the absence of the things they complained about in the past.
This isn't good news for Apple. The operations team now taking over everything and putting the design team in the back. All of you here complaining about Ive's designs, but those designs is what made most of you love Apple in the first place. Sure, some of his designs were questionable, but I loved most of his designs. I still remember the unveiling of the 12-inch MacBook and I loved it so much. It brought change and innovation. The current designs are just meh, that camera bump is going wild on the iPhone and the iPad design language has stayed the same mostly. I would blame Intel for the most part; if they put apple silicon in the previous MacBooks, they would have been a game-changer.
I only hated the butterfly keyboard, but loved everything else. Removing legacy ports so you can make space for new technologies.
Harry Haller
Suspended
And they made 8GB=16GB.
canadianreader
macrumors 65816
Sales department is now in charge of designs
canadianreader
macrumors 65816
That's what happens when a company is run by automatons.
I'm sincerely curious what people miss about Ive. A true legend of design. In fact, Vision Pro's design started under him. Few misses, except near the end with the trashcan Mac Pro, the Touch Bar MBP, the $17k Apple Watch, Magic Mouse II.
Also curious to know what he's done post-Apple since 2019. I know Airbnb and Ferrari are LoveFrom clients, but I only know of a typeface, a crest for Prince Charles, a Red Clown Nose, and a $64K turntable. Definitely does deserves a rest.
I must admit I miss Evans Hankey. Another legend.
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Sounds like Ive has been in semi-retirement, with projects like those. Maybe the non-compete clause in their contract with Apple prevented him from doing more consumer electronics design, but, if he’s designed a $64k turntable, doesn’t really seem like he’s keen on consumer electronics in general.
Xade
macrumors regular
I too hated the butterfly keyboard but I also hated having to carry a bag full of dongles!
Black Tiger
macrumors 6502a
Scott Forstall has been gone for 11 years. Are we seriously still clinging to the memory of this guy? Apple is more successful than it has ever been in its history and far surpassed where it was a decade ago. All of that happened without Forstall. Let it go people. People die, they move on, they get let go. And here we are.
A top achievement of Tim Cook is that he has tried to break Apple away from being a cult of personality that it was under Steve Jobs. Apple can now exist quite successfully without Jobs (or any other one person) and that wasn’t clear as a possibility even at the time of his death.
Tim doesn’t get enough credit for Apple’s success. Is he a slick salesman like Jobs? No. But he clearly cares about Apple and has dedicated every moment of his life to helping Apple become the success it is today. Tim has been the CEO of Apple now longer than anyone else in the company’s history. Apple’s modern success must absolutely be credited to Tim Cook and his team.
Black Tiger
macrumors 6502a
And today almost everything is USB C, so it’s a moot point. Apple was just too far ahead of the curve. And as usually, they pushed the industry towards USB C by making controversial choices that no one else was willing to make.
Black Tiger
macrumors 6502a
The iPhone 15 looks nothing like the iPhone 6 aside from being the shape of a phone and its functionality can’t even be compared. Go take a second look. And how many different ways can someone make a rectangle with rounded corners?
I owned the 6 plus. Thin and dug into a persons hands with its sharper frame. Also the huge extra spaces on it that didn’t have screen coverage. Oh and it bent.
ThomasJL
macrumors 68020
No one is denying Tim Cook is, by far, the most skilled CEO when it comes to making Apple astronomical amounts of money. The people on this forum who praise Cook don't realize that success in finances is not the same thing as success in innovation.
This will lead to Apple becoming another run of the mill Sony/Panasonic etc in regards to design and implementation. Steve Jobs put Jony Ive as an equal to Mr Marketing chief/CEO for a reason, he just couldn’t foresee that Jony Ive wouldn’t be able to continue working as he did under Steve Jobs, he just didn’t have SJ anymore, and that made him impotent facing the marketing people during his remaining years at Apple. I think he just missed his friend and got depressed/buckled under the pressure. I dont blame him, SJ left some humongous shoes to fill, and I honestly didn’t expect him to do more home runs like they did together. He proved he is a major slugger in design with insane plays… Imac, Ipod, Iphone. 20th Anniversary Mac
Yet another industrial designer that worked under Jony Ive is leaving Apple, reports Bloomberg. Peter Russell-Clarke has stepped down from his role at Apple after 17 years, and he plans to join space technology company Vast.
Under Ive, Russell-Clarke worked on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Park campus. He left Apple earlier in the year in order to "pursue passion projects," according to a press release put out by Vast.
As Bloomberg points out, almost all of the designers who worked under former Apple design chief Jony Ive have departed. Ive left Apple in 2019 to start his design firm LoveFrom, but he continued to work with Apple as a consultant until 2022. Apple paid Ive more than $100 million to be LoveFrom's primary client, but Ive was not able to work on projects that Apple felt were competitive, leading to the dissolving of the partnership.
Several Apple designers that worked with Ive opted to join LoveFrom, and in February 2023 when Ive replacement Evans Hankey left, Apple opted to drop the Product Design Chief role, restructuring its product design team under operations chief Jeff Williams.
Article Link: Another Ive-Era Designer Leaves Apple
…No kidding, that thing was the start of Apple as a great design company AND it showed SJ that Jony Ive is a massive asset.Their design is running on fumes now and Apple is a marketing/business company 1st, and not a product 1st company anymore, like how Steve Jobs did it. But eyh, what you gonna do? Steve Jobs is dead and the marketeers and the allmighty dollar won.
I do hope against hope, that a visionary will somehow find their way into Apples highest echelons, and perhaps summon the spirit of Jobs with another great design team. But that is somewhat ludicrous to expect when Apple is the golden cow of shareholders with deeper and deeper pockets. Its the tragedy of success and massive growth. When you win, you grow fat and complacent, and eventually you will fall. OFc they could be too big to fail, but in my view they failed when they started doing marketing mumbo jumbo to boost their income.
It was a good run, and I never expected Apple to do what they did. They were the underdog, and SJ managed to pull it out of the mud by its scruff. I loved it all the way to the top. And I grieved SJ when he had to leave so much before his time. I will never forget the amazing show he and Jony Ive put on, it was truly amazing.
Apple will always hold a special place in my heart and soul. Because their product taught me computers can be understandable, that things can be made in an elegant fun and intuitive way. I felt like I was in control and it gave me the confidence to believe that I could be an artist in the digital world. If I never started figuring out graphics in photoshop version 1.2, if I never learned how to scan pictures on a PowerMac 8100/80AV and start messing with quicktime and animation. I doubt I would have become an artist at all.
I would never be where I am now. Litterally.
Here’s to the crazy ones…
…..Yeye I get it, its all marketing. But SJ did it good enough to make it something bigger than that, he made the marketing speak real.
The question for any design team is: when do you stop iterating on a design and start iterating towards another design?
You can't argue that the iPhone (and iPad) are not just successful, but have redefined how to measure a successful product. But every design comes to an end. Is one extra .1mm a year really worth it?
Curved vs square edges is arguing whether the big end of the egg is better or the small end of the egg is better. The answer is "it's irrelevant."
Just like the best camera is the one you have with you, the best iPhone is the one you can buy. At this point the market is going on momentum. The quest really should be designing the next iPhone, which is arguably no phone at all (the Vision Pro).
What Apple can't do is intentionally cripple a product so it'll be dependent on its other products. That's what MS did, and it cost them the future. Apple almost did that with the iPod and luckily Jobs relented...a decision which enabled the iPhone and the Apple we have today.
You can't argue that the iPhone (and iPad) are not just successful, but have redefined how to measure a successful product. But every design comes to an end. Is one extra .1mm a year really worth it?
Curved vs square edges is arguing whether the big end of the egg is better or the small end of the egg is better. The answer is "it's irrelevant."
Just like the best camera is the one you have with you, the best iPhone is the one you can buy. At this point the market is going on momentum. The quest really should be designing the next iPhone, which is arguably no phone at all (the Vision Pro).
What Apple can't do is intentionally cripple a product so it'll be dependent on its other products. That's what MS did, and it cost them the future. Apple almost did that with the iPod and luckily Jobs relented...a decision which enabled the iPhone and the Apple we have today.
And how does Apple make astronomical amounts of money?
By innovating, developing, manufacturing, and selling tech products people (roughly 1 billion active customers) want to buy. For example: 600,000+ iPhones per day (on the average). Year after year after year.
e-coli
macrumors 68000
I couldn’t possibly disagree more. I’m a designer, and I hated Ive’s later work. It was talking to itself…smug and too cute by half. It was the opposite of form follows function. It was form defeats function.
The new products work for the people using them. Apple Watch Ultra is a huge improvement over Apple Watch. Mac Studio is incredible. The new Studio displays are glorious. The new MacBook Pro is a true pro workstation…and without dongles. The MacBook Air is a delight, and very powerful. And iPhone has incredible cameras. Dynamic island is a useful innovation around a necessary evil.
To each his own but Apple finally is running at a good clip.
Tim is this you?
The people, and the agency who used to work with Steve on Marketing are all gone. Just look at all the recent marketing and how many people felt cringe.
SanderEvers
macrumors 6502a
Harvey Zoltan
macrumors 6502
I wish one of their UI designers could make the app icon designs consistent. A small thing but I find it really annoying.
ds2000
macrumors 6502a
I do and don't, getting a proper macbook pro once more was fantastic. I do feel his eye for design is missed on some products though.