Apple loses another designer who worked in Jony Ive's core team
Duncan Kerr, a designer who has been a part of Apple's journey since the late 1990s is now departing, marking another loss for the design team in a relatively short span of time.
Jony Ive
In February, Apple lost designer Bart Andre, who had been with the company since 1992. He was Apple's longest-serving industrial designer.
On Wednesday, it was learned that Kerr would also be departing, though his plans are currently unknown. Kerr had worked at Apple since 1999 and was heavily involved in developing several generations of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
As Bloomberg points out, there aren't many of Ive's original team left. Since Ive's departure in 2019, designers Jody Akana, Anthony Ashcroft, Jeremy Bataillou, Joe Tan, Eugene Whang, and Andrea Williams have left the Cupertino-based company.
According to reports, there is a feeling of unease among employees due to the recent changes in leadership at Apple. Jeff Williams has taken over as the head of the design team and has allegedly introduced cost-cutting measures, which have caused some concern. In addition, there have been rumors that Apple has scaled back on its exploratory projects, which were a hallmark of previous design lead, Jony Ive.
However, some of these designers have been at Apple for more than 25 years. The recent departures are more likely about retirement more than dissatisfaction, given the ages of those involved.
For others, it may be greener pastures. Some of the core team have left to work for LoveFrom, Ive's new design company.
Currently, only a handful of Ive's original team are left at Apple. This includes Richard Howarth, Ben Schaffer, and Molly Anderson.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
sounds like personnel conflict. Some “new” guy coming in snd “wrecking everything” isn't going to sit well. After a while, you get tired of it snd decide it’s no longer fun, no longer feels important and not worth it any longer.
you break that and you’re in trouble.
https://macdailynews.com/2024/02/14/apples-longest-serving-designer-bart-andre-retiring-from-company/
Some have family that they want to spend more time with.
Apple doesn't have many new design challenges left. The mobiles and wearables are all screens now. The laptops are nearly perfectly designed.
They still need a strong design team for their newer products like Vision Pro but they will have trained a new generation of designers.
also, you said “Apple does not have many new design challenges left”. What ? That does not sound good for future in Cupertino.
Then Steve Jobs died and left the company in the hands of the bean counting penny pincher Tim Cook, who at first didn't dare to object Ive and also didn't really care about the product design. That's why at first Apple Design has gone crazy (butterfly keyboard) and by now has become rather stale and boring in the last few years. Case in point are AppleTV and Mac Studio .... that essentially just extended the height of the box making it look rather ugly or the MacBook Air design that finally succumbed to the operations pressure being put in a square box that is plain and boring.
That's probably why Ive eventually left. He lost his support in the company leadership and was bored with the new restrictions of the penny-pincher.
I do remember the Apple days when everybody was scared, when Tim Cook showed up. Because it usually was followed by cost-cutting and lay offs in the 00's.
So that's where we are at. Yeah Tim Cook managed the substance of the SJ Area well financially, but Apple totally lost it's edge.
So yes old-time designers are leaving heading for greener pastures (and I also assume they no longer need to work for money anyways).
In the case of Apple, many are leaving Apple not due to death, but for other reasons. But the reasons are largely irrelevant when we ponder the topic of CHANGE and consider its importance. It is very Jobsian. So while some may see a bleak future due to the OLD leaving Apple, Steve Jobs might actually see it differently. And perhaps so should we. Embracing change and getting a new generation of people designing at Apple isn't all dark and worrisome news, folks.
Here is the 2023 Macbook Pro:
Subtle changes over 8 years and likely even less over another 8 years.
iPad Pro 2018:
iPad Pro 2024:
Subtle changes over 6 years. Their products still sell in large numbers because people always needs replacement models eventually but none of the products that make up well over 90% of their product revenue need radically new designs, only some accessories and low volume products.
He was an influence for design over engineering, often resulting in products that are difficult or impossible to maintain, or have lousy characteristics (glue everywhere, poor cooling, inadequate battery life, lack of strength to name a few)
Not sure how the Air looks boring to you, I think it's a perfect refinement of the product (are you suggesting there's something amazing about the wedge design of the previous era? Why?). The latest iPhones, iPads, MacBook Pros all are the best they've ever been. Contrast the current MacBook Pros with the thin last gen Intel designs which ran hot and necessitated the butterfly keyboard the you complain about. The Mac Studio is an extension of the Mac mini design that's been around since the Jobs era. What else does it need to not be "boring" to you? As Ive has always said, design is about how something works, not how it looks. Who gives a crap what the Apple TV box looks like?
People make it sound like Ive designed products wholly by himself. In reality, he managed a team of industrial designers, all who made contributions. Additionally, they worked in tandem with a whole other team dedicated to input devices — which designed things like the butterfly keyboard. His deputy, Evans Hankey, was probably far more involved in day-to-day design choices than Ive later in his tenure, along with the rest of the design team. Strangely she's not mentioned in this article, and she just left last year.
Ive by all accounts was burned out and checked out, and wanted to do something else than iterating on consumer electronics for the later part of his career after where he had brought the hardware design over the years at Apple, which was almost three decades. He certainly could afford to leave and chase these kinds of projects with his buddy Marc Newson, so he did.
Tim Cook has been there since '98. He will forever be known as the person who scaled Apple to the behemoth that it is, able to manufacture the staggering numbers of devices they sell because ... guess what, people still love them and how they're designed.
iPad OS is fine and getting better like the hardware, if you don't like it there is a marketplace choice a Samsung Galaxy Tab with Android OS running Chrome and it will phone home.