The woman has a master's in Computer Science from Stanford... Product Marketing is not the same as normal Marketing, These were product managers who are now focused on telling the story of each product. Go to school first and then give opinions...
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Apple's Longtime App Store Developer Relations Lead Retires
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Where do they stand with regards to toads? This one is a terribly naughty toad though, he was in prison for crashing his cars. Then, he went on the run like Ronnie Biggs.
Attachments
On the periphery…
"The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has been urged to investigate concerns contained in US lawsuit papers that Google and Apple are actively collaborating to drive search revenue growth.
In a complaint about changes to the use of data in Apple's app store, online campaign group Marketers For An Open Web (MOW) has cited documents from a US Department of Justice lawsuit last October which was backed by 11 states.
These quoted an internal email saying senior Google and Apple staff discussed a 'vision that we work as if we are one company' when looking at search income." (Northcliffe / 23 March 2021)
"The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has been urged to investigate concerns contained in US lawsuit papers that Google and Apple are actively collaborating to drive search revenue growth.
In a complaint about changes to the use of data in Apple's app store, online campaign group Marketers For An Open Web (MOW) has cited documents from a US Department of Justice lawsuit last October which was backed by 11 states.
These quoted an internal email saying senior Google and Apple staff discussed a 'vision that we work as if we are one company' when looking at search income." (Northcliffe / 23 March 2021)
If you want to go there, there's also ample evidence of Cook's stark disinterest towards design (alienating Jony Ive to the point of resignation), and no, that doesn't seem to be something that has changed.
Some excerpts:
- Ive was “dispirited” by Tim Cook who “showed little interest in the product development process,” according to sources speaking to the WSJ. This helps explain why Cook, who comes from operations, sometimes appears to be seeing products for the first time in the hands-on area after Apple events (like the photo at the top of this article).
- Ive grew increasingly frustrated as Apple’s board was populated by directors with backgrounds unrelated to the company’s core business.
"Tim Cook is one of the nicest and most charitable CEOs out there," said Michael Obuchowski, chief investment officer of Apple shareholder Merlin Asset Management. "By now we've all fully realized that despite all his faults, Steve Jobs was a creative genius and Apple's alleged deep bench doesn't come even close to replacing his ideas and obsession with design."
Jony Ive Is Leaving Apple, but His Departure Started Long Ago
Apple’s design chief helped create some of the world’s best-known products, but grew distant from leadership, as the company shifted its focus to operations under CEO Tim Cook.
www.wsj.com
Jony Ive ‘dispirited’ by Tim Cook’s lack of interest in product design: WSJ
A narrative is growing that Ive’s exit from Apple started years ago
www.theverge.com
No, he really isn't and no, he doesn't seem to have learnt anything when it comes to a product mindset, vision and user experience. He's still a petty bean counter through and through. All he does with every product reveal is share the exact same wall calendar platitudes and pipeline big talk over stagnating SKUs iterated to death to minimise risk, cost and investment in R&D.
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It’s interesting that you brought this up. Just over the weekend, I was clearing out my pocket reading list, and came across this article I had saved some time back.
Apple’s Road to a Trillion Dollar Company
techpinions.com
Of note are points 3 and 4.
Tim Cook is clearly no Steve Jobs when it comes to product vision and showmanship, but that doesn’t mean he has learnt nothing from his time working under Steve Jobs, and I feel that he isn’t getting anywhere close to enough credit for the work he does.
I dont think anyone would question Tim Cook 's Operational Excellence. He is a genius in his own. No one in the any other industry has supply Chain that is as good as Apple. Not even Toyota.
But that doesn't mean he is without flaws. Which is what the critics, and your parent was pointing out. And his use of personnel, from Dixon's CEO to Burberry's CEO, along with other similar occasion seems to be lacking. It might not be he is bad, it is just comparatively speaking Steve Jobs's RDF was so great and he could mould people into something even greater than they could imagine.
I am aware of the article by the WSJ, and my opinion is that it is nothing more than a hit piece.
1) There actually wasn’t much in the way of genuine reporting found in the article. The WSJ relied on anonymous sources for all of the controversial parts of the article.
2) The article talks a fair bit about software design, which suggests that the sourcing for this article may have relied heavily on Apple’s software team, and Jony is not widely viewed in high regards by them, in part due to his role in having Scott Forstall fired.
Jony Ive stepped down because his role at Apple was simply getting too stressful. My guess is that WSJ jumped on this opportunity to push a faulty narrative about how he was leaving Apple because he was growing disillusioned and paint Apple as having lost its way.
Apple has also replied to this article with their own rebuttal, which is rare for Tim Cook.
It implies that the article by WSJ was narrative-based and that the data points and assumptions used to support the narrative weren’t accurate.
These publications, not least of all the WSJ, have not earned the right to have its Apple-based reporting assumed to automatically be true, not least because of their penchant for faulty narratives and questionable reporting, all to draw clicks and views.
Apple very much remains a design company, and it will continue to do well with a steady hand like Tim Cook at the helm.
Do you have source of this? Articles indicate more of burnout than stress. And no, they are not always directly related
One comes to mind.
Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple
Inside the top-secret lab where the world’s most powerful design team created the Apple Watch.
And yes, I do agree that burnout may be a better word. It seems that in the past, that all the attention and expectations would be showered on Steve Jobs may have been a blessing for Jony Ive because it meant that he didn't have to deal with all the attention. Once Steve Jobs passed away, the burden naturally fell on him, and he has been struggling to live up to and meet those expectations ever since. So Jony Ive has been grappling with all this stress from as far back as 2015 (or perhaps as early as 2012 after Steve Jobs passed away), though it would only be in 2019 that he finally stepped down.
Actually TC's response is so abstract and platitudinal (as usual) it confirms the WSJ article. Otherwise he'd give specific examples of how well engaged he is with designers and engineers. He doesn't because he isn't. And it's been a good few years since then; where are those incredible things that were supposed to blow us away, really?
As for Forstall, wasn't it TC who fired him for not apologising about Maps?
Apple's latest releases prove it's an appliance company run by an accountant and formerly known for their impeccable attention to design.
Incredible. And you still see no fault with the absence of leadership that caused this burnout to begin with? It all boils down to Jony just "burning out" because reasons?
Are there any relations between developers and Apple? I am not alone when I say Apple don't give a crap about developers. All tools offered for development are subpar. Not to mention documentation, that is a mockery, with vague information and around 91K pages with no information at all.
Just click here and see for yourself how many pages with the infamous "no overview available".
"no overview available" site:developer.apple.com
Just click here and see for yourself how many pages with the infamous "no overview available".
"no overview available" site:developer.apple.com
The reason behind Jony Ive burning out is precisely due to Apple being a design company, with Apple designers calling the shots, and searching for and having technology made to serve the product experience, not engineers excited about about new hot tech and trying to turn it into a product.
The exact same thing people are accusing Apple of not being after Tim Cook took over.
Which is an ironic condemnation the more I think about it, because I don’t recall them acknowledging Apple as a design company back when Steve Jobs was still alive. So they refused to recognise Apple as such when it suited their narrative to, and now they are concern-trolling that Apple has apparently lost its way when they need to craft a narrative to bash Apple with.
My takeaway - many critics still don’t understand what makes Apple Apple. Thankfully, like so many other companies, Apple’s success is not determined by the opinions of a vocal minority on an online forum.
It doesn’t matter if she has a Master’s in CS. Opting for a career in marketing is a decision. One becomes an executive only when they sell their soul.
Serves to show just how little you grasp about product design, how revisionist, and how fast you are to defend Cook's Apple.
Steve Jobs understood design and how it's not just about the veneer like you think. Excerpts of his approach like the ones below are being taught in design schools, no matter if Apple is not listed as a design company like IDEO or Frog. There is nothing of the sort that Tim Cook has contributed or will be remembered for. NOTHING.
Above all, Jobs wasn't all about dispensing catchy quotes but actually devoting himself to the nitty gritty of design and engineering, giving guidance and leadership (in a tyrannical manner, but still). A lead designer like Ive doesn't burn out from mere overwork; they burn out from ambiguity and lack of leadership that can make them literally go awol with experimentation and conceptualising without any rapport from the top.
As for the vocal "minority", that you're so fast to dismiss as irrelevant: here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the round pegs in the square holes.
Thankfully, there are still forums where people can freely express themselves without corporate thought police like yourself. I don't think you understand what makes Apple Apple either, friend. "You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where can I sell it." (which is exactly what Cook does btw)
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
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As for the vocal "minority", that you're so fast to dismiss as irrelevant: here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the round pegs in the square holes.
How many years have the people here been beating the whole “Apple is doomed” drum? Do you remember the furore when Samsung announced their folding phone in 2019? Now? Crickets.
There is nothing wrong with people expressing themselves in a forum. But what is a discussion if not opinions backed with evidence? People having an uninformed opinion about something they don’t understand and proclaiming it as valid as fact is what is ruining the world. Nobody wants to do any research. They just want to be right.
And maybe I will end up being wrong myself. And maybe you are right in that I don’t understand Apple even though I think I do. But I do put in a fair amount of thought and research into each and every one of my posts, and I guess I just wish that I could see more people doing likewise.
And not just “first first first”.
Which (I believe) is precisely what apple continues to do till this day.
It’s a little harder now that Steve Jobs is no longer at the helm to dispense a healthy dose of “common sense”, and maybe Apple will make a couple more mistakes along the way, but products like the Apple Watch, AirPods, as well as the rumoured AR glasses are evidence that Apple very much remains a design company.
Why haven’t we seen round smartwatches or foldable phones from Apple? The reason is simple - design. But you can’t have am impractical design that’s impossible to manufacture at scale, and that’s where Tim Cook comes in, and shines.
Serves to show just how little you grasp about product design, how revisionist, and how fast you are to defend Cook's Apple.
Steve Jobs understood design and how it's not just about the veneer like you think. Excerpts of his approach like the ones below are being taught in design schools, no matter if Apple is not listed as a design company like IDEO or Frog. There is nothing of the sort that Tim Cook has contributed or will be remembered for. NOTHING.
Above all, Jobs wasn't all about dispensing catchy quotes but actually devoting himself to the nitty gritty of design and engineering, giving guidance and leadership (in a tyrannical manner, but still). A lead designer like Ive doesn't burn out from mere overwork; they burn out from ambiguity and lack of leadership that can make them literally go awol with experimentation and conceptualising without any rapport from the top.
As for the vocal "minority", that you're so fast to dismiss as irrelevant: here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the round pegs in the square holes.
"You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where can I sell it." (which is exactly what Cook does btw)
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
This is the new Apple — just another enormous corporation. As a designer, I found Apple's focus on design during the 1980s truly inspiring, especially with regards to the work of Susan Kare. At university, our NeXT machine was just wonderful. It was a good time to see things progress by leaps and bounds.
You are conflating so much to frontload your narrative.
No-one beat the "apple is doomed" drum here. No-one. Apple is an empire and AAPL is bound to reach Mars faster than Elon does. But when it comes to their creative culture of design and engineering? That died with Jobs. Two things are true at the same time. Apple now is the IBM, Xerox and Pepsi, that Steve used to mock, all rolled into one. And Tim Cook is definitely the big head in the 1984 Jumbotron waiting for a sledgehammer to find its way.
Let's please not deflect to "what people do" when I've been presenting you some very salient and very factual points.
To your last point: a wearable, a pair of bluetooth earphones and an unconfirmed rumoured piece of tech don't prove anything about culture of commitment to design. They're just two successful products and a concept. At the same time Apple has made so many mistakes that show lack of commitment to user experience first (everything about the 2016 MacBook Pro, dongles, their fundamentally hostile "courage", a flawed HomePod that's now dead in the water etc), show a drive to find more revenue drivers by pushing solutions in search of a problem (Touchbar), show lack of QA across the board (pre-bent iPads, OSX dumb-down and buggiest iOS releases ever) and a general complacency that's unseen since Sculley (Siri, getting "shocked" at trashcan Mac Pro user outcry, not refreshing their Mac designs literally for a decade, SKU clutter)
Why do you shoehorn wildcard concepts like foldables? It's totally in Apple's spirit not to jump to a bandwagon too early. Besides, not doing so is less about practicality and more about conservativism and risk aversion. One thing's for sure, I miss the Apple that would create its own bandwagon and run with it, leaving other conservative industries in tatters. Right now the only product with some potential to do so is the M1 chip.
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And I appreciate your responses very much. Sadly, responses like yours seem more the exception than the norm here.
Whether we agree or not I appreciate yours too
What sometimes gets me eye rolling are the kind of "durr go back to your cave" kind of hostile retorts I get from some people just for being skeptical.