Jony Ive disappears from list of advisors for Saudi 'megacity' project [u]

AppleInsider · October 9, 2018 6:52PM

Apple's chief design officer, Jony Ive, has vanished from a list of advisors for a "megacity" planned to launch in Saudi Arabia in 2025. [Updated with correction on NEOM's size]

Ive was removed from the list on Tuesday after a brief appearance, and Apple has confirmed that Ive isn't involved in the project, according to BuzzFeed News' Tom Gara. It's not clear why Ive's name was on the roster in the first place.

A number of other prominent figures are still mentioned, such as Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen, Foster + Partners CEO Norman Foster, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.

The megacity project, known as NEOM, was originally announced by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in October 2017. It's expected to cost some $500 billion, and cover 26,500 square kilometers in northwestern Saudi Arabia, extending into Egypt and Jordan. Only the first phase should be ready in 2025.

Ive is one of the most famous product designers in the world, thanks to work on devices like Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads. He has also had some involvement in Apple architecture, contributing to Apple stores and even the company's new Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino.

The designer could have conceivably applied his minimalist aesthetic to NEOM buildings and helped direct the use of technology in the city.

samrod · October 9, 2018 7:14PM

"A little over 0.01 square miles" is about 200 x 150 yards, basically one city block. That's no mega city. It's a small village.

mac_dog · October 9, 2018 7:18PM

samrod said:

"A little over 0.01 square miles" is about 200 x 150 yards, basically one city block. That's no mega city. It's a small village.

No. It’s nothing more than an obscene amount of money.

foregoneconclusion · October 9, 2018 7:19PM

samrod said:

"A little over 0.01 square miles" is about 200 x 150 yards, basically one city block. That's no mega city. It's a small village.

I think there's a mistake in the article. Should be 26,500 square kilometers not square meters.

maccad · October 9, 2018 7:34PM

samrod said:

"A little over 0.01 square miles" is about 200 x 150 yards, basically one city block. That's no mega city. It's a small village.

It's 26,500 square kilometers, not square meters. That would be approximately 10,200 square miles. Parts of it will be in Egypt and Jordan.

emoeller · October 9, 2018 7:37PM

The special zone (which includes some areas outside of Saudi Arabia) is 26,500 sq Km ( http://www.neom.com/content/pdfs/NEOM-Fact-Sheet-en.pdf ).

Interesting project, and with Saudi money backing much of the half Trillion in capex, it could be something special. Problem is it is a solution looking for a problem and those rarely turn out well.

jfc_pa · October 9, 2018 8:17PM

PR got ahead of the negotiators.

mikethemartian · October 9, 2018 8:21PM

He wanted the houses to be too thin for the people to fit in them

elcapitan · October 9, 2018 8:23PM

mikethemartian said:

He wanted the houses to be too thin for the people to fit in them

Not only that, but the houses could only have one type of door, have inadequate ventilation so they overheat and all furniture had to be bolted or glued to the floor or walls.

edited October 2018

jwsc · October 9, 2018 9:18PM

ElCapitan said:

mikethemartian said:

He wanted the houses to be too thin for the people to fit in them

Not only that, but the houses could only have one type of door, have inadequate ventilation so they overheat and all furniture had to be bolted or glued to the floor or walls.

And all the walls will be made of glass so you can have fun bumping into them as you move about the house. 😜

entropys · October 9, 2018 9:37PM

Great, maybe Ive could concentrate instead on designing macs that can be fixed, have the latest hardware, aren’t constantly throttled, and don’t cost the annual income of a phillipino house servant in Saudi Arabia.

zoetmb · October 9, 2018 9:42PM

samrod said:

"A little over 0.01 square miles" is about 200 x 150 yards, basically one city block. That's no mega city. It's a small village.

Where are you getting that? It says it's 26,500 square kilometers. That's 10,200 square miles or the equivalent of 101 x 101 miles. The five boroughs of New York City make up only 303 square miles. It's enormous - the equivalent of almost 34 New York Cities.

staigard · October 9, 2018 10:21PM

bloggerblog said:

Appleish said:

Good. Nobody should be doing business with such a repressive, bloodthirsty country. There are other predominantly Muslim countries much more deserving of his attention.

Please enlighten us: how many individuals did the USA kill, in the last two decades, compared to Saudi. Would love too see your "bloodthirsty" comparison.
I'm no fan of the Saudi leadership, but I'm no fan of racial ignorance either.

Well granted, the USA has killed a lot of people in the last two decades. Especially using drones in anarchic regions of the world.

But what MBS (the Saudi boss) has just done is an order of magnitude worse. I ask you ... Have any American citizens been killed (and their bodies dismembered) during a routine visit to an American embassy just because they have dared criticize the people in power in the home country ?

rogifan_new · October 9, 2018 10:27PM

How the heck did he make this list in the first place?

retrogusto · October 9, 2018 10:36PM

They didn’t appreciate that he had the courage to get rid of glass windows, a centuries-old technology, and replace them with a superior digital solution.

clemynx · October 10, 2018 2:47AM

I wonder how much carbon will be released for the creation of this city, which will undoubtedly be sold under a faux-ecological message.
To avoid carbon emissions, the best thing to do is to reworks existing cities. Building a city from the ground up is an absurd marketing stunt that will be good neither for the planet nor for the less fortunate.

jcc · October 10, 2018 3:32AM

Good. Since Job's death, these bozos like Cook and Ive have completely lost focus. They should spend less time on these vanity projects and focus on making better Apple products as they've gone way down over the past 5 years.

If Steve were alive they would have never been allowed to take on these projects. Jobs would have cursed at them like a truck driver.

sflocal · October 10, 2018 5:17AM

jcc said:

Good. Since Job's death, these bozos like Cook and Ive have completely lost focus. They should spend less time on these vanity projects and focus on making better Apple products as they've gone way down over the past 5 years.

If Steve were alive they would have never been allowed to take on these projects. Jobs would have cursed at them like a truck driver.

Forget the fact that Tim took Apple to the trillion dollar mark... how well did you know Steve to know how he would react?

elcapitan · October 10, 2018 6:15AM

sflocal said:

jcc said:

Good. Since Job's death, these bozos like Cook and Ive have completely lost focus. They should spend less time on these vanity projects and focus on making better Apple products as they've gone way down over the past 5 years.

If Steve were alive they would have never been allowed to take on these projects. Jobs would have cursed at them like a truck driver.

Forget the fact that Tim took Apple to the trillion dollar mark... how well did you know Steve to know how he would react?

Under Steve's leadership the focus was never to be the most profitable or the company with highest valuation. The focus was on a) getting the products right to dazzle and please the customers b) market creation.

mikethemartian · October 10, 2018 10:08AM

retrogusto said:

They didn’t appreciate that he had the courage to get rid of glass windows, a centuries-old technology, and replace them with a superior digital solution.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf_kjwOSjGI

georgebmac · October 10, 2018 11:43AM

bloggerblog said:

Appleish said:

Good. Nobody should be doing business with such a repressive, bloodthirsty country. There are other predominantly Muslim countries much more deserving of his attention.

Please enlighten us: how many individuals did the USA kill, in the last two decades, compared to Saudi. Would love too see your "bloodthirsty" comparison.
I'm no fan of the Saudi leadership, but I'm no fan of racial ignorance either.

"We're Number 2. We try harder!"

Jony Ive disappears from list of advisors for Saudi 'megacity' project [u]

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