WSJ: Jony Ive Became 'Dispirited' After Apple Watch and Sometimes Failed to Show Up to Meetings

[flipperfeet]

Johnny Ive is also responsible for the cottage industry of inelegant dongles and three unnecessary power connector iterations Apple laptop owners have been saddled with since Jobs passing.

IMHO, Ive's legacy will remain increasingly thinner MacBook Pros with decreasing utility. Under his leadership, Apple relied on third-parties to provide connectivity and salvage user investment in the Apple ecosystem.

 

[curtvaughan]

This is not true. Steve (and his team) created the iPhone, the product that took apple to new heights. When cook took over, the smartphone market was quickly growing. Steve couldn't live enough to see with his own eyes the massive change he (and his team) made in our lifes. Basically Steve planted the seed and was only able to see a seedling. Cook just watered that seedling. Even a jack wagon like Balmer would have made apple a 500+ billion dollar company with such a strong foundation.

As an anecdote, Bill Gates said in a recent interview that his biggest mistake while at the helm of Microsoft was in not aggressively pursuing the mobile market. Realize, he retired from Microsoft in 2006, a year before Apple released the iPhone. Gates admitted that his failure in this regard, in not focussing on Microsoft Mobile phone development, led to Microsoft's ceding of the huge non-Apple mobile market to Google. To your point, that meant Balmer had no strong foundation - other than with the Windows desktop - to work with. Nadella is a much more crafty fellow, with both engineering/computer science degrees (BE, MS), as well as a MBA from Harvard. He may yet save Microsoft from irrelevance, even lately embracing the Linux shell as part of Windows (we'll see how that goes, both for MS and the Linux community). Gates WAS Microsoft, as Jobs WAS Apple, and they were roughly the same age and had parallel career trajectories. They're both gone, and it will be interesting to see how Apple fares without the Mac as its main profit maker, just as it will be interesting to see how MS does as the desktop market declines. I'm rambling a bit, but to your point - SJ left Cook with the iPhone, and Apple has fared well with that for years after his death; Gates failed to push MS into the mobile phone direction, and so MS has had to venture elsewhere to compensate. The futures of both of those companies are at major crossroads. Right now, Apple has iPhones and Cook; Microsoft has Windows, convertible laptops, services, and Nadella.

 

[flipperfeet]

This was sadly inevitable after Cook became CEO. Apple has increasingly focused on pleasing shareholders, which means operational efficiency, quarterly projections, short-term ROI, and minimal risk. Apple got where it is because it was willing to take bold risks and lead the market in design and innovation, but Cook isn't a leader, he's just a caretaker. A very skilled caretaker, who can keep the boat sailing indefinitely, but not someone who can take them somewhere new and uncharted.

Ive was the CEO Apple needed after Jobs' death.

Jobs hand-picked Tim Cook, if he thought Ive was up to the CEO role, he would have argued for him, and the Board would have given it to him, even in the last months of his life they thought he walked on water. Jobs understood design, but he would have never accepted much of the work pushed out the door as finished under Ive's tenure as head. Jobs would have never green-lighted a $17,000 watch, or co-branded with Hermes. He would have pushed Ive to out design Hermes and sold it for $100 more than the base watch. Ive was not up to being the CEO of Apple then or now. It will be interesting to see if he is even up to being the CEO of an organization that is going to compete with the likes of IDEO

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Wired: The real reason Jony Ive left Apple

"Since the last true breakthrough product, 2015's Watch, Ive has been slowly distancing himself from Apple. Now with LoveFrom, it looks like the luxury sector will be his first target"

Also has an interesting quote from Ive about Steve Jobs:

“So much has been written about Steve, and I don’t recognise my friend in much of it,” Ive said. “Yes, he had a surgically precise opinion. Yes, it could sting. But he was so clever. His ideas were bold and magnificent. And when the ideas didn’t come, he decided to believe we would eventually make something great. And, oh, the joy of getting there!”​

 

[Nanotyrns]

Nothing stays the same forever, and if did and was in the tech biz it would have croaked anyway.

Some think, as I do, that there's a season if not just one reason for everything, and this was Tim and Jony's time to decide how to begin a transition in a way that wouldn't shake the company (or the Street's view of it) to its foundations, no matter WHAT was the impetus for discussions resulting in the new arrangements.

Others of course have other opinions. Time will tell. I'm always up for Apple's next keynote.

Same here. I tune into every one and love to dig up old keynotes on YouTube.

 

[MacBH928]

Does not take a genius to realize Ive lost his magic, and so did Apple. Can't you see no one is waiting in lines for products launches any more?

Almost all Apple products today are the same as Job's days, or a worse version of them. I must say so is the software, its not a seamless experience any more.

One thing we keep forgetting, is behind every corporation there are shareholders that try to squeeze it for maximum profit, and those are the people that hire Cook and pay him, and he will serve them...he is not here for craftsmenship or releasing a better design. Max profit is why he is here.

 

[AlexJoda]

At this point, the apple maps excuse is nothing but bs. The trash can Mac pro, the iphone 6 or the butterfly keyboard are WAY bigger flops that has cost apple actual $ and reputation. Yet Ive was not officially blamed (let alone fired) like forstall was.

I think you mean the iPhone 6 Plus. The 6 was a massive success for Apple and still one of the best iPhones ever. When I compare it to my XR (besides the technical improvements the XR has) the iPhone still looks modern is was one of the best designs of Jony Ive....

I'm rambling a bit, but to your point - SJ left Cook with the iPhone, and Apple has fared well with that for years after his death; Gates failed to push MS into the mobile phone direction, and so MS has had to venture elsewhere to compensate. The futures of both of those companies are at major crossroads. Right now, Apple has iPhones and Cook; Microsoft has Windows, convertible laptops, services, and Nadella.

Don't forget that Microsoft has the "Cloud". Azure is the most important business devision of MS and would define the future of this company. The funny thing is that Gates nearly overslept the Internet at the start and now it is the most important thing for them...

 

[Rob_2811]

No awkward at all. One has nothing to do with another and if anything it shows Tim is not afraid to defend what needs defending. What's the publication going to do? Pull out?

Well Tim has just announced to the world that one of his Apple News partners publishes lies.


Awkward ...

 

[I7guy]

Well Tim has just announced to the world that one of his Apple News partners publishes lies.


Awkward ...

Yeah, for the publication, not Tim or Apple. Publication made themselves look bad. Tim did what needed to be done.

 

[Abazigal]

Well Tim has just announced to the world that one of his Apple News partners publishes lies.


Awkward ...

Were you expecting that every single publication signed up with Apple News reported only the truth, and that Apple was somehow supposed to be personally responsible for verifying the veracity of each and every article published?

I am not seeing what is so awkward about this. You reap what you sow, and if a news company wants to peddle BS, then get ready to be called out on it.

I believe that all the quick and early takes on this news will (eventually) be proven inaccurate, and that the truth is likely simpler and a lot less exciting than the media outlets are making it out to be. Jony Ive has been facing a lot of stress from all the responsibilities and expectations placed on him over the years, and he simply needs a break.

His new employment status is simply a new arrangement designed to allow him to continue contributing to Apple, while not having to deal with all the issues that contributed to his stress in the first place. It's easy to say that he really has no reason to complain, given how handsomely he is likely being paid. It is what it is. Jony Ive has come to a new arrangement with Apple, one that may well prove to be a win-win situation for both parties.

30 July will soon be upon us. Apple's earning results will be revealed, there will be another round of uproar and acrimonious debate, and there will always be another piece of negative Apple-related news for stir up the mob. Apple will still go on to be Apple (a design-led company), and continue to prosper for it. AirPods and apple watches and the lack of a mid-tier headless Mac and all.

And then September comes and I will likely upgrade to the Series 5.

And life goes on.

 

[Fixey]

Apple over the past year or so has slowly gone back to the days without jobs, in 5 years time Apple will be a struggling company yet again competing against the no1 Google that will dominate the computer industry and Microsoft just a foot note in history it will be very much Google with Samsung making the hardware and leaders of innovation

 

[I7guy]

Were you expecting that every single publication signed up with Apple News reported only the truth, and that Apple was somehow supposed to be personally responsible for verifying the veracity of each and every article published?

I am not seeing what is so awkward about this. You reap what you sow, and if a news company wants to peddle BS, then get ready to be called out on it.

I believe that all the quick and early takes on this news will (eventually) be proven inaccurate, and that the truth is likely simpler and a lot less exciting than the media outlets are making it out to be. Jony Ive has been facing a lot of stress from all the responsibilities and expectations placed on him over the years, and he simply needs a break.

His new employment status is simply a new arrangement designed to allow him to continue contributing to Apple, while not having to deal with all the issues that contributed to his stress in the first place. It's easy to say that he really has no reason to complain, given how handsomely he is likely being paid. It is what it is. Jony Ive has come to a new arrangement with Apple, one that may well prove to be a win-win situation for both parties.

30 July will soon be upon us. Apple's earning results will be revealed, there will be another round of uproar and acrimonious debate, and there will always be another piece of negative Apple-related news for stir up the mob. Apple will still go on to be Apple (a design-led company), and continue to prosper for it. AirPods and apple watches and the lack of a mid-tier headless Mac and all.

And then September comes and I will likely upgrade to the Series 5.

And life goes on.

It boggles the mind that one has to go into such a detailed explanation for those who simply want to criticize Apple without thinking about what they are really saying.

 

[Abazigal]

Apple over the past year or so has slowly gone back to the days without jobs, in 5 years time Apple will be a struggling company yet again competing against the no1 Google that will dominate the computer industry and Microsoft just a foot note in history it will be very much Google with Samsung making the hardware and leaders of innovation

AboveAvalon seems to think otherwise.

https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2019/5/16/techs-tectonic-plates-are-starting-to-shift

The writer posits that we will eventually see Apple, Amazon and Microsoft at the top, with google and Facebook a distant second.

But we shall see.

 

[interessiert]

This was sadly inevitable after Cook became CEO. Apple has increasingly focused on pleasing shareholders, which means operational efficiency, quarterly projections, short-term ROI and minimal risk. Apple got where it is because it was willing to take bold risks and lead the market in design and innovation, but Cook isn't a leader, he's just a caretaker. A very skilled caretaker, who can keep the boat sailing indefinitely, but not someone who can take them somewhere new and uncharted.

Ive was the CEO Apple needed after Jobs' death.

Oh, god! TOTALLY wrong!

IVE caused a lot of faults:
ALL must get thinnest possible: Butterfly Keyboard, too short battery time of iPhones and Mac Books. – Functionality isn't important for his designs: Mac Pro (trash can), Notch, Touch Bar, missing ESC- and F-keys and the poorness of interface sockets built in Mac Book Pro – just ugly: battery case for iPhones

Since long IVE is high headed and caring just of his own image. Yes, he is a good advertising speaker, nothing more...

So don't be sorry he left Apple – be HAPPY

Apple has enough talented designers in his team to make a step to the first row.

 

[flipperfeet]

Poor Jony, I can only imagine how weary he became spending so many years crossing swords with a visionless drone like Tim.

Its a shame that Tim has chosen to turn Sir Jonys retirement into an unseemly public spectacle also.

The word from the people I know at Apple is Ives is just as, if not more, insufferable. Poor, poor guy, somehow he'll have to muddle through with his hundreds of millions and having the world's most valuable brand as his design boutique's first client.

 

[Rob_2811]

AboveAvalon seems to think otherwise.

https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2019/5/16/techs-tectonic-plates-are-starting-to-shift

The writer posits that we will eventually see Apple, Amazon and Microsoft at the top, with google and Facebook a distant second.

But we shall see.

The writer is one of the biggest Apple shills on the internet so fairly unsurprising

 

[AppleInLVX]

I used Linux for years for work (and Solaris, and BSD, etc.). Yes, you can spend all day customizing it to sorta kinda look nice and sorta kinda work like a Mac, but hope you don’t need much commercial software, and hope you don’t mind keeping a terminal window up and spending all your time tinkering constantly.

OSX is in no danger of being Microsofty. Just relax. It will be fine.

Yes, that was my thinking as well. I could lose hours of my life just dinking around with any given thing about the system from critical stuff I needed to fix nownownow to little things I wanted to have. I never got it just right, and that's part of the reason I went to Mac in the first place. I hope you're right about the company staying at least true to its design ethic. I really don't want to go back to Windows if I can help it.

I guess I just worry that instead of the intersection of liberal arts and technology, Apple will relocate to the corner of Shareholder Lane and Stuffed Suit Road.

 

[RogerWilco]

Actually, Ive single-handedly destroyed Apple's HI design ethic by ignoring the Human Interface Guidelines book written in 1987. Now one might think "it's so old; doesn't it need updating?" but Guidelines recognized Human Interfacing and, unless I'm mistaken, we're still human and have expectations that don't really embrace discovery as the primary means we learn and master human/machine interfaces. Discovery is a bonus, not a requirement of passage when it comes to phones, computers, etc.

Discovery is what caused two Boeing 737 Max airplanes to crash.

Yes — x1000

The lack of visual cues, glaring inconsistencies, and undiscoverable “features” in iOS all appeared under Ive's leadership. This trend has to be reversed, but by whom?

 

[cmaier]

Yes, that was my thinking as well. I could lose hours of my life just dinking around with any given thing about the system from critical stuff I needed to fix nownownow to little things I wanted to have. I never got it just right, and that's part of the reason I went to Mac in the first place. I hope you're right about the company staying at least true to its design ethic. I really don't want to go back to Windows if I can help it.

I guess I just worry that instead of the intersection of liberal arts and technology, Apple will relocate to the corner of Shareholder Lane and Stuffed Suit Road.

All signs point in the right direction.

iOS 13/iPadOS 13 address many of the most glaring shortcomings, and are slowly backtracking some of the glaring user-interfaces problems that first reared their head when Ive took over the OS look and feel.

Swift UI makes it fun to code very powerful UIs and will likely usher in a new generation of awesome software. iPad is finally getting some powerful features that enable it to be a decent alternative to a PC for many people.

New hardware looks great - started with the iMac Pro, the Mac Pro looks very good and is giving people what they want, and the macbook pro 16" may be fantastic.

If they fix the keyboard and rethink the Touch Bar I'll be a very happy camper.

 

[bluecoast]

I really hope you are right, even if I don't think so.

Also, what exactly makes Tim Cook exceptional?

Jobs was exceptional BECAUSE he was a product guy running the company (he created).

I think that’s the thing - Jobs was a truly exceptional businessman the likes of which don’t come along too much. I’m sure Cook knows this and has done has best to disseminate Jobs’ ethos throughout the company.

I guess it depends on if you believe that companies always have to have an ‘auteur’ figure at the controls. Cook seems to feel that it can be a group effort. As I said above I think it’s just too early too tell and the period 2020-2025 will be crucial.

And Jobs wasn’t perfect - The Cube, the controversy over share compensation, Ping, MobileMe, antenna-gate, brushed metal (!) and other OTT skeuomorphism & Apple consistently shipping terrible mice were all lapses under his watch.

 

[bluecoast]

Look at past 5 years of Cook's hype in interviews about product pipeline and compare that with what they actually delivered - I nearly cried at the amount of fluff & BS... He can't stand the idea of introducing any new product himself, meaning he has no clue why we should buy them. I'm having very hard time imagining him introducing ANYTHING new from now on, just iterations and maybe better sameness. Even when he's parroting Steve's mantra about Apple being on intersection of liberal arts etc it just sounds so dishonest.

Board is a mess, products are mediocre or discontinued, Mac/iPad product range is confusing, new stuff is priced out of range of many old time Mac users.... feels like 90ties deja-vu all over again

When I saw the announcement what immediately came to my mind was the proverb that "people don't leave companies, they leave ****** bosses". If WS and investors haven't realized it by now, the emperor has no clothes - Cook has turned Apple into yet another boring enterprise. If the Patently Apple take on the WSJ article is true and that Cook leaked the stuff on Ive not attending meetings then I'm pretty sick of this guy that can't stand criticism.

Agreed, Cook is a terrible cheer leader for product. I think the best Apple keynotes are the ones where he acts as the ring master and focuses on customer SAT figures - seemingly his true passion!

I agree with you that Apple’s product range took a dive bomb in the last few years with some lines barely being updated and having models years out of date on sale (most of the Mac product lines in particular) - I believe that Jobs wouldn’t never stood for this.

So I agree with you there - it smacks of decisions being made because of what the numbers tell you and not ‘skating toward where the puck is going to be’ as Jobs was so fond of saying.

Although having said that, I think that most of Apple’s missteps in the past few years were because they believed that the Mac was dying and that the iPad and the iPhone were where things were going.

A combination of iOS not being able to get where Apple wanted it to be in time to replace the PC/Mac and the PC concept being very resilient proved Apple very wrong. Again, I have a hard time believing that Jobs would’ve made the same mistake.

So I agree with you - Jobs was someone who knew his industry in his bones and it’s a big risk for Apple if it can’t maintain that level of vision in the company. Again, I think that the jury is still out, but it’s a worry that Cook seems to be excessively numbers driven.

Apple should have new products across the board and be ashamed of keeping years old models on sale. Thankfully I do think that are starting to ‘get it’ with the retooled iPad and iPad Air. Let’s hope that this ethos spreads across their ranges.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

I think that’s the thing - Jobs was a truly exceptional businessman the likes of which don’t come along too much. I’m sure Cook knows this and has done has best to disseminate Jobs’ ethos throughout the company.

I guess it depends on if you believe that companies always have to have an ‘auteur’ figure at the controls. Cook seems to feel that it can be a group effort. As I said above I think it’s just too early too tell and the period 2020-2025 will be crucial.

And Jobs wasn’t perfect - The Cube, the controversy over share compensation, Ping, MobileMe, antenna-gate, brushed metal (!) and other OTT skeuomorphism & Apple consistently shipping terrible mice were all lapses under his watch.

I agree Jobs wasn't perfect, but again, he was a product guy. Tim appears to be very much a money guy. So things being a group-effort is irrelevant when the guy at the top of a company such as this is mainly focused on profits. It's a philosophy thing, and I feel Tim has disregarded most of what Steve speaks of in that lost-interview video someone posted earlier.

But you're right, the next five years will either prove me right or wrong.

Still, Apple's golden eggs are too good to do without.

 

[halluxsinister]

So if it wasn't for Ive we would have had a wearable iPhone remote control to please the other executives!

I really hope this is not the beginning of the end for Apple. It will be if the board overrule the design masters.

It is the beginning of the end for Apple. Just as the Windows ME debacle was the beginning of the end for Microsoft. Also, Windows 8.

Apple has momentum. And cash. Lots and lots of CASH. It’s going to end very.

Very.

VERY.

Slowly.

The end of Apple will be so slow and happen over such a long period of time, that when it comes time to roll the credits, metaphorically speaking, they’ll have to hire Peter Jackson to split that, the credit-roll, up into three, separate, feature-length films.

The demise of Apple will be like the Year of Linux On the Desktop. Any ... decade... now...

I’m not suggesting Apple is magically immortal, by the way. Just that the departure of one design guy, (who is moving like, just down the street, to start his own company, whose job will be doing design work for Apple, by the way,) dooming the company would be like worrying that a speeding locomotive hits a mosquito, that that will stop it. Sure, the hitting of the tiny insect will technically slow the train down. But not enough to notice.

Also, recall that Apple somehow survived the loss of Steve Jobs. TWICE. It survived the awkward, stupid-looking crappy-device era that Apple went through between the loss of Jobs and his return.

I’m pretty sure it’ll survive the moving slightly farther away of Jony Ive.

 

[\/\/.]

Apple has become the company Steve Jobs despised at the time: IBM. White collar, money-hungry and stale. Many people are feeling it. With Jonathan Ive leaving, it has been confirmed.

I have been with Apple since I was seven; from 1986 until 2017. Heck, I even have an Apple logo tattoo. But recently I switched to Android and Windows 10 and I am not regretting it.

Android is great; it has features I was missing on iOS. Windows 10 has cleaned up nicely, and with WSL, I'm getting the best of both worlds as a developer/designer (Linux and decent graphics software).

Even when it comes to hardware, Apple has been overshadowed. My Surface Book 2 is the laptop Apple should have designed. It's a MacBook Pro and iPad Pro combined, but then with with much better graphics performance, better battery life, better keyboard and a better pen (minus the awful iOS file system).

A lot of people will be disgusted by my statements (even me three years ago). But let's face it, Apple has lost its edge. And I wonder if there is a way back.

 

[Classie]

Probably by not many on here, but he truly does have a unique mind in terms of how he was able to develop these products over the years, where they still hold a modernized-sophisticated look. I think Ive just became fatigued with the core changes with Apple, and wanted to continue to expand and grow on his own.

Well said. I think this is what happened.
The only thing that could’ve stoped Ive from leaving was Steve - someone that could challenge him. His new colleague/partner has most likely taken this toll, and due to not being all into Apple, why not start something new.

I really do hope that Apple can benefit from the client deal with a new boosted Ive