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

Posted:
in General Discussion edited October 2018
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]

NEOM megacity project


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.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 20
    samrodsamrod Posts: 60unconfirmed, member
    "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.
    brakken
  • Reply 2 of 20
    mac_dogmac_dog Posts: 1,069member
    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. 
  • Reply 3 of 20
    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.
  • Reply 4 of 20
    maccadmaccad Posts: 87member
    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.
    stantheman
  • Reply 5 of 20
    emoelleremoeller Posts: 574member
    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.


  • Reply 6 of 20
    JFC_PAJFC_PA Posts: 932member
    PR got ahead of the negotiators. 
    JWSC
  • Reply 7 of 20
    He wanted the houses to be too thin for the people to fit in them

    razorpitGeorgeBMac
  • Reply 8 of 20
    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 retrogustotokyojimuGeorgeBMacatomic101
  • Reply 9 of 20
    JWSCJWSC Posts: 1,203member
    ElCapitan 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.  😜
  • Reply 10 of 20
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,152member
    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.
  • Reply 11 of 20
    zoetmbzoetmb Posts: 2,654member
    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.  


  • Reply 12 of 20
    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 ?
    razorpittokyojimu
  • Reply 13 of 20
    How the heck did he make this list in the first place?
    GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 14 of 20
    retrogustoretrogusto Posts: 1,109member
    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. 
  • Reply 15 of 20
    clemynxclemynx Posts: 1,552member
    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. 
  • Reply 16 of 20
    jccjcc Posts: 326member
    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.
    ElCapitan
  • Reply 17 of 20
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    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?
    macgui
  • Reply 18 of 20
    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.
  • Reply 19 of 20
    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
  • Reply 20 of 20
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    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!"
This discussion has been closed.