A lot of folks are taking Sir Jonathan Ive’s just announced title as Chief Design Officer at face value. Congratulations are in order and all that. But there is a lot more going on than a title change.
Ive was willed free reign at Apple by Steve Jobs and can do or have just about anything he wants. Titles aren’t of any significance, especially to someone with as little ego and indifference to such things as Ive. There is clearly more to the story than Apple is telling us.
Announcing the role change on a US federal holiday and effective on 2015H2 day 1 – July 1st is something big, planned and perhaps not to be taken as lightly as it is being portrayed.
Let’s look at the announcement which was made via a Stephen Fry article in the UK Telegraph and then announced over internal email (but not on Apple’s PR page -“nothing to see here folks!”). First of all, Ive and Fry are good friends which tells me it was Ive’s choice of news outlet to announce the news. That means the change and how it was going down was likely Ive’s decision and direction. Also, the US markets aren’t open so the AAPL stock jockeys won’t fall off their horses before they think about this for a few hours at least… and then fall off.
More importantly, there is some background to consider. We’ve known for quite some time that Ive longs to be back in his native Britain for a variety of reasons. One thing Fry said in the long and winding story really jumped out at me:
Jony will travel more, he told me.
The family man with his twins 10 years ago
In my mind, that immediately rang as code for moving back to England.
In an important 2011 profile, the Sunday Times noted that Ive longed to be back in the UK and almost left Apple that year before he was given a huge payout by Apple to stay on longer.
He and wife Heather, who met while they were studying at Newcastle Polytechnic, are said to want to educate their twins in England. He still visits the institution in the north-east to give masterclasses, giving up part of his three weeks’ annual leave. A friend of the family told The Sunday Times: ‘Unfortunately he is just too valuable to Apple and they told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them.’
Ding!ding!ding! New position. Get two subordinates to handle the day-to-day operations and pack your bags? Not quite that easy. If Ive left Apple, he’d be betraying Steve Jobs and abandoning his power as the most influential designer in the world. But he also can’t run the iOS UI and hardware design teams over FaceTime. You simply can’t just ‘call in’ such an important role.
So there’s this compromise. Ive gets two subordinates to run his two incredibly important programs, then gets to spend a reasonable amount of time in the UK with his kids who then aren’t forced to grow up talking like Americans and pronouncing ‘aluminum‘ like animals.
What’s Ive going to focus on while he’s out of town? Fry unceremoniously lays it out. He’s going to work with London-based Foster and Partners on the design of the Spaceship Campus 2 project and Apple Retail Stores…
…he will bring his energies to bear – as he has already since their inception – on the Apple Stores that are proliferating around the world. The company’s retail spaces have been one of their most extraordinary successes…
It is the fruit of a longstanding and friendly collaboration between Apple and Foster + Partners — you might say between Sir Jonathan Ive KBE and Lord Foster of Thames Bank OM.
…along with overseeing his new subordinate teams.
Remember, having Industrial Design and UI design coming out of the same brain was one of the key selling points of the Scott Forstall departure. Splitting the teams up again and making Alan Dye head of UI and Richard Howarth head of hardware design is a reversal of that very deliberate Tim Cook move. Perhaps as a foreshadowing, both execs were given public access by Apple for the first time in the New Yorker and WIRED pieces in the Apple Watch run up a few months ago. Howarth was even propped up as high as getting credit for designing the original iPhone.
What might be ironic about the change, however, is that Ive now has a C-level position (CDO?) which may make him eligible for the official Officers and Directors list. That would mean that changes in his remuneration would be public information through SEC filings.
As sad as it is to say, this feels like Jony Ive putting one foot out the door at Apple. He’s clearly set for life in monetary terms and doesn’t have much to prove in the electronics design world. iPhones, iPads and UIs will get flatter and the world will move on. That’s not to say there isn’t important work to be done in Apple Stores and the Campus 2 design, but this certainly feels like the end of an era.
…Or maybe he’s going to go design the Apple Car.
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Great points
I generally find the articles at 9to5Mac to be professional and trustworthy. An article like this reads like it was written by a MacRumors troll, and demeans the journalistic integrity that 9to5Mac generally publishes. Unless you interviewed Ive or have inside information you can publish, you don’t knows for sure why Ive was promoted, what his motivations are, or what lays in store for the future of Apple design, and “reports” like this serve no purpose beyond click-bait and opinionated-fluff. “Ding!ding!ding!” Really? Grow up. As of this writing this article wasn’t tagged as “opinion.”
I named sources. (Telegraph, Sunday Times, Apple PR, etc.) Drawing conclusions from there. Not sure why that upsets you. The dingdingding and aluminum were attempts at humor FWIW.
Seth, you linked to sources that form an opinion piece and not report an actual piece of news. I’m not “upset”, I’m just pointing out that 9to5Mac shouldn’t be in the habit of publishing opinion fluff that isn’t based on actual facts without labelling them as such.
I liked the article. It made me aware of what can be probable reason for Ive’s new title. If Seth is wrong, so be it.
Still, bpbatch comments on your piece are valid. This is full of speculation and wild guesses. I’ve read reports which are all over the place varying from Ive will be the next CEO to a imminent departure. We simply don’t know. For me it’s rather simple. Ive loves one thing and one thing only: designing. If the interviews with Ive are any indication it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ive doesn’t want to micro manage teams or lead them on a day to day basis but rather directs his attention on designing in general. But you can’t demote a guy like Ive that’s that important to your company (and will raise questions and hit share prices). So you promote the guy and leave the managing of the teams to two other guys. Besides, Ive is a brilliant designer but as recent interviews about the watch showed: he’s not a great talker. It’s for a reason that Ive always shows up in carefully edited videos and never live on stage.
Really, with this URL: “http://9to5mac.com/2015/05/25/jony-ives-leaving-apple/”?
Sorry, but if your plan is to transition someone with “one foot out the door”…you don’t promote them up to a C seat and then work them out of that. I don’t expect that you’ve run a large company, but I can tell you that it simply doesn’t work like this. From the standpoint of investor risk and the SEC, a decision like this carries a lot of weight—not the least of which is it’s ability to positively affect the share price. The largest market cap business in the world can’t go around creating new C seats and promoting people to them willy nilly – there is far more to consider than it appears most journalists would understand…hence these ridiculous write-ups. Dude got promoted. It’s an inherently more global position. He’ll travel more. He’s out of the weeds. He has two good leaders below him to handle the BS. His leadership is more holistic. Trying to derive anything more out of it is flippant.
“to” form. Anyway, this crap article is still a crap article.
You need to take a chill pill. The article is well researched and an interesting piece. Of course it’s an opinion piece, but so what. Go take your whine somewhere else.
Dude, GET A life. There are far MORE important thing in life that worry and bitching about Ive, Apple and this article. It’s a decent opinion based article, so quite the cry baby crap and move on, like how the world is gonna move on.
@Steve V. Kass—yet, you took the time to read my comment and respond? Check yourself, dude.
Well, as an FYI, wordpress software is relatively easy to set up on the off chance that perhaps you would like to create your own blog filled with Apple News. Have you tried it out?
WordPress also has a free version of the software so you can give it a test spin before taking off the training wheels.
You shouldn’t be reading any news about Apple if you are looking for “facts”. Apple operates in secrecy. I find it disingenuous of you that you lurk on Apple news sites while dismissing others for “not reporting facts”.
I disagree with the thrust of bpbatch’s criticism. I tend to read multiple sources for news about Apple and this article was the first one I read that shines a light on the implications behind was happening. I would also point out the Gruber is thinking along similar lines too and he’s a pretty smart cookie when it comes to Apple.
Clearly Seth is not able to claim that this is a completely factual article, but he is analysing the story from a perspective of one who knows a lot about the company and the people involved and he has outlined what he believes might be the bigger picture. I happen to think that his analysis is entirely plausible and does fit remarkably well with the facts as we know them.
It’s no secret that Jony Ive would like to spend more time in his homeland. Life in the UK is very different to life in California and as a father with a young family, he will obviously want to do what he feels is best for his family. There is much that he loves about California, but he comes across as a Brit temporarily living in California, rather than one intending to spend the rest of his life there.
Jony is interested in a wide range of topics that impact upon design and manufacturing. It could make a lot of sense for Jony to be less rigidly based in Cupertino and having the flexibility to spend some time at places with special expertise which could be beneficial to Apple’s designs. There are a number of businesses in Europe and elsewhere that could be strategic partners for an Apple Car. There are many other areas that Apple are researching and I would put my money on them getting into robotics and new manufacturing processes so that devices can be manufactured with more precision and in higher volumes, without needing an immense workforce.
I think that Seth might have hit the nail on the head. The announcement is a very elegant solution which allows Jony the freedom to be less tied to California, while still retaining his crucial role at Apple and now allows him to explore new areas for Apple and with Apple. Richard Howarth is a fellow Brit and has been very involved with the development of the iPhone. He shares Jony’s eye for detail and passion for getting everything as perfect as possible. Delegating more responsibility to Richard and Alan means that Jony can devote more time to researching technologies and ideas that will become future breakthroughs for Apple. Crucially for Apple, it’s a way to ensure that Jony stays with Apple and it neatly solves the problem where Jony might one day have to choose between living in America and working for Apple, or leaving Apple and living in Britain.
Instead of reading the article I think you should have read the headline first, and the label ‘Feature’ which cannot possibly be missed. This label indicates that the article is indeed an ‘Opinion’, an ‘Editorial’, or, a ‘feature, if you will.
That could have saved you reading the whole article should you not be interested in these.
The emperor wears no clothes! You all clearly are not reading between the lines here. I agree with Seth on this one. It may be awhile, but Jony is certainly on his way out, and this is the beginning of that process. He will have a VERY minor role at the company (or just be on the board) come 2018.
Agreed. This article read like something from Buzzfeed. While some of the conclusions drawn could be accurate, this definitely should have been labeled an Opinion piece.
I feel very uneasy about this news. It seems like he’s leaving but Apple doesn’t want their shares to fall so they’re calling it a promotion, but really he’s giving up a full-time position for a coast into retirement. Or so it seems.
If anything that NewYorker piece signaled that he was stretched very thin. This new title allows him to focus on big things and leave the mundane day to day management stuff to VPs (who still report to him at the end of the day).
Does no one think it a little strange that the designing force behind Apple products for close to 20 years, is now in charge of designing chairs for the corporate office??? Seth’s column is the only one that even noted that isn’t it a little strange that the guy in charge of design is now being promoted to head of design. Most news reports were simply rewriting the press release. My first reaction to the news, was ‘what? Isn’t he already in charge? He’s had these two guys reporting to him already. The only thing seemingly changing here is that Ives will “travel more.” Note that he doesn’t say why, except for the allusion to helping design new stores. That’s a poor excuse for ‘more travel.’ BTW, that’s what architects are for and they seem to be doing a pretty good job already. Having Ives now ‘traveling more’ as one of Angela Arhendts (in charge of retail) minions just does not make sense.
I completely agree. Running a company with out a defined secession plan is very risky.
They do. It’s called Angela Arhendts
Interesting piece.
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he’s going to be working extremely heavily on the car for the next few years, which of course Apple can’t talk about publicly.
I opt for this, too: he is testing the drivers right seated position in UK :D
(this statement based not on any research, just my fun;-)
Maybe he is really leaving Apple but he had a lot of vested shares that want to get paid.
Remember that Forestall was kept by this reason as consultant to Cook.
On the other hand, when they need Angela and she need to be two more months for the vested shares, Apple took the charge and paid her the money she would get.
I think Seth is right, especially the more you think about it.
But if Jony leaves, I am going back to Windows. Jobs, Forstall, now Ive…
Is this the end?
Nope not buying it. In 2012 Ive spent $17M on a house in the most expensive neighborhood in San Francisco. He’s spending nearly $2M to renovate it. In that New Yorker profile it was revealed that Ive and his wife have become U.S. citizens. None of that makes sense if Ive’s plan is to spend more time in the UK. Cook’s memo specifically said he’d be focused on new ideas and initiatives. That leads me to believe he’s giving up some of his day to day stuff so he can focus on new things like perhaps cars or Apple store redesigns or Apple’s further foray into wearables. Apple releasing this news today means it will be the first thing talked about tomorrow morning. It’s on the front page of Tuesday’s Telegraph newspaper with a large photo and caption “Briton moves closer to the top at Apple”.
The only question I have is, Cook specifically referred to this as a “promotion”. Does that mean “Chief Design Officer” is a rank above “Senior Vice President”?
With technology and the ability for him to travel on a whim without having to resort to flying commercial, he can do his job anywhere he wants to. Heck, Jobs ran both Apple and Pixar at the same time, so to think that one has to go to their offices at Apple corporate every day is just nonsense. These people use video conferencing, email, text messaging when they can’t be in the office. He’s more of an approval position rather than doing the day to day work.
For most office jobs you’d be right but I don’t think Ive will telecommute. 1) He has repeatedly insisted on the importance of crafting and working with physical prototypes. 2) Those prototypes and designs are highly confidential, and I doubt Apple would want them physically traveling around the world or being sent over the Internet. 3) The ID team is super tight and based on face to face conversations over coffee, notebook drawings, comparing physical materials, testing packaging, etc.
Jony and wife almost certainly became U.S. citizens just so they can leave the U.S. for however long they want and freely return whenever they want. It doesn’t indicate anything as far as an increased commitment to work for Apple, except that he will be able to do so more easily while living abroad–if that’s what he wants.
You don’t just “become” a U.S. Citizen. It takes a long time and subjects you to taxation on your worldwide income. They could leave and enter freely with work permits or permanent residency (which also subjects one tor worldwide taxation but is easier to relinquish).
Totally agree here – Seth just twisted the whole thing with a Feature header. This is not a feature – pure opinion piece. Ive is not a manager – he is a creator. Managers cannot be creators. Even Steve was a terrible CEO by any normal CEO standards because he was a creator. I am certain that Ive will continue designing most important products such as iPhone and anything else he is dreaming up. Once the design idea is planted those two VP’s will manage it. Ive effectively assuming the role of Steve without CEO duties. I cannot see this promotion as Ive getting ready to leave Apple!
I think people put way too much stock in the effects single people have on Apple. Teams of people have built all of Apple’s products and while certain people are extremely valuable, I don’t think anyone is so irreplaceable that Apple will fail without them.
Remember, when Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO and then passed, people thought it was the end of Apple. I never thought this and I admired Jobs greatly. But, he groomed Tim Cook to run Apple and Cook has done a great job. He’s not Steve Jobs but that’s not the kind of energy Apple has needed in this time of huge growth. Cook was the right person to take Apple to the next level.
Ive is a very talented guy but let’s not forget that he’s pushed through certain changes that haven’t been universally popular; like some of the design elements of iOS 7 and the flattening of Yosemite (the OS, not the park). I really like Ive’s hardware designs and his aesthetic but like Jobs, I don’t think he’s irreplaceable. There are lots of very talented designers at Apple and no doubt Ive, like Jobs, has groomed them to carry on and take Apple forward should he decide to bow out or change his influence.
The market would no doubt go crazy for a while if Ive left but the market goes crazy for the wrong reasons regularly. If AAPL tanked because of an Ive rumor, I’d say it would be a great buying opportunity.
Couldn’t agree more with you! Ive is good, but he’s not the only one. He might be the best one in Apple, but who’s to say that they wouldn’t bring in a new guy if Ive does indeed leave? There are tons of great designers out there. After all, someone is designing all those beautiful German cars or Swiss watches. I think designing a good-looking car is a lot more difficult then designing a phone.
And it’s not like Ive has been bulletproof. I still think that the iPhone 4S was the last good-looking phone. The 5 was crap and I hate the 6 as well. Lousy color choices and those stupid (STUPID) lines at the back of the phone. And as you already mentioned, there are many things about the iOS 7/8 that I’m not particularly fascinated either.
Having said that, I doubt that he will leave Apple. He might just be bored with his current job. Maybe he does want to design a car or come up with something entirely new. I still think that the entire iCloud situation is untapped market. It could be so much bigger, so that could be one new area. Who knows! I’m not really stressing about that. Apple is bigger than one man.
And like Steve, Jony has embued the company with his DNA – his values, design sensibilities, thought processes. The ID team especially, there are members with 20 years experience who are a part of our beloved Apple products just as much as Jony
That could be it. That said, overseeing design of software, hardware and retail for a company that is so focused on design and delivery would be a massive undertaking. It could be that they just want a layer under Ive to filter some of the less important things that are going on and possible to allow him to focus on things other than managing staff.
I don’t necessarily see this as a roll back of Tim Cooks change to bring UI and hardware under one umbrella when Forstall parted ways. Both divisions are still ultimately under Ive, there just happens to be an extra tier under him now as opposed to the previous arrangements where Ive had hardware, Forstall had software and both reported to Cook/Jobs.
Keep in mind that since 2011 Apple has added the watch to it’s portfolio and I don’t think they’ve dropped any product lines since then. If they have a car in the works and Ive is also designing retail stores, then his workload isn’t exactly shrinking, assuming the number of not announced R&D works is also still there too.
The recent book ‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ mentioned multiple times that one of Jobs keys to success later in his career was that he placed people he could trust immediately below him to allow him to delegate work and who he could personally trust to make the right decision without him needing to sign off on everything. It could be that we are seeing a similar relationship form here for a man that’s currently across everything the company is doing.
“Jony Ive, Apple’s chief of design, said that he would stop designing products for Apple and go it alone if the company ceased innovating.
Ive revealed that Apple’s innovation in technology is what keeps his interest at the Cupertino based company, in an interview with the Sunday Times about product design.
“Yes. I’d stop. I’d make things for myself, for my friends at home instead. The bar needs to be high,” said Ive when questioned about whether he would ever leave Apple.
“I don’t think that will happen,” Ive added. “We are at the beginning of a remarkable time, when a remarkable number of products will be developed. When you think about technology and what it has enabled us to do so far, and what it will enable us to do in the future, we’re not even close to any kind of limit. It’s still so, so new.”
Hello Apple Car.
I’m not sure what all this speculation is all about. I worked in high-tech for the past 16 years and such a move by an influencing member of Apple (highly may I add) is probably nothing more than Ive’s desire to go do the next big thing. Be it the car, the space shuttle or the (existing) stores. He calls the shot. trust that if someone like Ive wanted to leave, no one would have been able to stop him.
For those who are in the industry, you know that products are planned or “mapped” for 3-5 years. So the innovation has mostly happened and it’s now in execution, of course not forgetting on-going small adjustments in reaction to market and customer feedback, etc. But we all know, significant product changes and designs/re-designes are very costly in man-hours and dollars. So, it’s possible he simply doesn’t want the daily operations anymore…to him, it’s a done science maybe…the holographic, credit card ultra-thin iPhone is already on the drawing board and in-line for 2017, who knows?
But to venture into real-estate, retail stores, brick and mortar, cars and planes…whatever it is, might be more alluring and interesting to Ive.
Bottom line, no one is irreplaceable….you can argue that all you want, but to prove my point, think about the old questions…”What will happen if Bill Gates gets hit by a bus?” or “Who will take over if Linus Torvalds quits?” and “What will happen to Apple without Steve Job?”…..
The smart leaders are those who put a succession plan for the “institution” to continue long after them…that’s their true legacy.
1+1 = my 2 cents
Nice article! It’s fun to try to connect the dots, and I appreciate the connect-the-dots writing style. Everyone likes to speculate, and the author does a good job of presenting some ideas and arriving at some potential conclusions.
No matter what happens, Apple can’t have all its eggs in one basket: the passing on of Jobs proved this.
Therefore, if Ives or anyone else, happens to leave Apple (not likely, but hypothetically) Jobs implemented the whole Apple University thing in order to perpetuate the culture. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if Ive left, but it would be the end of an era, that’s for sure. Even with the brand ethos and Jobs’ vision “in the DNA” of Apple, things will be taken in different directions (they already are).
Still, this is all speculation about a company that is extremely well co-ordinated in how it plays its hand (Apple Watch launch excluded). There’s no question that when and how Ive decides to make any kind of move it will all have been thought through several steps in advance, none of which most observers–if any–would be able to predict.
LOL! Too many “connect the dots”! Editing tool! STAT!
I like your article Seth, but it’s still all just asumptions. If he is going to work less and spend more time in the UK why start designing stores, furniture and fixtures and design details on the new spaceship campus. Doing architecture work on stores would mean more traveling to look at what works at different locations. He could be working heavily on fitting the Apple watch and other products into the stores.
He could be putting energy into working on a car. At this points it’s a guessing game. Usually promotions don’t mean less responds okay and less work. WWDC might give some insight into Apple’s internal restructuring.
Exactly. No reason to announce a promotion and C-level title if this is just succession planning and Ive shedding duties as he walks towards retirement. That New Yorker profile mentioned Ive was working with Angela Ahrendts on a redesign of Apple stores. I highly doubt the one Apple Watch table was it. If Ive is going to be more involved in new Apple stores or existing store redesigns that will involve travel. And if these car rumors are true that may also involve some traveling. I don’t think travel necessarily means spend more time in England.
The Macalope is going to have a field-day with this one!
Every Apple-related podcast I listen to, and a few that have nothing to do with Apple, are going to have a field day with the kremlinology in this.
Gotta love those spikey trolls Seth. As I often say, “If you’re not getting flak, you’re not over the target.” Based on past reports of Jony wanting to be based back in his home country and your endeavoring to sagely read between the lines of this most recent report certainly gives your theory merit. On the other hand, it could be something completely different. My point is that creatively connecting dots, looking for patterns, asking good questions and sharing your theory are part of what’s great about a free press. Remember this: If you’re NOT getting “no’s,” pushback, attacks and troll/hater visits, you’re not doing your job : ) Thank you and keep up the excellent work!
Pure speculation… And extremely irresponsible…
Quite disappointed in 9to5 ……publishing opinions of this sort can have huge consiquenses for many !
Feels Like FUD intended to manipulate narrative and stock.. Etc
Major thumbs down !
What Seth’s intentions from writing this article really means !
Getting paid to spread FUD to manipulate the narrative..
Some are already taking this to the next level .. Ives is leaving BS.. .is this the end of Apple garbage talk.. Etc
Feeling good about your pay Seth….?
Another so called journalist added to IGNORE list !
Dat URL slug.
Paving the way for Marc Newson to take over?…
No. But he will be able to collaborate more easily with Marc as his studio is based in London.
Lets see what Gruber has to say…. One foot out the door sucks…. and Forestall needs to come back….
Ive has done some brilliant work but the Mac and iOS are not all good. I miss the days when the Apple human interface team did evidence-based design studies, rather than relying on a superior sense of cool.
I don’t see this as a potential way out of Apple for Ive – I see it as an upgrade of design as a function for Apple. Is there any other company of that size who has a Chief Design Officer?
Now, design will rank at the same level as finances. That’s pretty important in my opinion. You could say that his success has made a profound change in the organisation of Apple.
Could Ive move to England? Sure, but that’s pretty speculative. The sentence of him travelling more could also be a hint at Ive, by travelling more, will be able to implement the elevation of design as a function for the leadership in every possible nook and cranny of Apple operations around the world.
If I was a designer, reading about Ive’s promotion to the premier leadership of Apple, I would be overjoyed! Now, design is not only recognised, but is also located at the High Table of Decisionmakers.
Well done. Makes perfect sense to me.
BTW, ‘his kids who then aren’t forced to grow up talking like Americans and pronouncing ‘aluminum‘ like animals.’ I laughed out loud. This is a classic. Very creative and good use of alliteration. I had the experience two weeks ago of talking to an Irish craftsman for an improvement to our home there. I said ‘aluminum’ and he replied ‘yes, aluminium.’ Notice the extra ‘i’ in British-related English.
Mr Ive and his background in bathroom fittings have served him well, those white, round edged Apple devices everyone loves are obviously influenced by the porcelain throne… however, there’s too many rumours about Ive, he has a mansion in Somerset, some say its up for sale, some not, Newcastle Polytechnic, which was called that when he attended but is now known, well past 15 years plus known as Northumbria University is not likely to be the place they settle, apart from the academics and memories, the weather is milder in the south and their respective families are not North Eastern either, well his are not. I know that city very well. So who the heck knows, maybe, after all it was time for a shake up, but it’s interesting debate, geek celeb gossip perhaps – but I am not sure – as seems to happen a lot now – that some of the rank comments are really necessary… I am not sure why people love to get so nasty online.
I’m from and live in the very city you mention. You are right, the weather is milder down south – but perhaps Mr Ive just wants to go back to his University roots and get rat-arsed on Newcastle Brown Ale in the Bigg Market on a Friday night :)
Somehow he and his sweet wife don’t seem to be the types to be hurling on cobble stones in Bigg Mkt on a weekend. The Somerset countryside is far more peaceful. He obviously has a place for NCL in his heart, as do I, but when you can afford to live anywhere, like him, you can probably pick and choose very carefully. Looks like he is not leaving AAPL at all, in Feb he made that clear, he is just shifting priorities. They get the best of both worlds and it’s very true there’s good things to be had on both sides of the Atlantic. I wish him luck, no doom and gloom, AAPL does need to evolve.
Totally agree :)
You’re wrong. The man simply doesn’t like managing. He doesn’t want to manage, he has never wanted to manage. He wants to design things, that is all. Managing things takes away from his ability to design things, as it impedes his time and energy on things he isn’t great at, and doesn’t want to do. Same reason why he was never going to be Apple CEO, he simply did not want to. It’s not that hard to understand.
IF you read the New Yorker profile of Ive, you will recall Laurene, Steve’s widow, saying that there must be some way in which Ive’s job could be made a little bit less taxing (paraphrasing from memory).
This priece should be labeled “opinion.” It is highly speculative and there has been no public communication of any intent by Ive to scale back. You usually don’t join the C-Suite to scale back. This isn’t like Bill Gates who was already Chairman and CEO stepping back into an artificially created “Chief Software Architect” role as step one of handing over the reins to his successor.
Let’s be honest, I don’t think Jony has “really” designed anything over the past 5+ years. While he may be in the room and oversaw things, he isn’t the designer he used to be, he’s more corporate now. He’s off designing tables and cameras with Marc Newsome when he should have been at Apple making a completely fresh iPhone and iPad. He’s to important to the company as figure head and someone who can steer the design and UI in the right direction. But when it comes to the actual design of a single product, he hasn’t been the guy who sketched it out, modeled it and said “Hey team, make this” in a very long time. That Ive is long gone.
Personally for me, I hope this means we’ll see something new out of Apple after the iPhone 6/6+S. Let’s see a fresh, new take on the iPhone (and especially the iPad) while having Ive give his blessings by adding suggestions and ideas. But, this may be what Apple needs. After all, Howarth has been at Apple for a very long time, he has Ive’s trust and works in his very small team of designers. If anything, he’s been personally molded by Ive for a decade plus.
Ive’s off to work for Samsung! heh
He already does design Samsung’s products, but they don’t pay him to do it.
You my friend win the internet. +1,000,000 comment
Brilliant! Many folks on this thread think they’re pretty smart (including me)–but this goes above and beyond the call of duty. :)
What’s this obsession with returning to the stuffy over-priced UK? Who wants to live in the UK? It’s so grim and dull there, everyone wants to commit suicide. Canada is filled with UK immigrants. Supposedly we get more sunshine than them (if you can believe that).
When you have such a great opportunity to live in beautiful California, especially San Francisco (one of the most beautiful cities in the USA), why would you want to move to the UK?
He’s got an amazing job in the best company in the world, a beautiful apartment, and ugly over-priced car …. What else do you want from life?
It’s “joe-nee” because of its spellling: j-o-n-y. What a pompous a$$wipe he is. I hope a muhzzie forces his British brats into se_x slavery.
Interesting article. As a journalist myself for the past 30 years, I’m sure he would have checked his resources and if it was hearsay, would have stated it as such. Not doing so would simply harm his own integrity and credibility. Not knowing this situation fully stifles my views of it.
To Sir Jony Ives for advancing the NWO’s power grip on Orwell’s nightmare of surveillance. Jolly good old chap!
He better not be leaving Apple. I would be crushed. I would rather have him design and be happy in London instead of abandoning the role of visionary for Apple.
Let’s consider Jony’s performance on software design first. This is what some prominent people have said about iOS 7: The Verge wrote in their review: “iOS 7 isn’t harder to use, just less obvious. That’s a momentous change: iOS used to be so obvious.” In iOS 7 basic usability features such as making buttons look like buttons are now stuffed under Accessibility options. About this, Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment wrote: “If iOS 8 can’t remove any of these options, it’s a design failure.” (And iOS 8 hasn’t.) Michael Heilemann, Interface Director at Squarespace wrote, “when I look at [iOS 7 beta] I see anti-patterns and basic mistakes that should have been caught on the whiteboard before anyone even began thinking about coding it.” And famed blogger John Gruber said this about iOS 7: “my guess is that [Steve Jobs] would not have supported this direction.”
And what about Jony’s other responsibility, industrial design? The iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and other Apple products are all amazingly well designed and breathtakingly beautiful. But these products weren’t designed by Jony Ive all by himself. He designed them under Steve Jobs’s guidance and direction. Steve was the tastemaker. Apple’s post-Steve products are nowhere near as well-designed.
Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors are horrid, and when you add those Crocs-like cases it looks more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen holding. Then they released some ads for the 5c, and I kid you not, one of the ads had sounds of bleating farm animals. (It was titled “Every color has a story”, published on tumblr.) That the 5c didn’t do well in the market shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Of late Apple has done phenomenally well, financially. But this isn’t because of Jony Ive’s design. It is because of the ecosystem created by Steve Jobs. The larger phone size met an important demand, and is not an innovation, and this is not repeatable innovation.
If you’re going to design a car, the UK is actually a pretty good place to be for picking up talent, both local and German (which is a US local flight distance away). If you think of the specific weaknesses with the Tesla (a ‘cheap’ interior for the price) it’s the exact areas the Euro high-end marques excel at, and the exact kind of stuff you can see Ive obsessing over.
What’s unsaid – maybe Ive has found he doesn’t enjoy software design. The gap between Apple’s industrial and software design probably annoyed him, but consider how he makes videos that are obsessive about physical materials and manufacturing processes – this is a guy obsessed with the quality of materials, not responsive design.
But also, as others have noted – the Watch is probably the last ‘new’ thing we’ll see from Apple in a long time – it’s an obvious end to the ever more ‘personal’ computer trajectory we’ve been on since the 70s.
The next step is invisibible computing, and that’s both technologically way off, and something I suspect Ive has little interest in.
Here’s an alternative explanation. Jony Ive is a creative person who never really wanted to be an administrator making day to day decisions on a range of issues that have little or nothing to do with design but a lot to do with running a group of hundreds of people. This day to day work will now be handled by others but JI will set overall design goals and sign off major decisions. The truth is that iPhone, iPad, Macs and Apple Watch hardware designs are pretty stable at this point and not much of a challenge for Jony.
Further, Apple needs to keep finding new products to develop where Apple can contribute something unique. This isn’t something Tim Cook can do, nor Phil Schiller nor Eddie
Cue or any of the SVPs. And with the amount of work that Jony I’ve has to do currently he can’t see the forest for the trees. Innovation is Apple’s life blood. So the idea is to free Jony up so he can get out of the office, out of his 1 hour each way commute even if it is in a Bently and out to places where he can do some blue sky thinking about cars and other potential products that might be Apples life blood in the future. If he decides to spend more time back here in ol’ Blighty (God only knows why but hey, some people love windy cloudy days and beaches made of small rocks) it’s not that he cares how his kids say alu-min-I-um but rather to have someone at Apple thinking about the future. That used to be Steve’s job, now it’s Jony’s
Recent interview with London Evening Standard and Marc Newson:
“What’s your job title? ‘I don’t really have one but I work on special projects.’ Is it full-time? ‘It’s about 60 per cent of my time.’ How long will you do it? ‘Indefinitely, I hope.’”
He could work for anyone, anywhere. So why did he choose Apple
The key is his friendship with Ive. The two men met 20 years ago in London and have been professionally and personally inseparable ever since. They share a design philosophy. They dislike the vast majority of consumer products, so they design radically new ones that we could not have imagined before.
‘It’s very easy for us to work together,’ says Newson.
If Newson hopes to work at Apple Indefinitely (be it 60%) then can’t see Jony not thinking the same way.
He is not going anywhere soon, not even in his Apple car.