Apple design chief Jony Ive to depart later this year, create new studio with Apple as cli...

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  • Reply 81 of 186
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member
    I see all these tech writers out there praising John Gruber’s post about this. I don’t see what’s so great about it. It’s quite nasty, especially the part where he complains about the FT using the title “Sir”. Not professional at all.
  • Reply 82 of 186
    Sanctum1972Sanctum1972 Posts: 112unconfirmed, member
    Well Apple does know how to keep secrets. I still think all these hot takes of [insert Apple product I don’t like here] is because of Ive is a little too simplistic. John Gruber was pretty scathing in his blog post. But if you read the New Yorker profile it’s clear Ive never wanted the role of “THE product guy” at Apple. It’s everyone else crowned him that person.
    He is now one of the two most powerful people in the world’s most valuable company. He sometimes listens to CNBC Radio on his hour-long commute from San Francisco to Apple’s offices, in Silicon Valley, but he’s uncomfortable knowing that a hundred thousand Apple employees rely on his decision-making—his taste—and that a sudden announcement of his retirement would ambush Apple shareholders. (To take a number: a ten-percent drop in Apple’s valuation represents seventy-one billion dollars.) According to Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, who is close to Ive and his family, “Jony’s an artist with an artist’s temperament, and he’d be the first to tell you artists aren’t supposed to be responsible for this kind of thing.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come
    It seems pretty clear with his working on Apple Campus and Apple Stores that he was getting bored designing computers. Which makes me wonder just how much he was involved in things like the butterfly keyboard. I doubt he spent much time at all on software design. I do wonder what will happen now. Surely Jeff Williams overseeing his teams is temporary. But I wonder if they’ll put the human interface team under software engineering and the industrial designers under hardware engineering and get rid of the CDO position for good.
     I expect that position to be phased out for good. After all, the Chief Design Officer position is not very common so in that sense, he had one foot inside Apple and the other foot outside of it. And yes, boredom does happen when creative burnout occurs. I'm sure he'll do some contractual work for Apple time to time but when it comes to some of the work, I suspect the internal design team will keep it in-house for NDA purposes. The allure of going independent as a designer or creative is very strong even though he claimed that his work with Apple is not done even though with some limits so that he can juggle between clients. The signs of him wanting to get the F out were there.
    I see a lot of chatter about certain products or design decisions and his involvement but my first thought after him just being burned out is, is there another reason he might be leaving, maybe some other decisions inside the company that made him think it’s time to go? Maybe Apple becoming more and more of a services company just isn’t appealing to him. Maybe he thinks design will have less of a place inside the company in the future. Who knows. What is interesting is the person taking over for ID isn’t the same person who got that job when Ive was promoted to CDO. So I wonder if he’s no longer at the company or it didn’t work out with him in charge?
    You mean Evans Hankey and Alan Dye? They're both in charge of the Industrial Design and Human Interface Design respectively.They will answer to Jeff Williams. It's possible the Services aspect of Apple is making him realize he's got less work to deal with there and decided to go freelance to tackle other creative problems. Apple may be the main client but it would not surprise me if other big name companies will gravitate to him. In my view, going independent is the right thing to do to get the creative juices flowing and handle unique projects that are not related to Apple. It's possible he saw some things within Apple's transition into a direction he found disturbing and wanted out but only as a consultant on a certain capacity. When you go independent, you work with a creative brief and then within the client's parameters and budget. But how much creative control will he have outside of Apple remains to be seen. His creative services will not come cheap. I suspect Tesla might be one of his future clients. Just a hunch. 
  • Reply 83 of 186
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member
    Well Apple does know how to keep secrets. I still think all these hot takes of [insert Apple product I don’t like here] is because of Ive is a little too simplistic. John Gruber was pretty scathing in his blog post. But if you read the New Yorker profile it’s clear Ive never wanted the role of “THE product guy” at Apple. It’s everyone else crowned him that person.
    He is now one of the two most powerful people in the world’s most valuable company. He sometimes listens to CNBC Radio on his hour-long commute from San Francisco to Apple’s offices, in Silicon Valley, but he’s uncomfortable knowing that a hundred thousand Apple employees rely on his decision-making—his taste—and that a sudden announcement of his retirement would ambush Apple shareholders. (To take a number: a ten-percent drop in Apple’s valuation represents seventy-one billion dollars.) According to Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, who is close to Ive and his family, “Jony’s an artist with an artist’s temperament, and he’d be the first to tell you artists aren’t supposed to be responsible for this kind of thing.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come
    It seems pretty clear with his working on Apple Campus and Apple Stores that he was getting bored designing computers. Which makes me wonder just how much he was involved in things like the butterfly keyboard. I doubt he spent much time at all on software design. I do wonder what will happen now. Surely Jeff Williams overseeing his teams is temporary. But I wonder if they’ll put the human interface team under software engineering and the industrial designers under hardware engineering and get rid of the CDO position for good.
     I expect that position to be phased out for good. After all, the Chief Design Officer position is not very common so in that sense, he had one foot inside Apple and the other foot outside of it. And yes, boredom does happen when creative burnout occurs. I'm sure he'll do some contractual work for Apple time to time but when it comes to some of the work, I suspect the internal design team will keep it in-house for NDA purposes. The allure of going independent as a designer or creative is very strong even though he claimed that his work with Apple is not done even though with some limits so that he can juggle between clients. The signs of him wanting to get the F out were there.
    I see a lot of chatter about certain products or design decisions and his involvement but my first thought after him just being burned out is, is there another reason he might be leaving, maybe some other decisions inside the company that made him think it’s time to go? Maybe Apple becoming more and more of a services company just isn’t appealing to him. Maybe he thinks design will have less of a place inside the company in the future. Who knows. What is interesting is the person taking over for ID isn’t the same person who got that job when Ive was promoted to CDO. So I wonder if he’s no longer at the company or it didn’t work out with him in charge?
    You mean Evans Hankey and Alan Dye? They're both in charge of the Industrial Design and Human Interface Design respectively.They will answer to Jeff Williams. It's possible the Services aspect of Apple is making him realize he's got less work to deal with there and decided to go freelance to tackle other creative problems. Apple may be the main client but it would not surprise me if other big name companies will gravitate to him. In my view, going independent is the right thing to do to get the creative juices flowing and handle unique projects that are not related to Apple. It's possible he saw some things within Apple's transition into a direction he found disturbing and wanted out but only as a consultant on a certain capacity. When you go independent, you work with a creative brief and then within the client's parameters and budget. But how much creative control will he have outside of Apple remains to be seen. His creative services will not come cheap. I suspect Tesla might be one of his future clients. Just a hunch. 
    Evans Hankey was not the person picked to lead ID when Ive was promoted to CDO and went to work on Apple Park, Richard Howarth was. So either he’s no longer at Apple, his leadership of ID didn’t work out or he didn’t want the responsibility so they gave it to someone else. For what it’s worth a former Apple employee (who I believe worked in engineering ) tweeted positively about Hankey saying “she makes shit happen”. Also notable: a woman in a high ranking position at Apple. 
    edited June 2019 mattinozradarthekatfastasleep
  • Reply 84 of 186
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    Well Apple does know how to keep secrets. I still think all these hot takes of [insert Apple product I don’t like here] is because of Ive is a little too simplistic. John Gruber was pretty scathing in his blog post. But if you read the New Yorker profile it’s clear Ive never wanted the role of “THE product guy” at Apple. It’s everyone else crowned him that person.
    He is now one of the two most powerful people in the world’s most valuable company. He sometimes listens to CNBC Radio on his hour-long commute from San Francisco to Apple’s offices, in Silicon Valley, but he’s uncomfortable knowing that a hundred thousand Apple employees rely on his decision-making—his taste—and that a sudden announcement of his retirement would ambush Apple shareholders. (To take a number: a ten-percent drop in Apple’s valuation represents seventy-one billion dollars.) According to Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, who is close to Ive and his family, “Jony’s an artist with an artist’s temperament, and he’d be the first to tell you artists aren’t supposed to be responsible for this kind of thing.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come
    It seems pretty clear with his working on Apple Campus and Apple Stores that he was getting bored designing computers. Which makes me wonder just how much he was involved in things like the butterfly keyboard. I doubt he spent much time at all on software design. I do wonder what will happen now. Surely Jeff Williams overseeing his teams is temporary. But I wonder if they’ll put the human interface team under software engineering and the industrial designers under hardware engineering and get rid of the CDO position for good.
     I expect that position to be phased out for good. After all, the Chief Design Officer position is not very common so in that sense, he had one foot inside Apple and the other foot outside of it. And yes, boredom does happen when creative burnout occurs. I'm sure he'll do some contractual work for Apple time to time but when it comes to some of the work, I suspect the internal design team will keep it in-house for NDA purposes. The allure of going independent as a designer or creative is very strong even though he claimed that his work with Apple is not done even though with some limits so that he can juggle between clients. The signs of him wanting to get the F out were there.

    I'm curious, what were the signs? I never saw any.

    I think it goes way back some time after Jobs passed away and Jony didn't have much of a sounding board from someone who speaks on his wavelength. And when Apple apparently brought Marc Newson on board, it was for that reason and to deal with the Apple Watch design and probably a few other things just so that Ive's creative juices continue to flow. So I get that and know what it's like to create without having some critique or feedback. 

    Fast forward to the iPhone 6 and then on with the same design language, along with the MacBooks. Even iMacs. They seemed to not have changed much but only to a small degree. It's as if Joy was sitting there content with the design and focused on side projects outside of Apple such as the Christmas Tree, Holga(?) camera redesign for auctioning, a chair ( if I recall ), and several other things that seemed to take up his time along with the Apple Park planning. It was as if he was twiddling his thumbs, itching to do things outside of Apple's scope. 

    And then the next signs were Angela Arendts exit and the industrial design team members which was a big hit. It was right there is when I smelled a big exit is in the making. If I were Jony and I see a bunch of my close design colleagues leaving Apple Park, life would get very lonely and seeing all new faces there would probably make things worse. It's that sense of creative isolation that probably drove him to decide that and also he did mention wanting to go back to England/UK. It would make sense for Jony to follow them that way.
    Well, the other take is there could be a new guard making waves internally, the old guard are moving aside to make room, enjoy their cash horde and do something different feeling like they are leaving in good hands.  Given most are walking away with a fair bit of their own reward tied tothe  share value you'd have to think they have some confidence or wouldn't make way.

    Looking forward to it, hoping it's a sign that team have something in waiting in the wings ready to release as a test to see if their boss takes the CDO chair.
    Could even be two things given there are two people noted as now working direct with the C-level team I assume as a test to see who belongs at the table.
  • Reply 85 of 186
    tyler82tyler82 Posts: 1,100member
    Your favorite Jony Ive designed product?

    mine: Pixar lamp iMac. 
  • Reply 86 of 186
    Sanctum1972Sanctum1972 Posts: 112unconfirmed, member
    Well Apple does know how to keep secrets. I still think all these hot takes of [insert Apple product I don’t like here] is because of Ive is a little too simplistic. John Gruber was pretty scathing in his blog post. But if you read the New Yorker profile it’s clear Ive never wanted the role of “THE product guy” at Apple. It’s everyone else crowned him that person.
    He is now one of the two most powerful people in the world’s most valuable company. He sometimes listens to CNBC Radio on his hour-long commute from San Francisco to Apple’s offices, in Silicon Valley, but he’s uncomfortable knowing that a hundred thousand Apple employees rely on his decision-making—his taste—and that a sudden announcement of his retirement would ambush Apple shareholders. (To take a number: a ten-percent drop in Apple’s valuation represents seventy-one billion dollars.) According to Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, who is close to Ive and his family, “Jony’s an artist with an artist’s temperament, and he’d be the first to tell you artists aren’t supposed to be responsible for this kind of thing.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come
    It seems pretty clear with his working on Apple Campus and Apple Stores that he was getting bored designing computers. Which makes me wonder just how much he was involved in things like the butterfly keyboard. I doubt he spent much time at all on software design. I do wonder what will happen now. Surely Jeff Williams overseeing his teams is temporary. But I wonder if they’ll put the human interface team under software engineering and the industrial designers under hardware engineering and get rid of the CDO position for good.
     I expect that position to be phased out for good. After all, the Chief Design Officer position is not very common so in that sense, he had one foot inside Apple and the other foot outside of it. And yes, boredom does happen when creative burnout occurs. I'm sure he'll do some contractual work for Apple time to time but when it comes to some of the work, I suspect the internal design team will keep it in-house for NDA purposes. The allure of going independent as a designer or creative is very strong even though he claimed that his work with Apple is not done even though with some limits so that he can juggle between clients. The signs of him wanting to get the F out were there.
    I see a lot of chatter about certain products or design decisions and his involvement but my first thought after him just being burned out is, is there another reason he might be leaving, maybe some other decisions inside the company that made him think it’s time to go? Maybe Apple becoming more and more of a services company just isn’t appealing to him. Maybe he thinks design will have less of a place inside the company in the future. Who knows. What is interesting is the person taking over for ID isn’t the same person who got that job when Ive was promoted to CDO. So I wonder if he’s no longer at the company or it didn’t work out with him in charge?
    You mean Evans Hankey and Alan Dye? They're both in charge of the Industrial Design and Human Interface Design respectively.They will answer to Jeff Williams. It's possible the Services aspect of Apple is making him realize he's got less work to deal with there and decided to go freelance to tackle other creative problems. Apple may be the main client but it would not surprise me if other big name companies will gravitate to him. In my view, going independent is the right thing to do to get the creative juices flowing and handle unique projects that are not related to Apple. It's possible he saw some things within Apple's transition into a direction he found disturbing and wanted out but only as a consultant on a certain capacity. When you go independent, you work with a creative brief and then within the client's parameters and budget. But how much creative control will he have outside of Apple remains to be seen. His creative services will not come cheap. I suspect Tesla might be one of his future clients. Just a hunch. 
    Evans Hankey was not the person picked to lead ID when Ive was promoted to CDO and went to work on Apple Park, Richard Howarth was. So either he’s no longer at Apple, his leadership of ID didn’t work out or he didn’t want the responsibility so they gave it to someone else. For what it’s worth a former Apple employee (who I believe worked in engineering ) tweeted positively about Hankey saying “she makes shit happen”. Also notable: a woman in a high ranking position at Apple. 
    That's the guy! You're right. He's the one that disappeared so it must be he got fired or stepped down to let someone else be in charge. I think he also left the company with the other designers not too long ago after Angela's exit. 
  • Reply 87 of 186
    RadMaxRadMax Posts: 14member
    I think plenty of people found the recent designs from Apple to represent a poor choice of compromises.  I for one am glad to hear that the lead design position at Apple will be occupied by someone other than JI.  He did some great things, but his departure is overdue.
    AI_lias
  • Reply 88 of 186
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    tyler82 said:
    Your favorite Jony Ive designed product?

    mine: Pixar lamp iMac. 
    Mine too..
    Been looking at ways to convert my 17inch to USB-c Hub and second monitor just so I can have it on my desk.

    AppleExposedJWSC
  • Reply 89 of 186
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    tyler82 said:
    Your favorite Jony Ive designed product?

    mine: Pixar lamp iMac. 
    I still have my 2000 model. It's one of the few pieces of old vintage tech that I can't seem to part with. I was even using it as a headless Mac with a FW400 connected RAID until I bought a Mac mini in 2014. I had to use FW400 because it only came with USB 1.0 at 12 Mbips.

    Getting the 14 year newer Mac mini certainly helped with speed in booting and I didn't have to run OS X Server (which was then deprecated but still an allowed developer download though oddly still required a license that I somehow got to work before it locked me out) to use as a Time Machine server.
    JWSC
  • Reply 90 of 186
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    The way I see it, he watched those clowns at Beats get paid billions for their lousy (but popular) headphones and started to think, “what the hell am I doing here?”.
    beowulfschmidt
  • Reply 91 of 186
    canukstormcanukstorm Posts: 2,695member
    ...my sense (fear) is Mr Ive & Mr Jobs were a symbiotic miracle or anomaly, along with so many other contributions from presumably many... Can such 'chemistry' be hard to define? Was Steve Jobs the best design critic/foil Mr Ive might have had ? I have not really been that keen on a number of Apple design decisions since that 'era', at the simplest level dropping such things as Kensington lock slots on the more compact hardware, to a mouse with locked in batteries and a charge jack that makes use impossible when the batteries die - perhaps it is just me, and no doubt there are many amazing contributions and concerns I cannot know - I remember reading somewhere (SJ/JI?) 'the best ideas can be as fragile as a whisper' and so I hope the 'back room' refines that magic chemistry again - I have seen the 'whisper' be both caught and developed, and destroyed by rash judgement. I understand the sentiment, and to me anathema to corporate culture generally in the face of profit, deadlines, efficiency et al vs design excellence...

    I will be most interested to see what comes out of FromLove unshackled from the scope of current Apple corporate...

    edited June 2019
  • Reply 92 of 186
    hammeroftruthhammeroftruth Posts: 1,303member
    I think in the long run this will be good for Apple. In the past Apple used to consult with designers like Frogdesign who helped make some pretty cool products and actually followed Jobs when he left to start NEXT. 

    To be honest, I’m not sure that Ive’s contributions to iOS were better than the skeuomorphic design that preceded it. 

    I agree with some of the statements made here from other posters that without Jobs, Ive doesn’t have a hyper critical sounding board. 
    Perhaps that is what he misses too, having someone critique his work to make him work harder in his designs and not just give him kudos. 

    It’s scary to see Ive leave, but it’s time for some new blood and new designs. 
    JWSC
  • Reply 93 of 186
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    The way I see it, he watched those clowns at Beats get paid billions for their lousy (but popular) headphones and started to think, “what the hell am I doing here?”.
    I have to imagine that thought at least crossed his mind, albeit without your negativity about Beats.
    edited June 2019 JWSC
  • Reply 94 of 186
    hammeroftruthhammeroftruth Posts: 1,303member

    From this. 


    To this. 

    Thanks Jony. 
    Soliradarthekat
  • Reply 95 of 186
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member
    RadMax said:
    I think plenty of people found the recent designs from Apple to represent a poor choice of compromises.  I for one am glad to hear that the lead design position at Apple will be occupied by someone other than JI.  He did some great things, but his departure is overdue.
    One person alone does not design everything or make all design decisions. People have been saying Ive was semi-retired for years. But yet he’s the one responsible for every decision? Please.
    edited June 2019 JWSC
  • Reply 96 of 186
    rain22rain22 Posts: 132member
    This is fantastic news!
    He should have departed 7 years ago imo. 

    Here's hoping for innovation again at Apple. 
  • Reply 97 of 186
    JWSCJWSC Posts: 1,203member
    I wouldn't be surprised if he has been let go because of the MacBook Pro keyboard debacle and possibly was also unhappy to have to design a tower.

    Not a chance. There were plenty of "gates" under Ive. Apple ignores the noise unless it's a complete fu**-up then you'll get fired.

    toysandme said:
    I’m hoping the next boss is not colorblind. 

    me too /s





    Aaah, colors.  I do recall reading somewhere that Jony and Steve were definitely NOT in agreement about Bondi Blue.  Steve really liked it and Jony hated it.  At some point in the argument Jony stormed out of the room in disgust.  Both were very passionate about their design sensibilities.

    AppleExposed
  • Reply 98 of 186
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member
    rain22 said:
    This is fantastic news!
    He should have departed 7 years ago imo. 

    Here's hoping for innovation again at Apple. 

    Right, because Jony Ive was the only one responsible for innovation at Apple.
    SoliAppleExposedmdriftmeyer
  • Reply 99 of 186
    And, of course, John “get off my lawn” Gruber begins the handwringing. 🤦🏻‍♂️
    SoliAppleExposedtmaybeowulfschmidtfastasleep
  • Reply 100 of 186
    JWSCJWSC Posts: 1,203member
    MisterKit said:
    Didn’t see this one coming. It would have been one thing if he had retired after an illustrious and iconic career, but to start up his own company where his ideas are on the open market and possibly going to the highest bidder, well, that’s just a bit fuzzy and unclear. Maybe one day the back story will come out.

    It is hard to imagine Jony Ive will ever match the success he had working for Apple.
    It’s not about achieving career success.  Jony did that a long time ago.  And in doing so he changed Silicon Valley’s and the world’s perception toward the nascent field of industrial design, formerly known as commercial art.  Those not in the business thought industrial design was a cosmetic touch to the exterior of tech products.  Jony unequivocally demonstrated that industrial design can impact almost everything inside and out.  Jobs inherently understood this and he was able to use, and indeed, push Jony and his team further than any industrial designer had ever gone before.  Design at Apple is not just cosmetic.  It is cared for in every facet of their products.  That is Jony’s legacy.

    From one industrial designer to another,  thank you Jony.  You’re my fricking hero!
    Soliradarthekatdblanch369
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