After Jobs died, Apple's products became unbalanced -- too much function sacrificed for aesthetics. Since Ive left, they have become more balanced (and, except for issues with the Studio Display, better).
I wonder if part of what Jobs was able to do that Cook couldn't was say 'no' to Ive in a way that he could understand and respect. Maybe without Jobs to provide the balance, Ive just couldn't perform as well.
The problem with Ive was that he placed more importance on thinness and style than what user needed/wanted. Just look at the multi year laptop keyboard fiasco, the lack of ports. Finally we have laptops that have decent keyboards and reasonable ports.
Just consider the hubris of a gold watch, who were the target audience, certainly not the typical Apple computer/iPhone user. The trashcan high-end Mac, We now, finally, have good desirable and usable Macs.
Personally I think he was fired with cause as he should have been several years prior. He was only successful when there was Steve Jobs there to reign him in.
Why did you use Bolded font for the entire post? It does not look good for reading. Please use normal fonts and bold only the necessary contents.
Apple is better off with I’ve gone. It is releasing its best products ever. That wouldn’t be the case if Ive was still there. His focus on thinness and such would have ensured the current product line never existed. We’d have pro laptops that were super slim, overheating, horrible keyboards, 1/4 the battery life and one port only.
Everyone loves a nice, clean, easy to follow, and “everyone lived happily ever after” narrative. But that’s not reality in a world that’s constantly changing and with people who are constantly changing, and hopefully, growing and learning along the way. The world is too dynamic to fit the clean narrative revisionists and book authors seek. Their output ends up being an overly narrow story that fits into a pattern and format that is publishable but also somewhat suspends and distorts reality and frees readers from having to actually think or draw their own conclusions.
The one commenter’s point about the success of Jony Ive being closely tied to his working and personal relationship with Steve Jobs and the culture that Steve nurtured at Apple during their years working together is probably the closest to reality. But you also have to factor in all of the supporting cast from design to engineering to manufacturing to marketing who also made it happen. It was never the Steve & Jony show then, just like it isn’t the Tim & Craig show today. That kind of dynamic ended in a garage many decades ago.
Jony Ive did some really great work at Apple and his legacy lives on in many ways. But he’s moved on with a massive amount of financial security to free his mind and open his wallet to pursue whatever he decides to focus on in the current phase of his life and career, whether or not it has anything at all to do with Apple or his former endeavors. Jony had his run at Apple and has hang up his cleats from those days with zero regrets. Time for Jony to happily flip the page and move on to his next chapter.
Tim Cook on the other hand, is still in a position where he must continue to guide Apple through the present challenges as the leader of the biggest and best technology company on the planet in a world. This world has become increasingly hostile towards successful technology companies, especially ones like Apple that merit and have earned enviable levels of influence over ordinary people in ways that infuriate social and political leaders and bureaucrats who crave total control over who wins and who loses based on their own agendas.
Tim Cook is the right person for the greatest challenges that Apple is facing right now, just as Jony and Steve were for the time and place they were most needed. Tim isn’t staying awake at night worrying about tapered edges and minimalist user interfaces. Tim’s worried about keeping Apple from being destroyed by outsiders who are trying to level the playing field by stripping away or negating all of the things that Ive, Jobs, Woz, Cook, and a supporting cast of amazing employees at Apple have worked so hard to create over the past nearly 50 years.
Tim is still in the breech. Jony can take a permanent vacation. Don’t know about you, but I know whose shoes I’d rather be standing in right now.
Tim Cook is an industrial engineer. Which is one who thinks about how to make systems more efficient. His claim to fame is with improving apple's supply chain management. Another industrial engineering thing is to optimize the allocation of resources to maximize/minimize a target (like money, time, labour). We can see over the last few years apple has been focused on hardware (M1 chip) and supply chain (getting chips during a chip shortage), and less with other things such as software.
As for Ive, some of his designs are iconic, some of his ideas not so much. Like who okayed that iphone case with the extra battery? Or the mouse charging port? Some clever design is important, but it must be balanced with useability, repairability, manufacturability, and cost.
I seem to recall Ive stating something about wanting to focus more on design projects that didn't involve mass produced items.
That makes sense. Both Ive and Marc Newson have shown they are more interested in highly unique, luxury designs for some time now. Just look at their collaborations. Plus Newson has always made these sorts of products. I'm not sure he has ever made anything that one could call truly mass produced. Okay, maybe his Magis Dish Doctor countertop dish drainer is mass produced, but in pretty small numbers. I have one and it's great.
Jony Ive was or is obviously a gifted designer, however the Apple obsession of making devices thinner and more pure and minimalistic with every iteration was not helpful. I remember the designers' dream, the "Cube": It was beautiful (for the time) but unpractical. Good design is important, but superior functionality is what matters even more.
To say that Cook is just an accountant is - in my opinion - just arrogance. Apple has been releasing maybe less groundbreaking devices than between the first iPod and the iPad, but much of what they launch becomes a success: biggest watch maker in the world, biggest headphone maker, Airpods (sth I found quite bizarre in the first place) are in my ears all the time now. And while I am not a computer specialist, I consider the M1 processor a real game- changer. The MacBook Pro 14/ 16" with M1pro & max have changed the way we think of Laptops. Those are all breakthough products that win over loads of PC users of the past. I consider Tim Apple to be a true benefit for the company.
That's pretty much as expected. Cooks is an accountant at best who has absolutely no understanding how to keep Apple innovating. He leeched off the state of Apple when he'd taken over and admittedly was an effective Chief Excel Operator indeed. But he failed giving Apple a future and I almost expect the next CEO toy (something with AR) is going to be the same thing as the 'Damn scribble toy' (S. Jobs) that failed to deliver a quality product from that guy that used to sell 'sugar water' (S.J. again). History is repeating itself: The last round John Scully managed to grow the Macintosh after Steve left and essentially proved Apple is no longer able to develop a good product (case in point the embarrassing joke that was the Newton). Now Tim Cook took over (again from SJ) and is executing well on all the (many) things Steve started, but I'm afraid he will fail delivering a quality AR Thingamagick (and the 'old' Apple stuff also starts to crumble in oh so many places). I think Peak Apple is already behind us.
Yeah what a shit job he’s doing. Stock is up 1,000% since he too over, while the rest of the market is up 300%. Time to fire that clown.
What hard make or break decision has Tim Cook had to make at Apple since becoming CEO?
Wouldn't the development of Apple Silicon and the switch from Intel qualify?
That's pretty much as expected. Cooks is an accountant at best who has absolutely no understanding how to keep Apple innovating. He leeched off the state of Apple when he'd taken over and admittedly was an effective Chief Excel Operator indeed. But he failed giving Apple a future and I almost expect the next CEO toy (something with AR) is going to be the same thing as the 'Damn scribble toy' (S. Jobs) that failed to deliver a quality product from that guy that used to sell 'sugar water' (S.J. again). History is repeating itself: The last round John Scully managed to grow the Macintosh after Steve left and essentially proved Apple is no longer able to develop a good product (case in point the embarrassing joke that was the Newton). Now Tim Cook took over (again from SJ) and is executing well on all the (many) things Steve started, but I'm afraid he will fail delivering a quality AR Thingamagick (and the 'old' Apple stuff also starts to crumble in oh so many places). I think Peak Apple is already behind us.
Jony Ive was great for Apple, but I want to know who, specifically, approved the 2013 Mac Pro, who was behind removing all the useful ports on the pro portable machines relying on dongles for everything, and who was responsible for the laptop keyboard disaster from 2016 to 2018?
Was Jony also the main pusher behind form over function such as laptops that are thin they can’t have the ports everyone uses? What about iPhones that bend far too easily (I’m talking about iPhone 6 Max of which mine was bent from the factory right out of the box).
Some recognition should be given to the A15/M1 Apple silicon team. That’s a real winner that will keep Apple competitive.
You know, maybe this book will describe some of what was going on with Mac and iPad product lines between late 2011 to at least early 2017, when Apple finally decided to change how Apple products were developed, especially the Mac product line. A book from a WSJ writer is probably not what I'm looking for though. Want a book from someone who worked there, or an outsider who understands product design and company dynamics. I don't get that sense at all from pop media writers. Ie, I want a book about Apple, not Jony Ive.
It's hard to pin down bad decisions to just one person as decisions at Apple's level is most definitely a product of constant, collective decision churn. There's always a champion of this or that idea, but there's always someone who didn't put their foot down or turn in their badge. This is why it's so important to have a decision maker with "taste", or a decision process whose outcome is "taste" or elegance, or whatever word you describe for products that people love. Also really important to be able to turn on a dime when bad decisions are made. On average, they have been doing that, though it's probably not possible for them to turn on a dime anymore.
It's easy to make criticisms from the peanut gallery, as we aren't beholden to actual facts, context, limitations, et al. Apple has changed from 100m revenue to almost 400m revenue from 2011 to 2021. That speaks for itself. Mistakes have been made, but they also have recovered. From a company management point of view, that's all good and hard to criticize. As such, a lot of the mistakes are pretty small in the grand scheme of things.
In this light, I'd like to know: 1. The whole product marketing decision story on the MacBook 12, the biggest Mac product line failure since the G4 cube, imo. The pro desktops were a debacle during this time, but the rMB12 was meant to replace the MBA and constitute 60%, maybe 70%, of Mac sales. They kept on trying, revved it 3 years in a row, and finally gave up on it during the fateful 2017 year. 2. The whole product marketing decision story on the Mac Pro 2013, iMac Pro 2017, the April 2017 "we made mistakes" meeting. 3. The whole product marketing decision story on why the iPad must remain in-between an iPhone and a Mac in terms of features and functionality. iPads still suffer from this. 4. What convinced them that not shipping a branded monitor was a good idea.
There are bigger strategic and consequential decisions that Cook made that drove Apple much more so than Macs, but perhaps this should be for a later day.
I would argue his departure was a blessing in disguise. Sure I love his designs, usually very elegant, with a lot of attention to detail. But his pursuit of thinness, less ports, etc., have always caused a lot of practical challenges for Mac and iPhone users (particularly Mac).
Some of his design language still lives on at Apple, but I think the hardware have become generally better as a result of his departure.
That's pretty much as expected. Cooks is an accountant at best who has absolutely no understanding how to keep Apple innovating. He leeched off the state of Apple when he'd taken over and admittedly was an effective Chief Excel Operator indeed. But he failed giving Apple a future and I almost expect the next CEO toy (something with AR) is going to be the same thing as the 'Damn scribble toy' (S. Jobs) that failed to deliver a quality product from that guy that used to sell 'sugar water' (S.J. again). History is repeating itself: The last round John Scully managed to grow the Macintosh after Steve left and essentially proved Apple is no longer able to develop a good product (case in point the embarrassing joke that was the Newton). Now Tim Cook took over (again from SJ) and is executing well on all the (many) things Steve started, but I'm afraid he will fail delivering a quality AR Thingamagick (and the 'old' Apple stuff also starts to crumble in oh so many places). I think Peak Apple is already behind us.
Yeah what a shit job he’s doing. Stock is up 1,000% since he too over, while the rest of the market is up 300%. Time to fire that clown.
What hard make or break decision has Tim Cook had to make at Apple since becoming CEO?
I don't know, but one can say that one hallmark of a good CEO is that he recognizes and deals with problems early enough to avoid having to make "make or break" decisions. Heroic fire fighting makes for great drama and sexy news reports, but boring-but-effective fire prevention beats fire fighting any day.
There is no understating how important Jony Ive was in Apple's recovery from its near death experience. But there is only so much minimalism that you can do with products that are basically flat bricks with a screen.
Ive set the Apple design language (which is a great design language), then he went overboard when the iPhone got bendy, when pro users started complaining that there aren't enough ports for them to do their jobs properly, when the trashcan Mac overheated, and when the MacBook keyboards became as durable as an Italian sports car (or any Italian car, actually). Under Ive, Apple was a mass marketer whose design chief thought he was still designing for a low-volume tech boutique.
I first suspected that Apple design was getting unmoored from Apple tech when the Apple Watch came out with a ten thousand dollar gold model that would be dated tech in one year. I thought the gold model meant that Apple designed the watch to make the crystal, innards, and back of the watch upgradeable so that for around the price of the cheapest Apple Watch, you can upgrade your gold Apple Watch to the latest tech and thus be able to use it indefinitely.
What kind of idiot sells a $10K luxury watch that is last year's tech in one year and a useless lump of gold in 3-4? Apple proudly advertised how they did a deep dive into the luxury watch market to learn from the established brands. Did they not learn that with proper maintenance, a $10K Rolex you purchase today will still be running like new 50 years from now? Wealthy people might not mind spending $10K on a watch but they do mind wasting $10K on anything. That's one of the reasons they got to be wealthy.
As great as a designer Jony Ive was and is, it was time to go when form stopped following function at Apple.
It is worth noting that the drivel upon which this article is based was written by Trippe Mickel, a anti-Apple propagandist who has never been right about the company.
There might well be some facts sprinkled in amongst his anti-Cook diatribe, but the accuracy of anything he has ever written on the topic of Apple has been exceedingly low.
We’ve heard that many times. But it’s never been truer than now, and I am pretty sure that most people agree.
The iPhone is beautiful as ever and iOS works great.
iPad might be even better.
The iMac is wonderful. The MacBook Pro is a dream. The new Studio is a bomb. MacOS has never been as useful and beautiful.
I see this period both in upsides and downsides. Even in the best Apple quarters, Apple products always drawbacks. Current products still have some, but they have become so minimal for most usage. Their products are truly nearing perfection. Yes, they can always be made better, and Apple will not rest on its laurels.
Apple needs to find to its roots again, even it will not be Wallstreets darling anymore.
As ive once said "WE ( meaning Apple) have ideas for products, but, technology had not caught up.
I think Apple has a problem in the software front because real good young talent Will want to start their own Apps to make those Zuckerberg riches. The latest revision to the Apple Podcast app just isn’t very exciting.
I agree that Apple could do much better on the software side. I won't speculate about the reasons (for Apple specifically). Software is tough. In some ways tougher than hardware. But Apple could definitely use an infusion of energy, vision, creativity, and "envelope-pushing" on the software side.
This is where UX, graphic and industrial designers need to lead most software engineers by the nose. While software engineers can code up a storm, few are equipped to design a compelling user interface. They simply don’t have the skill set. That’s not to say that no software engineer anywhere possesses these talents. A few SW rockstars do. But they are few and far between.
Apple needs to find to its roots again, even it will not be Wallstreets darling anymore.
As ive once said "WE ( meaning Apple) have ideas for products, but, technology had not caught up.
I think Apple has a problem in the software front because real good young talent Will want to start their own Apps to make those Zuckerberg riches. The latest revision to the Apple Podcast app just isn’t very exciting.
I agree that Apple could do much better on the software side. I won't speculate about the reasons (for Apple specifically). Software is tough. In some ways tougher than hardware. But Apple could definitely use an infusion of energy, vision, creativity, and "envelope-pushing" on the software side.
This is where UX, graphic and industrial designers need to lead most software engineers by the nose. While software engineers can code up a storm, few are equipped to design a compelling user interface. They simply don’t have the skill set. That’s not to say that no software engineer anywhere possesses these talents. A few SW rockstars do. But they are few and far between.
Sure. To some extent. But let's not forget that UX, graphic, and industrial designers have capabilities and insight that exists on a broad spectrum just like SW developers and architects. While UX designers, just to single out one specialty, can provide a great deal of help to SW developers their contributions alone are never enough unless they completely understand the syntax, semantics, and context of the full problem the software is trying to solve. The whole team needs to have someone in a leading role who understands the whole problem from the customer's perspective, or be able to bring in other specialists from within the organization, such as application engineers, field services engineers, product support staff, product managers, competitive analysts, data scientists, marketing folks, etc., who understand the target customer base and can impart their knowledge on the rest of the development team, including UX designers. Using "voice of the customer" engagements with members of the UX, architecture, engineering, and product management team along for the interviews is also a great technique to add to the mix.
I'm a big fan of good UX design, but truth be told, it's rather hard for me to find many applications to hold up as good examples, especially ones that apply to many different problem domains. Personally, my all time favorite UX design has to be the spreadsheet metaphor, whether Lotus 123, Excel, Quattro Pro, Super Calc, or Numbers. I cannot think of any single UX design metaphor that is more broadly applicable, approachable, conformable to more problem domains, or as intuitive to use for so many varied and functional purposes than the spreadsheet. You can use it as a stupid list that does zero calculations. You can use it to manage the finances of a large company. You can use it to calculate Fourier Transforms for evaluating signal processing algorithms. You can use it to perform thousands of other things that cut across many problem domains - all using the same basic application and UX metaphor. Whether you learned how spreadsheets work from using Lotus 123, Excel, or Numbers, chances are you can pick up any application that follows the spreadsheet metaphor and be productive with it in short order, despite some subtle differences. It's withstood the test of time better than any other application that I can think of, besides I suppose, the text editor, which actually has so little functional capability compared to the spreadsheet.
Comments
I wonder if part of what Jobs was able to do that Cook couldn't was say 'no' to Ive in a way that he could understand and respect. Maybe without Jobs to provide the balance, Ive just couldn't perform as well.
The Ive designed mice were garbage.
Sure hope we don't see a reintroduction of the pizza box Macintoshes.
The one commenter’s point about the success of Jony Ive being closely tied to his working and personal relationship with Steve Jobs and the culture that Steve nurtured at Apple during their years working together is probably the closest to reality. But you also have to factor in all of the supporting cast from design to engineering to manufacturing to marketing who also made it happen. It was never the Steve & Jony show then, just like it isn’t the Tim & Craig show today. That kind of dynamic ended in a garage many decades ago.
Jony Ive did some really great work at Apple and his legacy lives on in many ways. But he’s moved on with a massive amount of financial security to free his mind and open his wallet to pursue whatever he decides to focus on in the current phase of his life and career, whether or not it has anything at all to do with Apple or his former endeavors. Jony had his run at Apple and has hang up his cleats from those days with zero regrets. Time for Jony to happily flip the page and move on to his next chapter.
Tim Cook on the other hand, is still in a position where he must continue to guide Apple through the present challenges as the leader of the biggest and best technology company on the planet in a world. This world has become increasingly hostile towards successful technology companies, especially ones like Apple that merit and have earned enviable levels of influence over ordinary people in ways that infuriate social and political leaders and bureaucrats who crave total control over who wins and who loses based on their own agendas.
Tim Cook is the right person for the greatest challenges that Apple is facing right now, just as Jony and Steve were for the time and place they were most needed. Tim isn’t staying awake at night worrying about tapered edges and minimalist user interfaces. Tim’s worried about keeping Apple from being destroyed by outsiders who are trying to level the playing field by stripping away or negating all of the things that Ive, Jobs, Woz, Cook, and a supporting cast of amazing employees at Apple have worked so hard to create over the past nearly 50 years.
Tim is still in the breech. Jony can take a permanent vacation. Don’t know about you, but I know whose shoes I’d rather be standing in right now.
As for Ive, some of his designs are iconic, some of his ideas not so much. Like who okayed that iphone case with the extra battery? Or the mouse charging port? Some clever design is important, but it must be balanced with useability, repairability, manufacturability, and cost.
That makes sense. Both Ive and Marc Newson have shown they are more interested in highly unique, luxury designs for some time now. Just look at their collaborations. Plus Newson has always made these sorts of products. I'm not sure he has ever made anything that one could call truly mass produced. Okay, maybe his Magis Dish Doctor countertop dish drainer is mass produced, but in pretty small numbers. I have one and it's great.
It's hard to pin down bad decisions to just one person as decisions at Apple's level is most definitely a product of constant, collective decision churn. There's always a champion of this or that idea, but there's always someone who didn't put their foot down or turn in their badge. This is why it's so important to have a decision maker with "taste", or a decision process whose outcome is "taste" or elegance, or whatever word you describe for products that people love. Also really important to be able to turn on a dime when bad decisions are made. On average, they have been doing that, though it's probably not possible for them to turn on a dime anymore.
It's easy to make criticisms from the peanut gallery, as we aren't beholden to actual facts, context, limitations, et al. Apple has changed from 100m revenue to almost 400m revenue from 2011 to 2021. That speaks for itself. Mistakes have been made, but they also have recovered. From a company management point of view, that's all good and hard to criticize. As such, a lot of the mistakes are pretty small in the grand scheme of things.
In this light, I'd like to know:
1. The whole product marketing decision story on the MacBook 12, the biggest Mac product line failure since the G4 cube, imo. The pro desktops were a debacle during this time, but the rMB12 was meant to replace the MBA and constitute 60%, maybe 70%, of Mac sales. They kept on trying, revved it 3 years in a row, and finally gave up on it during the fateful 2017 year.
2. The whole product marketing decision story on the Mac Pro 2013, iMac Pro 2017, the April 2017 "we made mistakes" meeting.
3. The whole product marketing decision story on why the iPad must remain in-between an iPhone and a Mac in terms of features and functionality. iPads still suffer from this.
4. What convinced them that not shipping a branded monitor was a good idea.
There are bigger strategic and consequential decisions that Cook made that drove Apple much more so than Macs, but perhaps this should be for a later day.
Some of his design language still lives on at Apple, but I think the hardware have become generally better as a result of his departure.
Ive set the Apple design language (which is a great design language), then he went overboard when the iPhone got bendy, when pro users started complaining that there aren't enough ports for them to do their jobs properly, when the trashcan Mac overheated, and when the MacBook keyboards became as durable as an Italian sports car (or any Italian car, actually). Under Ive, Apple was a mass marketer whose design chief thought he was still designing for a low-volume tech boutique.
I first suspected that Apple design was getting unmoored from Apple tech when the Apple Watch came out with a ten thousand dollar gold model that would be dated tech in one year. I thought the gold model meant that Apple designed the watch to make the crystal, innards, and back of the watch upgradeable so that for around the price of the cheapest Apple Watch, you can upgrade your gold Apple Watch to the latest tech and thus be able to use it indefinitely.
What kind of idiot sells a $10K luxury watch that is last year's tech in one year and a useless lump of gold in 3-4? Apple proudly advertised how they did a deep dive into the luxury watch market to learn from the established brands. Did they not learn that with proper maintenance, a $10K Rolex you purchase today will still be running like new 50 years from now? Wealthy people might not mind spending $10K on a watch but they do mind wasting $10K on anything. That's one of the reasons they got to be wealthy.
As great as a designer Jony Ive was and is, it was time to go when form stopped following function at Apple.
There might well be some facts sprinkled in amongst his anti-Cook diatribe, but the accuracy of anything he has ever written on the topic of Apple has been exceedingly low.
But don’t take my word for it — ask the Macalope.
(unless I’m secretly the Macalope …) 😜
I'm a big fan of good UX design, but truth be told, it's rather hard for me to find many applications to hold up as good examples, especially ones that apply to many different problem domains. Personally, my all time favorite UX design has to be the spreadsheet metaphor, whether Lotus 123, Excel, Quattro Pro, Super Calc, or Numbers. I cannot think of any single UX design metaphor that is more broadly applicable, approachable, conformable to more problem domains, or as intuitive to use for so many varied and functional purposes than the spreadsheet. You can use it as a stupid list that does zero calculations. You can use it to manage the finances of a large company. You can use it to calculate Fourier Transforms for evaluating signal processing algorithms. You can use it to perform thousands of other things that cut across many problem domains - all using the same basic application and UX metaphor. Whether you learned how spreadsheets work from using Lotus 123, Excel, or Numbers, chances are you can pick up any application that follows the spreadsheet metaphor and be productive with it in short order, despite some subtle differences. It's withstood the test of time better than any other application that I can think of, besides I suppose, the text editor, which actually has so little functional capability compared to the spreadsheet.