Jony Ive is no longer consulting for Apple
Apple and Ive's design firm, LoveFrom, are no longer working together, with both parties choosing not to extend the existing contract.
Jony Ive
Jony Ive left Apple in 2019 to create his own independent design consultancy, LoveFrom, following nearly three decades at the company.
However, Ive continued to work closely with Apple in the following years, confirming that the two companies were still working together in 2021.
However, according to The New York Times, the companies decided not to renew their contract. While it's unclear precisely what caused the split, chances are neither party was pleased with the current deal.
After all, Ive's design firm had a habit of poaching designers from Apple.
Additionally, Apple executives were concerned over how much the company paid Ive.
And it was likely that Ive had grown tired of dealing with Apple. While working with Apple, LoveFrom wasn't allowed to work on any projects deemed competitive to Apple.
It was learned recently that Ive had left Apple burnt out and tired in the wake of CEO Tim Cook's numerous structural changes.
Read on AppleInsider
Jony Ive
Jony Ive left Apple in 2019 to create his own independent design consultancy, LoveFrom, following nearly three decades at the company.
However, Ive continued to work closely with Apple in the following years, confirming that the two companies were still working together in 2021.
However, according to The New York Times, the companies decided not to renew their contract. While it's unclear precisely what caused the split, chances are neither party was pleased with the current deal.
After all, Ive's design firm had a habit of poaching designers from Apple.
Additionally, Apple executives were concerned over how much the company paid Ive.
And it was likely that Ive had grown tired of dealing with Apple. While working with Apple, LoveFrom wasn't allowed to work on any projects deemed competitive to Apple.
It was learned recently that Ive had left Apple burnt out and tired in the wake of CEO Tim Cook's numerous structural changes.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
It's like he forgot that people buy products in order to use them, not just for looking at them. A good designer needs to blend both. Looking good while being fully functional
I wish the UX would be more clear and intuitive and he literally made the iOS 7 difficult. There's so much cognitive burden. It's too flat. It's difficult to intuitively discover.
But I see the refinements over time and every iteration, the cognitive burden becomes lighter and lighter.
By all appearance Tim Cook manages by group consensus. Tim, and his leadership team, recognize that design is important. But it’s not Tim’s passion like it was to Steve.
Steve was an iconoclast, a maverick, and rule breaker. But he is gone and there’s no re-creating him. Apple’s leadership team have no choice but to run Apple with the skills and passions that they have available to them. The Steve and Jony show, great as it was, is a bygone era for Apple that can never return.
So, a toast to what was, and a second toast to better things to come for both Apple and Jony.
Unless someone is better than Jony at Apple, this is sad. I hope it’s not a personal thing between Tim and Jony.
Jony Ive was quite literally the best industrial designer in history. I put Dieter Rams at #2 and Rams himself said Ive was way better than himself because he never had lines of people waiting to buy his products!
I have great confidence in Apple’s current in-house design team, and clearly the company does too — since they’ve let the contract lapse. Not worried about the future, loved a lot of what Ive’s team did also.
With macOS, for example they changed buttons to look like icons, while they used to look like buttons before they moved to a flat design. Some elements are hidden and hard to discover. Similar issues in iOS.
But fortunately we got rid of the awkward skeuomorphism as well.
Result: confusion. It looks the same but does not behave the same. I have a macOS expectation on iPad and vice versa.
I hoped they’d chosen an overarching design language but within a distinct ‘per operating system’ language.
To be provocative: When was the last time Apple made some big mistake that's largely due to design and product thinness. The 2016 Macbook. That design was probably fixed a year before (2015), since then Ive is (mentally) elsewhere.
Since then Apple stopped risking things in product design. Which I think is bad. If you don't risk you no longer impress. That's what happened at Apple. They no longer push the envelope further. The latest (totally boring looking) Air is proof of that. I think that is sad and will damage Apple in the long term bigger than any design flaw did in the past.
Yes we probably won't see another 'innovation' like the butterfly keyboard. But we probably won't see innovation, like the Unibody Laptop designs, flat panel all in one computer (started by Spartacus) etc either. New innovations will probably come from the bean counters: 'Let's make it cheaper to manufacture, looks are not important'. I would rather like to see Apple fail once in a while to over-design, than to bore people to death with 'things as usual'.
Tim knows that himself: While Steve always lead up to the new designs and generated excitement in his keynotes. Tim shows the 'product' up front and continues with lot's of techno bubble and costs. While Steve concentrated on 'how this will imrpove your live', Tim concentrates on lists and numbers.
The company will execute well based on the momentum generated by Jony and Steve (at that time Apple was always ahead of the curve), but no momentum has come after that. So enjoy it while it lasts.