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Apple Ends Partnership With Former Design Chief Jony Ive
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Shirasaki
macrumors P6
When people say products Ive designed after Jobs are form over function, they carry an implication that form has become the focus of the said product over actually building one that is nice to use while also looks nice. A.k.a, the balance, or “compromise” as You call it, is lost.
Those latest MacBook Pro MacBook Air still looks amazing compared to PC counterparts, and because function is also kept in mind during the design, the latest MacBook Air frees up one USB-C port to use when charging, still a sleek machine with beautiful round Corners and thin profiles that can run cold most of the time.
I agree, people want products to look nice and nobody want to buy Kim-1 development kit for daily tasks (assuming it can do so). But at the same time, people would also not enjoy using the product if too much compromise need to be made just to create a stunning-looking product. I don’t think original color iMac computer, iBook clamshell laptop and iPod are “unusable” even with the design. Quite the opposite actually.
Yes. You can buy individual seats. Only for the pro max though. They’ll be 10000 USD each. Plus 1000 for the mount. They cannot be added or removed later so you have to do it when you order it.
You’re telling me this wasn’t the deal from the getgo? It would have been VERY bad optics if they just parted ways back then, for both parties. He clearly felt he “lost” some support for his visions internally, people also tire of doing the same year after year. This way, everyone looks happy.
He’s designed beautiful products. Most of those products is what’s kept me from going full fruity over the years.
(Honestly, even if they have made a lot of money and increased stock value (which is a sign people like tje products), that’s mostly because their software is so damn good anyone can use them and that the sw guys are geniuses. Product design has been a little “silly” imho)
He’s designed beautiful products. Most of those products is what’s kept me from going full fruity over the years.
(Honestly, even if they have made a lot of money and increased stock value (which is a sign people like tje products), that’s mostly because their software is so damn good anyone can use them and that the sw guys are geniuses. Product design has been a little “silly” imho)
I really hated Ive when he was in charge of a lot of stuff after Jobs died. I believe that a lot of products went into the wrong direction, BUT he was an absolute design and technical enthusiast, something that i am missing from apple right now.
This is the perfect example of a technological company taken over by business administratos who dont feel real passion for the company or the products. Tim is exactly that. Sad to watch.
Yes I agree. I suppose the point, that I failed to articulate properly, is that design is always a synergy of form and function. Ive didn't always get it right, but personally I feel the balance was usually spot-on for what I want and expect from Apple products. iPhone 6 was too thin and bendy, and now we have amazing cameras whose distended blister is getting close to doubling the thickness of a phone that is getting heavier and heavier. A good thing? A matter of perspective.
And you are dead right about the MacBook Air. It's probably the single greatest looking computer ever made. Particularly in Midnight.
“and he was allegedly frustrated that Apple's board was populated with directors with backgrounds in finance and operations rather than technology.”
Surprised no one brought this up. This is usually the beginning of the end of a successful company. Bean counter scum is what caused GM to fail and Apple to crash in the 90‘s. We might be repeating history.
Surprised no one brought this up. This is usually the beginning of the end of a successful company. Bean counter scum is what caused GM to fail and Apple to crash in the 90‘s. We might be repeating history.
Indeed. And the board bemoaning paying him too much is a major red flag if true.
Shirasaki
macrumors P6
While I kind of agree what you described, remember, Johnny Ive‘s early products designed with Steve Jobs was also in an era where striking and radical design was never touched or heard by industry and everyone more or less just copy paste the traditional beige color computer case with some variations, or follow a series of “tried and true” design philosophies because “if it ain’t break, don’t fix it” and “this design works. Let’s don’t deviate too much”, unlike today, where I think partially thanks to Apple’s design, the proliferation of a internet, new generation being less bound by the 1980s, and world being more globalised than ever, among other factors, modern companies are willing to pay the design risk tax and try out brand new things as bland design will not stand out anymore.
His success didn’t come in a vacuum. Steve Jobs was a major driving force, but the time period, the 1970 to 2005 tech world Wild West also helps Apple’s strikingly different computers stand out from the crowds. Even powermac G5 tower design is a thing of beauty from inside to outside. Had Apple established a few decades later by Steve Jobs and Wozniak, Apple would be very different today I’d guess, though we will never know.
When I talk about “form over function”, I refer to the butterfly keyboard, the MacBook 12”, trash cam Mac Pro and Touch Bar. Are they look great or help the associated products look great? Yeah. Are they good to use? Deliver great experiences? Id argue pretty meh. Trash Can Mac Pro has been a meme for a while. Apple spent 4 years and still fail to deliver a reliable butterfly keyboard. 12” MacBook having only one port for everything makes it frustrating to use with any accessory without using dongle. Even today those two-port MacBook Pro is a bit of disaster to use with accessories sometimes. Touch Bar was cool on paper, but support never was the level people were hoping for, and Apple rightfully ditched it for everything but the 13” MacBook Pro. I don’t know how much input Ive was in there, but those were all designed while he was working for Apple. Time changes, so does people. I don’t say Ive never change, but had he changed his design philosophy along with time, he might continue To design stunning Apple products for a few more years. Instead, he choose to stick to his design philosophy and work independently, which is fair, but that means his goal no longer align with current Apple very well.
So yeah, good riddance.
Jony created designs that pushed the limits of engineering. Steve stood in the middle and demand the compromise that gave the best in form and function. When the design facilitated excellent engineering, we got some of Apple's best innovations like the iPhone, iPod, the iMac G4 and the original MacBook Air. When the engineering had to start being compromised to facilitate for the sake of design, we got some of the bigger flops: Butterfly Keyboards, thermally limited MacBooks, giant camera bumps, shrinking phone batteries for that sake of shaving off fractions of a millimeter in thickness.
After Steve, no one at Apple knew how to balance the equation. He knew when it was time to walk Jony and the design back a step and when it was time to go have morale boosting screaming session with some hardware engineers. I am pretty sure Steve would have never been afraid to confront Jony on something like the Siri Remote 1.0 and straight up telling him it wasn't a viable product. Cook and the rest of the team just don't posses that sense of whether something will be a far out success or is just too far out. Doing a reset and going back to fundamentals with design was the right choice for where Apple is at.
I think it is important to remember that Steve chose Tim Cook to succeed him exactly because of who he was though. Tim took the crazy innovative Apple and made it scale. I think Steve knew they had made the dent in the universe and that the company needed to modify their strategy to maintain it and make it bigger. Say what you will about Tim, but he's been pretty successful at scaling the business.
Edit: a missing letter.
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Shirasaki
macrumors P6
Maybe. Bean counter can create massive profits and bring company to a brand new height financially, but a leader who cannot see over the money would not really have the vision for the future.
What I’m concerned about is, there are now enough loyal customers to more or less keep Apple afloat, I’m not sure missing that kind of tech guy is that important as it was back when Apple wasn’t that big. If loyal customers keep shelling out money to buy anything Apple produces, Apple surely can get away with current practice for years or even decades.
Kuckuckstein
macrumors regular
Ah well - all the hate.
You know, I actually believe that Steve would have supported a lot of Ive‘s thin designs. Just remember how proud he was of the MacBook Air.
The difference is that as a CEO he would have force pushed his engineering teams to actually make these things work flawlessly. Which is a living nightmare to be in.
But you as customers would only remember the extraordinary results.
Tim is not such a product perfectionist and so we get functional, less extreme devices reusing designs from the past. Except Apple silicon, but again that path started with the A chips under Jobs.
You know, I actually believe that Steve would have supported a lot of Ive‘s thin designs. Just remember how proud he was of the MacBook Air.
The difference is that as a CEO he would have force pushed his engineering teams to actually make these things work flawlessly. Which is a living nightmare to be in.
But you as customers would only remember the extraordinary results.
Tim is not such a product perfectionist and so we get functional, less extreme devices reusing designs from the past. Except Apple silicon, but again that path started with the A chips under Jobs.
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AndiG
macrumors 65816
Good decision. There are other companies focussing on technology and user experience. Jobs always wanted to make the best products while Tim always. wanted to make the most money.
Installing Tim was the last and maybe the biggest fail of Jobs.
Installing Tim was the last and maybe the biggest fail of Jobs.
This caught my eye as well (as did the anecdote about designers leaving Apple for Ive's company.)
I definitely don't miss the excesses of "peak Jony Ive" era Apple (basically from Steve's death until just before he left,) where the Mac in particular, suffered from a series of over-designed devices that were often suboptimal (or outright bad) for their intended use case.
However, the continued concentration of power in the hands of accounting, operations, and finance (what you might call the "Tim Cook School") over the last decade has also been concerning.
That said, with designers pushed off center stage, Apple's engineering team's are finally being allowed to fly but... It still feels like finance runs the show and I don't know that that story ends well...
Hopefully Apple can find a way to achieve the kind of balance it had under Steve Jobs again...
Kaptajn Haddock
macrumors 6502
I worked for GM as Product Trainer, Yup bean counters (AKA brand managers, that came from Nabisco) also the CEO of GM at the time Rick Wagoner who was from the GM financing branch, not from the manufacturing side, didn't care about the product was only interested in growing GM financial for mortgages, property development. He forgot about the core business, auto manufacturing.
MJaP
macrumors 6502
Ive's designs were hit and miss but more hits than misses, and there was a few truly iconic designs in there as well. However it was a case of form over function with Ive, let us not forget...
The hockey puck mouse.
The trashcan Mac.
The Magic Mouse 2 (charging and ergonomics).
The way you charged the 1st gen Apple Pencil.
The touchbar.
The thermal envelope of the MacBooks in a pursuit of thinness.
You're holding it wrong iPhones.
Bendy iPhones and iPads.
The butterfly keyboard (the WORST keyboard it has ever been my misfortune to use on any laptop ever, a thing straight out of Satan's bottom, I sold my MacBook Pro after 7 months I just couldn't stand it any more)
...and the worst sin of all... his narcissistic ego-stroking nauseatingly self-congratulatory he's probably touching himself inappropriately just out of frame Keynote videos about how wonderful the product he designed is.
The hockey puck mouse.
The trashcan Mac.
The Magic Mouse 2 (charging and ergonomics).
The way you charged the 1st gen Apple Pencil.
The touchbar.
The thermal envelope of the MacBooks in a pursuit of thinness.
You're holding it wrong iPhones.
Bendy iPhones and iPads.
The butterfly keyboard (the WORST keyboard it has ever been my misfortune to use on any laptop ever, a thing straight out of Satan's bottom, I sold my MacBook Pro after 7 months I just couldn't stand it any more)
...and the worst sin of all... his narcissistic ego-stroking nauseatingly self-congratulatory he's probably touching himself inappropriately just out of frame Keynote videos about how wonderful the product he designed is.
If that's true then the design is even worse that I thought.
E.g. Would you buy a phone if you couldn't use it while charging?
Diskutant
macrumors 6502
yes please!
That stuff made me love to just look at the shelf and then because I look at it open a book. Just like a real shelf where I like to look at it and then open a book. With the current ui I never do that, I hate it so much.
BvizioN
macrumors 603
I never truly understood this issue. Once in few months I charge the mouse, I do it when I am not using it and I don't care if it upside-down or vice versa! Not sure why people moan so much about this. I guess it is on people's nature to find reasons to complain.
From my perspective Jony Ive is easily the most talented and influential designer of the late twentieth, early twenty first century. His relationship with Jobs saved the company and gave us devices that have literally changed the way society behaves.
Unfortunately for me at least he lost his way. Beginning with him being put in charge of IOS design, he began to take away the magic and depth in the interactivity under the belief that "people were now used to touching glass". This is counter intuitive to the way the brain works and to his own earlier philosophies nurturing the tactile nature of the hardware.
He designed the 'Cheese Grater' Mac Pro which was a master stroke of hardware upgradability and engineering and then replaced it with the 'Trashcan' which was the opposite.
My high end 2019 MacBook Pro was one of the worst pieces of hardware I've had from Apple in 25 years (and most short-lived). The 2021 Apple Silicon model is one of the best ( and yes I realise the processor is a big part), it addresses all of the design flaws of its predecessor.
The original watch was the most 'beta' product Apple has released in the last 25 years and the details that have emerged about him wanting to position super high end models as jewellery only go to demonstrate his direction of travel. It's a piece of technology that is obsolete in 2/3 years (1 year in the case of the original), not a potential family heirloom.
I think that was a pointer to where he is now, designing frippery for clients like Ferrari. Shame.
Unfortunately for me at least he lost his way. Beginning with him being put in charge of IOS design, he began to take away the magic and depth in the interactivity under the belief that "people were now used to touching glass". This is counter intuitive to the way the brain works and to his own earlier philosophies nurturing the tactile nature of the hardware.
He designed the 'Cheese Grater' Mac Pro which was a master stroke of hardware upgradability and engineering and then replaced it with the 'Trashcan' which was the opposite.
My high end 2019 MacBook Pro was one of the worst pieces of hardware I've had from Apple in 25 years (and most short-lived). The 2021 Apple Silicon model is one of the best ( and yes I realise the processor is a big part), it addresses all of the design flaws of its predecessor.
The original watch was the most 'beta' product Apple has released in the last 25 years and the details that have emerged about him wanting to position super high end models as jewellery only go to demonstrate his direction of travel. It's a piece of technology that is obsolete in 2/3 years (1 year in the case of the original), not a potential family heirloom.
I think that was a pointer to where he is now, designing frippery for clients like Ferrari. Shame.
ct2k7
macrumors G3
Again, that’s not saying he designed the keyboard’s intricacies.Industrial Design
vt.edu
As described by the Industrial Designers Society of America, "Industrial Design (ID) is the professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer.
The butterfly keyboard was expensive to manufacture due to low yields. It was terrible for users in terms of ergonomics due to 1mm key travel.
The only thing Jony Ive tried to optimize was thinness and portless-ness.
sergioandr.es
macrumors newbie
Wasn't Ive responsible for the notches on almost any new Apple product? I wonder when we will see the first Apple Watch with a notch.