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Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client
- alaskamiller 7y agoInevitably most every creative person crave independence regardless level. So he pulled a kanye and started his own Donda. Now awaiting LoveForm x Mercedes, LoveFrom x Piguet, LoveFrom x Nike, LoveFrom x Apple luxury goods collabs.
- PascLeRasc 7y agoI'm not sure why you're being downvoted, this is an interesting idea. I'd love to see Jony Ive's design language make it into other products like shoes or car interiors.
- will_pseudonym 7y agoNo LoveForm x Yeezy? :)
- ericzawo 7y agoA fitting name for Ive's new firm. Now perhaps Apple can get back to work on fixing the function part of their laptops, like, say, the keyboard.
- freehunter 7y agoI actually didn't see the name of the new company in the linked article. Turns out it's called LoveFrom. https://www.wired.com/story/jony-ive-leaves-apple/ https://www.wired.com/story/jony-ive-leaves-apple/
- steve19 7y agoWell we knew it wasn't going to be called LoveFunction
- hapless 7y agoMaybe we'll get some Apple products that have features other than "Now 1% thinner"
- leadingthenet 7y agoMost Apple mobile devices actually got thicker recently, including the latest iPhone.
- azhenley 7y agoStock is down 1% after hours. Will be interesting to watch it tomorrow.
- atonse 7y agoI have to imagine that he's going to have the biggest non-solicitation clause ever in history. He's partnering with Marc Newsom and others... who he's collaborated with heavily in the past for Apple Watch (and other one-off auction products, etc). Jony's got to be tired of designing with the Apple aesthetic after all this time, and maybe wants to design a car or toaster again.
- pdpi 7y ago> Jony's got to be tired of designing with the Apple aesthetic after all this time In many ways, I'd argue that vice-versa is just as true. My understanding is that thin-at-all-costs is largely an Ive directive.
- wmf 7y agoJony Ive defines the Apple aesthetic and he has already changed it multiple times (bondi blue, white plastic, aluminum & glass) so he could change it again if he wants.
- atonse 7y agoYes but they'd still be computers, with computer-use-case constraints.
- metafizikal 7y agoI agree, I bet this is about designing non-computer products for him, but it looks like he'll still have some level of input on Apple products as an external consultant.
- h3throw 7y agoHe's going to agree to one after leaving? As a part of severance?
- wmf 7y agoYeah, more likely he already has various clauses in his contract. But since his new company is doing business with Apple they could also add conditions to that deal.
- 333c 7y agoI wonder how this will affect Apple's product lines over the next decade. It seems like Ive had huge influence on most of their products. Who will take his place?
- alanbernstein 7y agoJony Ive, Inc?
- qychtkd 7y agoHis new company is called LoveFrom. Marc Newson is joining too.
- filmgirlcw 7y agoHis lieutenants are taking over, per the Apple news release. Alan Dye, for one, has been around for forever. The bigger question I have is if he’s taking (or will take) most of his team with him to his new company (where Apple will be a client).
- adrr 7y agoMaybe we’ll get a MacBook Pro that doesn’t throttle the cpu and has a decent keyboard that doesn’t break after a year because the product designers wanted a super thin computer.
- trustfundbaby 7y agoI think this is good for Apple, I found that I was not impressed or excited about his work after Steve Jobs wasn't there to help him refine his instincts any longer. Everything he did after that just seemed ... uninspired.
- raverbashing 7y agoI suspect he had a hand in several recent Apple "successes" like extra thin keyboards that break easily, $999 monitor stands and not to forget, the cables that come apart easily. While his work was definitely important at Apple, I think he might have lost the needed balance when SJ left
- codesushi42 7y agoPerhaps, or maybe this was because he had already clocked out, taking less active role. He has probably been planning this for a long time.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- toyg 7y agoI wouldn't put cables on him, but he did have a big hand in the 2013 Mac Pro, which was possibly the worst thought-out Apple product of the last decade. He did push boundaries, but sometimes boundaries pushed back.
- anth_anm 7y agoFor a second I thought you meant the 2013 Macbook Pro and I was wondering what the hell you were talking about.
- slantyyz 7y agoWhile I get the appeal of the Retina Macbook Pros and forward, my love affair with the Mac laptop ended with the discontinuation of the 15" unibody Macbook Pros. Those unibody laptops represented just about everything I wanted in a laptop. A powerful laptop with a quad i7 with a bunch of useful ports (including ethernet) and the ability swap out the RAM and storage easily.
- chipotle_coyote 7y agoI think this may well be true. I've argued for years that what Steve Jobs was exceptionally good at was acting as a kind of "product editor": he could look at a program or a device and very quickly pinpoint problems. He wasn't perfect at this -- it's easy to point out big flubs and minor misfeatures -- but he was clearly better at it than most people at most companies, and sure seems to be better at than anyone left at Apple. (More than one long-time Apple employee has told me that they think Scott Forstall was nearly as good at this as Jobs was, and that it's quite possible some of Apple's more egregious form-over-function blunders in the last five or six years would have been avoided if Forstall was still on board. Forstall was admittedly the champion of skueomorphism, but I'd accept the silly linen backgrounds if it meant better keyswitches.)
- abakker 7y agoGenuine question: Who cares? I love design, and I love the engineering Apple has done, but, I've got to believe that Apple keep their aesthetic without keeping the same exact people. I think I would count this as a win for Apple - an opportunity to change the guard and give permission for some new designers to give a critical eye to the products they make. I would love to see them take maybe 1 or 2 steps back from minimalism.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoIt's not minimalism, it's poor minimalism. IMO Watch is just plain unattractive as a design object. Tinkering with the crown colour or the strap choices hasn't changed that. I keep waiting for it to be refined, so far not. I'm also not sold on the new(ish) font and flat UI style. They work, more or less, but there's something very bland about them. The big hits were game changers and were anything but bland - the original Bondi Blue iMac, the MBP aesthetic, the Macbooks including the Air, and the iPhone. Good design integrates form without breaking function, and that hasn't been the case with the not-really-working keyboards, the touchbar, the bottom charge port on the Magic Mouse, the death of the headphone jack, the end of MagSafe, the missing ports on too many laptop models, and others. I don't know which of those Ive was responsible for. I suppose we'll find out over the next few years.
- urbanjunkie 7y agoYou're pompous and yet irrelevant.
- abakker 7y agoI tend to agree with you - at some point the whole "take everything away that you can do without" became "do without". my MacBook pro is great, but I would love more ports. I don't care as much about weight, I'd happily do with more battery, and more keyboard travel. Generally, when I think of "Pro" I'm thinking of more features, not just the same features but more powerful. I would think that pros actually have different needs, and that their tools would have different functions to suit. As you said, we'll see.
- onion2k 7y agoNothing in this post says Ive's new company will only work with Apple. Maybe he'll land Dell as a client..
- draw_down 7y agoNor has anyone else claimed that... it would kind of defeat the purpose of forming a separate company, wouldn't it. I can't think of a designer with more prestige in the world, so I'm sure they'll have their pick of clients.
- onion2k 7y agoNor has anyone else claimed that... it would kind of defeat the purpose of forming a separate company, wouldn't it. The alternative is that this is actually a PR spin on Ive leaving Apple, and he'll have no influence over Apple products any more. I prefer to think it's not that though, and I'll get an Ive designed iPhone and an Ive design Dell.
- Despegar 7y agoIf Apple is his client he's probably not going to take any clients that competes with them.
- bitwize 7y agoWhy not? FrogDesign had Apple and competitors as clients.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoHonestly I just doubt Ive would want to "bless" more than one competing product. The way I imagine this is that it frees Jony Ive to expand his unique brand of "perfection" to more product types than Apple sells. Like, maybe Jony Ive continues to push Apple products and design as the best computers/phones, and then also is now designing appliances and cars and furniture.
- slantyyz 7y agoI don't think that's an issue. Few, if any of Apple's competitors are willing to invest in the high manufacturing costs it takes to produce something like a Macbook Pro, or a 2019 Mac Pro. Apple isn't one to cut corners, unlike a lot of its competitors. Any Ive design produced by a competitor is unlikely be at the level of anything Apple produces.
- dchest 7y agoThis means we'll potentially have something other than Macs/iPhones designed by Ive. Nice!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- CountSessine 7y agoI haven’t forgiven this guy for the latest “thin at any cost” 4th gen MacBook Pro we’ve had since 2016. He ruined the best programer’s laptop on the market. Maybe with him and his ego gone, they can fix the next generation and salvage the product line.
- fc_barnes 7y agoThis exactly. I don't know if it's Ive or Cook, but I'm really wondering what I'm doing to do when my older Apple devices kick the bucket. Apple, if you're listening, bring back real keyboards and the headphone jack!
- artursapek 7y agoThinkpads are nice
- sneakernets 7y agoI just want a thick MacBook Pro again. To my brain, thin = flimsy and cheap. Give me something with some weight to it, and a keyboard that doesn't suck. Heck, just refresh the 2011 design with modern tech and I'll be happy. (And no more friggin' touchbar that messes up my Vim workflow. please!)
- omarchowdhury 7y agoGet a laptop protector. You'll get the weight and added protection.
- fumar 7y agoI travel frequently for work. I like having a pro machine that is light and thin. I am okay with compromises, but understand that the target audience feels differently. I believe my Macbook Pro goes more places than before due to the compactness. That includes using python, photo, design, and general office work.
- kingnothing 7y ago
- debuggerpk 7y agoi say good riddance. His over-influence on apple products and his obsession with thin-ness has resulted in products that look good but don't perform as well, for example, the mbp thermal issues plus the butterfly keyboards.
- emsy 7y ago"I've named my company 'I'. It's the thinnest and lightest name I've ever created" Sorry I couldn't resist.
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- doomlaser 7y agoThe Financial Times has an interview with him about this https://www.ft.com/content/0b20032e-98cf-11e9-8cfb-30c211dcd229 https://www.ft.com/content/0b20032e-98cf-11e9-8cfb-30c211dcd...
- neokrish 7y agoInteresting that this comes at a time when Apple is redefining itself with Privacy, iPadOS and other major efforts. Could this have been a planned announcement? Just wondering the timing and if it means anything..
- HatchedLake721 7y agoWhy would this not be planned at a trillion dollar company with a key historic person that spent 30 years there?
- notatoad 7y agoIt was announced in a press release on apple's website. what makes you think it wasn't planned?
- dharmon 7y agoI, even (especially?) as a long-time Apple fanboy, am looking forward to some fresh design blood in the Apple ecosystem. AAPL is down about 1%. So I guess the market values Ive at around $9B? :P
- IshKebab 7y agoI'd be amazed if the random fluctuation in Apple's stock is less than 1%.
- eatmyshorts 7y agoBut the stock dropped 1% in the seconds after the announcement. This isn’t a 1% drop over the entire day; it’s a 1% drop in 30 seconds after the market has closed. I think it’s safe to say the market values Ive’s contribution to Apple at $9b
- Bud 7y agoIve is worth more like $300B. Easily.
- jonknee 7y agoBut in the real world he is definitely not the wealthiest person in the world.
- favorited 7y agoThat's not "safe to say" at all – markets don't respond well to uncertainty, and SVP-level changes at a company like Apple = uncertainty. If the company's market value was consistently $9b lower after someone left, then you might make that case.
- sprafa 7y agoAssuming the market valuation of this I worth a cent. Which... it probably isn’t.
- 7y ago
- valine 7y agoWith the iPhone X Apple put serious R&D into a display that folds back on itself for the sole reason that a phone is more ascetically pleasing when the boarders are symmetrical. Even after a year and a half every phone except the iPhone has an asymmetrical chin. Will Apple still be able to make decisions like that without Ive in a leadership position? For Apple's sake I really hope so.
- wahnfrieden 7y agoCouldn’t figure out what you’re referring to with the notch. Can you show some illustration of this or something to read?
- valine 7y agoHere's a good explanation: https://www.redmondpie.com/why-most-2018-smartphones-have-chin-bezel-while-2017-iphone-x-doesnt/ https://www.redmondpie.com/why-most-2018-smartphones-have-ch...
- scarejunba 7y agoBloody hell, that's amazing. I had no idea.
- Grumbledour 7y agoThat's fascinating, I had no idea. I commend them on their willingness to see this design decision through, yet I wonder if it is actually good design. The article already mentions it makes the phone more expensive and I do wonder, if it does not make the phone also harder to use? At least on my android, I already find the chin on the smaller side and with big hands it gets harder to grasp the phone at a part where I don't accidentally trigger something on the display. I would guess it would also strain my thumb even more when trying to tap stuff at the bottom of the screen. From looks alone, more display is always gorgeous, but from a usability standpoint, I am not so sure.
- kalleboo 7y ago
- mergy 7y agoStill funny. >> https://jonyiveredesignsthings.tumblr.com/ https://jonyiveredesignsthings.tumblr.com/ The freeway sign was great >> https://66.media.tumblr.com/2fa4ae4cfe93b3662ca9ac0b60769861/tumblr_mojqymtKCY1svn1xeo1_500.jpg https://66.media.tumblr.com/2fa4ae4cfe93b3662ca9ac0b60769861...
- nasredin 7y agoCan't believe this wasn't mentioned sooner!
- jedberg 7y agoGiven his penchant for thinness over function, I hope this means we can have a thicker pro laptop again, with all the ports back and a more robust keyboard.
- dman 7y ago+1 - I hope this comes to pass!
- PunksATawnyFill 7y agoAMEN. I hope this jagoff's incredibly degrading influence on Apple's products can be reversed.
- ceejayoz 7y agoYeah, the designer of the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Macbook really tanked the company with those.
- jaredlightman 7y agoLook at Jony's designs, everything from the first iMac to the soon to be released Mac Pro can be boiled down to a rectangle with rounded corners. 20 years of the same core element has caused it to become stale.
- Twisell 7y agoOr maybe just maybe market decided that this was actually the best form factor for computer so far? Maybe also not unrelated to the fact that screens are rectangle... You can’t blame Apple as it’s one of the few company that actually tried alternatives... that market rejected. To name a few : the twentieth anniversary Mac, the "Luxo" iMac, and more recently the trashcan MacPro
- settsu 7y agoUnnecessary ad hominem notwithstanding, > the designer of the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Macbook can also be > degrading the company [paraphrase since the parent has now been flagged] They're not mutually exclusive. There's a strong argument that form has undone the function of some of Apple's hardware. Success in no way precludes the possibility of bad decisions.
- cvaidya1986 7y agoEnd of an era. On the bright side, more lucky companies will get to work with him!
- southerndrift 7y agoWhat if St(eve) Jobs picked Mr. [E|I]ve just because that's the name needed to hand out apples to people, especially the bitten ones? In other words: is his design really that important?
- noja 7y agoIve been waiting for this
- PunksATawnyFill 7y agoIve seen what you did there, and approved.
- behnamoh 7y agoIve had enough!
- anth_anm 7y agoHopefully this lets Apple move back to making great devices that look great, instead of devices with seriously compromised performance in exchange for being very slightly more thin.
- musicale 7y agoTime to get his revenge for Steve Jobs cancelling the eMate!
- strict9 7y agoSince the early 2000s Apple's feature removals have been good--except for the escape key/touchbar fiasco. I've given it long enough and unlike the headphone jack which was painful but managable, the MBP with touchbar needs a re-do. Physical buttons for escape key and volume/brightness was a bridge too far. Hopefully that can now happen with someone else in charge.
- solarkraft 7y agoI read this as "Jony wanted to go and we had no choice". It seems like a good way of prettifying his legacy, "that famous designer guy" vs "that guy at Apple".
- mrkstu 7y agoHopefully this signals the end of the designers tyranny at Apple. While physical design has been of paramount importance in Apple's rise to the top, it has been more and more detrimental as Jony and his group wandered into worshipping at the altar of luxury and Platonic idealism. When combined with /not/ ignoring other than luxury market segments and usability that was fine. But when Jony's star was completely ascendant everything else was sacrificed at that altar (see butterfly keyboard, single port MacBook, escape key-less touch bars, no 32 GB MacBook Pros since that would require non-power-sipping RAM.) I could have lived with this if the design of the software hadn't also suffered in conjunction with the hardware. Jony was given responsibility for UX and it also started prioritizing abstract design principles over actual usability with extremely low contrast UI elements and other poor choices. As we saw those points being walked back and Apple being responsive to the complaints, I've been wondering if Craig Federighi's star was rising and if Jony's was dimming, since I doubt he was a willing participant in the diminution of his artistic choices. Seeing the extreme effort he was putting into charity[0] and the spaceship campus, instead of his actual responsibilities, it all combined to me that he needed to either get re-focused by the CEO or get a new job. [0] https://www.dezeen.com/2018/11/16/jony-ive-diamond-ring-marc-newson-red-auction/ https://www.dezeen.com/2018/11/16/jony-ive-diamond-ring-marc... https://petapixel.com/2013/11/24/one-kind-jony-ive-red-leica-m-sells-whopping-1-8m-charity-auction/ https://petapixel.com/2013/11/24/one-kind-jony-ive-red-leica... https://www.businessinsider.com/jony-ive-bono-sothebys-charity-auction-2013-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/jony-ive-bono-sothebys-chari... https://www.fastcompany.com/3019896/designed-by-friendship-jony-ive-and-marc-newsons-15-ton-desk https://www.fastcompany.com/3019896/designed-by-friendship-j...
- kshacker 7y agoTyranny of design. Interesting thought. What if he was let go after seeing the reaction to the new Mac compared to the trash can?
- CharlesColeman 7y agoWouldn't surprise me if something like that is what sealed the deal, but the criticism of Apple's design decisions has been building for some time now.
- sys_64738 7y agoSounds like he’s becoming an 1099 employee.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- meerita 7y agoJony Ive certainly took Apple to a new style era. I wonder who will be the next one to do that and to me this is exciting. It means we will "maybe" a new style from Apple. I owned most of the Apple products designed by Jony and pre-Jony era. Can't be more excited with this. Also what he will do outside Apple, it triggers my curiosity what he will be involved, I bet appliances.
- catacombs 7y ago> I wonder who will be the next one to do that and to me this is exciting A recently Art school graduate that can connect with those damn millennials and Generation Z kids.
- buildbuildbuild 7y agoForm does not end in the enclosure. He brought beauty to computing, but dongles are his legacy. Personally I hope his client sends him way less work than he’s anticipating.
- steve19 7y agoI don't wish him bad but I am really hoping I will finally be able to upgrade my MacBook pro with a model that has a good keyboard and some extra ports.
- babyslothzoo 7y agoI guess there isn't much design needed in services and upselling of services anyway
- zinckiwi 7y agoApple's About Us page will be all smiles.
- pier25 7y agoHis work is great aesthetically but I'm guessing there has been some conflict at Apple for him to leave. I wouldn't be surprised if all the latest Apple problems originated from engineering constraints imposed by his decisions. From the trashcan Mac Pro to the butterfly keyboard.
- musicale 7y agoThis is an interesting hypothesis. It is reminiscent of Steve Jobs' insistence on his carved wood Apple /// design (which the motherboard didn't fit into) or that the original Macintosh must not have a fan (because computers with fans were junk.) Both designs contributed to reliability problems (multiple boards/ribbon cable/flexing/loose DRAM chips on the Apple ///, failed analog boards on the Mac.)
- sneak 7y agoThis is the first hypothesis I’ve read on the matter that seems to fit the observed public data well.
- jkw 7y agoHe’s making more money at Apple than he will leading his own design agency. This makes me think that he no longer finds his work compelling at Apple. Or Apple decided it’s time for a new leader, but wants things to have a soft landing.
- magic_beans 7y agoOr maybe he just got bored. It's been 20 years.
- Tempest1981 7y agoI know, actually 27 years, so from age ~25 to 52. Pretty much his whole adult life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive
- maxxxxx 7y agoI think he has been independently wealthy for a very long time. Money is probably not the issue.
- spiderfarmer 7y agoYeah you have to be unhealthily greedy if money is still a big motivator at that level.
- thinkling 7y agoSince he was the Chief Design Officer at Apple, responsible for all design, I imagine his role came with a lot of management overhead. I'd wager a guess that maybe he wanted to ditch the corporate overhead (and spend more time directly working on design), and as a bonus he'll get to take on a wider range of projects. Also possible that he wanted to go back to the UK and that his firm will be located there.
- sprafa 7y agoFrom Daring Fireball speculation his move to Chief Design Officer was already a move for him to be distanced from day to day design. Sort of a soft firing already, but by moving him up.
- anbop 7y agoHe's been irrelevant for a few years now and is working mainly on the architecture of the new headquarters.
- musicale 7y agoBesides the eMate 300, iMac "hockey puck" mouse, and G4 Cube, don't forget Apple's 20th Anniversary Macintosh! 20th Anniversary Mac, in Sir Jony's own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIFdBp8rbtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIFdBp8rbtA
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- stuart78 7y agoSeems like good news to me for both Apple and Ive. I don't think any of the Apple design complaints posted elsewhere in the thread will be addressed, but I hope a new design voice will emerge for the next generation of Apple products. And Ive seems to have been anxious to expand his work surface for quite some time, especially as seen via Apple Watch. It will be interesting to see what he does for other products in other spaces. I hope green field suits him well.
- jVinc 7y agoInteresting move. Looking forwards to seeing what he decides to do outside of work with Apple.
- alphagrep12345 7y agoWhat exactly is his job? Is he a designer who says - this is how our product should look like? Or does he actually engineer the product deciding which component should be smaller, etc?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Celexior 7y agoThe move is great on Ive's side, but on the customer side I thing Apple will start to do the right compromise, and then the wrong ones. Apple should start to promote others designers, this job is like a dream (huge company, almost unlimited budget, and you can price the articles high).
- interlocutor 7y agoApple used to be known for their amazing designs. That was when Steve was running the company. Since his death Apple has been in a free fall in the design space. Most of the comments here seem to be about their awful hardware design. Yes, the thin macbook is not very usable, and the Homepod which is shaped like an amorphous blob is uglier than any Bose speaker. But what about their software? Their UI design is super unusable too. (See some specific examples here https://uxcritique.tumblr.com/ https://uxcritique.tumblr.com/ ) Flat design is a usability disaster; see studies from Nielsen Norman group and others https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design-long-exposure/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design-long-exposure/ I am glad Ive is gone. Maybe Apple can now recover.
- asciimov 7y agoThe problem is Jony Ive ran out of Dieter Rams designs to borrow from.
- mruniverse 7y agoAt least he borrowed some nice designs. For me, the iphone 4 was a great design. The hockey puck mouse was horrible though. Was that an Ive design?
- vehementi 7y agoIs the UI super unusable, or does it have some flaws?
- m1sta_ 7y agoI switched to Android from iOS about 18 months ago and badly miss the iOS UX. iOS is flawed, but less flawed than the competition. I don't feel that OsX is the leader in the desktop space anymore.
- panopticon 7y agoThat seems pretty hyperbolic, especially considering that Nielsen says flat designs are on the right track. To quote, "Early pseudo-3D GUIs and Steve-Jobs-esque skeuomorphism often produced heavy, clunky interfaces. Scaling back from those excesses is good for usability. But removing visual distinctions to produce fully flat designs with no signifiers can be an equally bad extreme. Flat 2.0 provides an opportunity for compromise — visual simplicity without sacrificing signifiers." And that Tumblr blog appears equally hyperbolic. There are some clear UI/UX mistakes in there, but the blog is conveniently ignoring how visually noisy those pre-Yosmite GUI elements are in-context by providing oddly cropped screenshots to make a point.
- ndiscussion 7y ago"It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." - Steve Jobs I have loved most of Ive's designs, but it's clear to me that he needs a bouncer to keep him in check. RIP.
- WMCRUN 7y agoThe last paragraph has nothing to do with Jony Ive and is like a little self pep talk from Apple.
- TimTheTinker 7y agoThat’s their press release boilerplate. The same paragraph appears at the bottom of every press release, though it gets updated from time to time. They’ve been doing that since at least 2004.
- saagarjha 7y agoIt's standard copy for a press release.
- ElFitz 7y agoOh well. I hope it won't, but that's probably gonna be interesting.
- shriphani 7y agoBefore I ever got a mac (or cared about these sorts of things), I saw the Jony Ive exhibit at the design museum - left quite an impression on my family and me - we thought of computers as some kind of calculator++ but this felt like something out of a very upscale music studio.
- lwansbrough 7y ago"Designed by Jony Ive's design firm for Apple in California" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
- Mugwort 7y agoSell?
- TimTheTinker 7y agoUm, yeah :-] Actually, I think Steve and Jony together were really where the magic happened. Since Steve passed away, form has often trumped function at Apple.
- asciimov 7y agoI hope this is an indication that the Braun/Dieter Rams well spring has run dry. I wonder, where does the design language of Apple go if they move away from their current aesthetic.
- mandeepj 7y agosoon - Tesla as client too
- bborud 7y agoThank goodness. I hope this means function can trump form more often.
- tantalor 7y agoThis is some kind of tax/regulation dodge?
- JimBrimble35 7y agoOh thank God, I'll have another company to not buy products from! Seriously though, I think his vision may have overstayed it's welcome at apple.
- bborud 7y agoJust like evolution requires selection to work, good design requires an good filter. I think Jobs was the filter that made Jony Ive good. Without filter Ive appears to be just another unbridled ego not quite able to retain focus on what is important. I hope this means Apple will hire designers more respectful of utility for the MBP and iMac lines and start catering to professionals. And then Ive can focus on making insanely expensive to manufacture halo products with CNC’ed cheese graters.
- m1sta_ 7y agoJony Ive always seemed to looked at product design like he was trying to establish an emotional relationship, not a business partnership.
- bitL 7y agoHooray! Can we now get skeumorphic desktop and Fn keys back?
- Austin_Conlon 7y agoRealism is making somewhat of a comeback, take a look at the Books app.
- LeicaLatte 7y agoIs this a result of the keyboard fiasco?
- catacombs 7y agoI doubt it. Thirty years at a company is a long time, especially if Ives worked under a strict contract. He probably wanted to be his own boss.
- LeicaLatte 7y agoThere is precedence for this behavior by Tim/Apple. Ask Scott Forstall.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- LeicaLatte 7y agoWhat happened to the Beatles after the death of John Lennon? How did the Doors manage themselves creatively after Jim? It is going to be fascinating to see how Apple manages creativity, collaboration and inspiration hereon.
- valleyer 7y agoIn case you're being serious, the Beatles broke up ten years before Lennon died.
- LeicaLatte 7y agoDead serious.
- xparco 7y agoPretentious
- mikerg87 7y agoDoes this mean that Scott Forstall might be back at Apple to help fix their software issues
- xparco 7y agoHis sexual harassment at Apple was disgusting and I hope he goes to jail and justice is served
- goldcd 7y agoWhat's always struck me about Apple, is that despite their espoused "form follows function/Rams philosophy" - it's clearly not their pattern. They normally seem to start with a great idea (iMacs, ipods, iphones, whatever) - and then add really great incremental additions (mag-safe, 'retina displays', thumb-scanners etc) - and then completely lose sight of what they were originally trying do do as they iterate further. The air being thin was impressive, and ushered in everybody else pulling their finger out. However removal of headphone jacks, connectors, to achieve this was nothing anybody asked for. Not just one the small stuff either - thermal problems on the g4 cube, trash-can, imac pro. The new Pro though looks awesome. Arguments over pricing are separate - but first form-is-function device I've seen from them in an age. I'd like to think Jony hates it, and has stomped off in a huff (or having finally convinced the company to ship it, and point them in the right direction, he's happy to walk away from his baby).
- Sonnol53 7y ago"I think he'll come back" - Apple employee. There's more Apple employees commenting on this post on Blind https://www.teamblind.com/article/Apple-says-goodbye-to-Jony-Ive-FLVGS3bp https://www.teamblind.com/article/Apple-says-goodbye-to-Jony...
- dx7tnt 7y agoI'm finding it hard to understand how being external to Apple is going to work for Ive and his team, given Apple's approach to secrecy and paranoiac insularity. A seeming contradiction from the very FT article Jony is pushing his new role and company: “[Apple Park] was a really significant project that was unlike many of our others, because it was for us,” Sir Jonathan said. It also brought Apple’s entire design team together for the first time into one purpose-built studio, with industrial designers sitting side by side with font and interface designers. ie. we're going to be putting all the design team in one place, except me and my design team - we'll be somewhere else. All I can speculate is that Ive will become some kind of conceptual overlord, but one ultimately well at arms length from what is happening at Apple. I can't help but feel that Ive's been pushed, in the most graceful way possible given his contribution to making hundreds upon hundreds of billions for the company. Remember the drastic way Scott Forstall was kicked out despite being seemingly successful, and for what? too much skeuomorphism? It can be easy how ruthless these people can be. It could be quite telling that recently they had to do an unheard of (for them) backtrack in the form of the Mac Pro - essentially reverting it to the decade old design of the cheese grater and re-incorporating PCI desperately needed by longterm partners such as Blackmagic Design - heavily pushed in the last keynote, who've been suffering since the trashcan came out, with many of their leading capture cards only able to be used in the horrific solution of a thunderbolt-PCI lunchbox. This announcement does seem like it could have stemmed from that, given they said something along the lines of "we had designed ourselves into a thermal corner" with the never-revised trashcan, that ultimately lacked all the features that make it worthwhile for pro users ie graphics, PCI, storage and RAM. Ultimately, pushed or not, Sir Jony could well feel his work was done in many ways with the creation of the new UFO campus and such a string of successful products all having reached maturity. What else is there for him to do? After so much success, it could just becomes boring. Even the best artists don't try and keep churning out number one records year in year out - there's just too many other things to do.
- boreas 7y agoCompletely off topic, but it took me three tries to parse this: There’ve been rumors for years that Ive had one foot out the door
- _headphones 7y agoTHE FUCKING HEADPHONE JACK. JUST FUCKING PUT THE HEADPHONE JACK BACK WHERE IT FUCKING BELONGS. FUCK.
- dx7tnt 7y agoDrink the Bluetooth and Dongle flavour koolaid. Headphone jack is gone for good, and it's never coming back.
- UIZealot 7y agoI wandered into an Apple Store with my wife one day to look at the Apple Watches, the first major product designed without Steve Job's involvement. Looking at the thick, rounded rectangles, I laughed out loud and said "Jony Ive has no taste". Like I said before, without Steve Jobs, Jony Ive is just another designer.
- makecheck 7y agoWhen you give a lot of power to someone with a lot of talent, great things can happen. The downside is that nobody’s perfect (even talented people) so a person with a lot of power can make a wrong decision and that may be all it takes for the decision to be final. In that type of structure, preventing wrong decisions comes down to things like the personality traits, wisdom, etc. of the people with all the power. In other words, is he or she the type of person that can be convinced NOT to do something that they would otherwise decide to do? I can only observe what has come out of Apple in recent years. I immediately saw things I disliked in their software when Jony Ive was also put in charge of software (to this day, much of iOS-7-style apps seem form-over-function to me and I want more gradients, damn-it). And there were also some massive hardware failures, most of all keyboards, screens and Touch Bars. If Jony made most of these calls and just couldn’t be convinced otherwise, I’m glad he’s gone and look forward to a happy medium of “pretty nice but usable” hardware and software.
- api 7y agoA new kind of thinner lighter design firm?
- _hardwaregeek 7y agoGeez, from these responses you'd think Jony Ive nearly killed Apple or something. There's a lot of inevitable criticism about Apple, whether it's Macbook Pro and its lack of ports or the iPhone and it's lack of headphone jack. One aspect that I've noticed about this criticism is that it always presumes to be absolutely, undoubtedly correct. That there can't and isn't another perspective. Apple sucks. Clearly. Obviously. For instance, take the Macbook Pro. There's two ways of viewing it. The first view is that it sucks. There's no USB A ports to plug in flash drives. There's no SD card reader. The lack of function keys is inexcusable, terrible, whatever. The second view is that it's incredible. The laptop is thin and absolutely beautiful. You can palm it in one hand with ease. When you hold it, you feel its lightness and lithe. The main difference between these points of view is that the first perspective has prerequisites. The people who hold this view are those who use flash drives, or those who need SD card readers, or those who use function keys. Take note, this is far from the general population. I know I don't need a lot of these features on a daily basis and I'm not unusual. On the other hand, the second point of view is one of aesthetics. And as much as some may claim the contrary, we all value aesthetics to a degree. Even if some may vocalize to the contrary, deep down everybody likes pretty, shiny stuff. And man, Apple (and therefore Ive) makes pretty, shiny stuff like no other. What I respect about Ive is just how relentless he is in his pursuit of beauty. Beauty in aesthetics, but also beauty in sensation. What stuns me is how no other computer company has figured this out. I have a ThinkPad on my desktop and it's just so goddamn ugly. It's made of this cheap plastic that feels light, yet the laptop is heavier than my Macbook Pro. The lid is too heavy, so you have to hold the bottom portion down to open the laptop. There are two unnecessary logos that are too small to be easily read from afar and too ugly to be worthwhile. The laptop just feels bad. Granted, a ThinkPad is a bit of a strawman. Microsoft's own products are probably a better comparison. To an extent, they're quite nice, pretty beautiful even. Yet they still don't have this relentlessness towards beauty that Apple has. Their products still feel like compromises. And in compromising the products have become more attractive to group A or population B. But they have lost their raw magnetism, the beauty that attracts all. Whether or not this alienation of the small groups is worth the attraction of the larger population is a separate debate, but I respect Apple and Ive's decision to stay on one side. Speaking of, it's rather fascinating seeing how Apple can make a product feel "new" for so many different iterations. I've thought that a particular iteration was the pinnacle of this product, that nothing else would look cooler or newer or more...well futuristic. Only to be totally proven wrong by the next iteration.
- Zenst 7y agoIf you was to do this in the UK, the TAX man would hit you up with IR35 and you would get taxed as if your was working for you former company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IR35 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IR35
- emiliosic 7y agoApple needs a 'refreshed' vision in hardware design. It's beautiful, but not the most practical. This 'soft exit' to me is for the best.
- cbetti 7y agoCongratulations Jony.
- totaldude87 7y agoMultiple ports - yeah!!!! No more butterfly keyboards- yeah!!!! I say bring back the Mac book pro 2012 - that's all I need.
- gchokov 7y agoThis PR really does sound like a crisis management.
- allenleein 7y agoBen Thompson wrote an article[1] about this problem in 2015 after Ive just got "promoted". From the article: In my estimation, whether Ive intends it or not — and I think he likely does, for what it’s worth — this is the beginning of the end of his time at Apple. To give up “management” in exchange for “thinking freely” is, when it comes to business, akin to shifting from product-focused R&D to exploratory R&D. Steve Jobs was very clear on the consequences of that approach: "One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. And I’ve made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room. And I got the scar tissue to prove it." I found this quote/clip in this excellent Gruber piece, Working Backwards to the Technology; the analogy I’m trying to draw is that just as the best way to ensure that great technologies make it to market is to start with the product and work backwards, inventing along the way, the best way to lead an organization’s design direction is to lead the organization, and that means managing. And that is what Ive is giving up. [1]: "Jony Ive “Promoted”, The Implications of Not Managing, What About Apple?" https://stratechery.com/2015/jony-ive-promoted-the-implications-of-not-managing-what-about-apple/ https://stratechery.com/2015/jony-ive-promoted-the-implicati...
- EugeneOZ 7y agoIt's good that it's happened - will raise wave of criticism Apple deserves. It's good that Apple will remain the main client of Jony Ive - we all make mistakes, but he did a lot for devices design and I'm sure he still can push it forward. Maybe new position will give him more freedom, maybe Apple need more freedom :)
- anbop 7y agoThe new headquarters syndrome strikes again. Ive, sidelined, went eyeballs deep into the new headquarters, alongside a decline in physical product quality like the trashcan design miss and keyboard gremlins. Hardware and software teams kept executing but there’s clearly a need for a change in design.
- TheOperator 7y agoApples design has been a big yawner for a few years now. Apple watch and MBPr impressed me. Since then? Seems like the design had actively getting worse since 2015 I.E. MBP with touchbar. The Mac Pro and Apples new display don't look terrible to me but the cheese grater aesthetics aren't amazing either and it's a bit of a rehash of the Powermac G5. There was also that charger they cancelled. Maybe apple should consider going back to their playful aesthetic? Aluminum and glass is just so... Yawn
- mulderc 7y agoI have been looking at some of the past plastic devices and actually really love the design and feel. Wonder if they should try that again.
- _ph_ 7y agoI still have my G5 iMac in a corner and its design is just wonderful. The acrylic housing with a white interior holds up just great. It also was possible to open it with a screwdriver or even a penny.
- rusk 7y agoI liked this. It looked like a toy but it had pretty serious internals. Kind of the opposite of how things are now ...
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoUnpopular view - Jobs kept Ive focussed. Jobs, for all his many faults, had very, very good taste, and also had a user's-eye view of design. Ives seems to have a designer's eye view on design. Without Jobs to keep him on track he started designing for posterity and for design magazine pictorials - not for customers. The classic designs - blue iMac, iPod, iPhone, laptops, possibly the initial MacPro sketches - all happened under Jobs when Apple was trying to expand its share of the mass market. The failures - gradient tint flat UI in iOS 7, butterfly keyboard, disappearing ports, end of MagSafe, HQ glass wall injuries, etc - are all failures of form over function and happened after Jobs died. There's some overlap - Anglepoise iMac, some of the special editions, puck mouse, that plastic clamshell laptop - but the hit rate under Jobs was far higher.
- nkkollaw 7y agoI truly hate Ive's design choices lately. It's form over function (see: laptop so thin that the keyboard doesn't work, you can't fit any port, etc. etc.), which is definitely NOT good design. Both Apple's hardware and software have been nosediving for the past 5 years. So much so that I'm still using a 2015 MacBook Pro, and only because of macOS because Microsoft Surface Book looks about 1000 times better than anything Apple's ever made—and it has a detachable touchscreen with pen. I hope this is good news for Apple to get better at design again.
- pooya13 7y agoApple’s problem is that they are looking at their customer base for directions, while ironically every business course uses Apple’s iPhone as THE example for addressing pains from a first principle, evidence based, customer discovery approach. Which is sad because at some point Apple was very inspiring.
- blue_devil 7y agoWhatever happened to design is beautiful because it's functional? That was the original meaning of the word design.
- mikorym 7y agoI don't know the details of how this would work, but I can see rationale in general of compartmentalising and furthermore making each compartment self sufficient. It can easily happen that a department in a company becomes unprofitable or complacent in the absence of direct market forces.
- FabianBeiner 7y agoA few days ago, Nick Law - current Chief Creative Officer of the Publicis Groupe - announced that he will be leaving to join Apple for a "once in a lifetime opportunity." Maybe he'll replace Jony Ive?!
- yongchoi 7y agoIt's kinda sad though
- unixhero 7y agoWhy didn't he do this a few decades ago?
- 734129837261 7y agoI've never been impressed by anything that man has done. He just sailed along with the ideas and changes made by Jobs. Ive seems like the typical designer who is unaware of anything hardware related. The trashcan was proof of that. The new cheese grater is probably a royal pain in his rear because it doesn't looks pretty. Even his voice overs were tacky as hell. Easy to make fun of. Cringeworthy at best. When Jobs dies Apple's creativity and forward-thinking also died. They started multi-touch, they made touch screens work, they made MacBooks that weren't full of stickers and big humps of plastic, they made smartphones with an OS that actually worked smoothly. When Jobs died they stopped innovating. Maybe a few remnants of Jobs' ideas were implemented but none of them to the degree of innovativeness and quality during his time. Jobs would have canned so much crap Apple has released over the years. He would have made certain products so much better by simply spending several billions more on research and development. Jobs wasn't there to suck up to shareholders. He was not even there for us. I'm pretty sure he was there for himself and his legacy. Jony Ive was never part of anything impressive. To me, he's just the talking head with a voice who they hopefully took away any control from. Apple needs to spend some of their countless billions on innovation and setting standards that are 5 years ahead of the competition. Instead, they're twice as expensive with outdated tech. Such a shame.
- m12k 7y agoI feel like the Apple we've seen since Jobs died is exactly what I would have expected if someone let the designers run the show without a strong product manager to reign them in: Gorgeous and mostly user-friendly products, but slightly too caught up in their own cleverness instead of the actual needs of real users. I hope there's a chance to rectify that now - though I fear it won't happen until someone more visionary and less 'operations-focused' takes the helm of the company. Steve Blank did this excellent analysis and comparison between Balmer and Cook [0] - I hope there's a Satya Nadella in Apple's future too. [0] https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ballmer-and-why-he-still-has-his-job-at-apple/ https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...
- AimForTheBushes 7y ago> Gorgeous and mostly user-friendly products, but slightly too caught up in their own cleverness instead of the actual needs of real users. This is so true. Hence the dongle epidemic.
- Eric_WVGG 7y agoWhat dongle epidemic? A USB-C version of every important cord or connector has existed for _years_. Anyone who still has dongles is choosing them.
- oliveshell 7y agoIf I want to get 10 GB of RAW photos onto my 2013 MacBook Pro, I just pop the SD card out of the camera and into the laptop. Transfer is done in about a minute or two. No SD card reader means the new MBP just couldn’t do this without dongles, full stop. That’s a step backwards.
- robinmayfair 7y ago“Full Stop” is always a good argument. I have a USB-C card reader which I guarantee you is faster than the one you have. Sure, internal card readers were nice. But they’re gone from Apple now. Really not sure why people keep talking about this.
- webbrahmin 7y agoI used to love my mac book pro. Sadly, it is not the same device which it used to be. The quest to make it thinner has actually made it a substandard machine. I feel Apple has lost a lot of developer love and brand capital since Jobs. I am hoping things would improve on the product front. Not all devs live in the US. For devs in developing countries, a mac book pro is a serious investment. We want a machine which is robust and long-lasting. If things continue they way they have in last few years my next machine will not be a mac book.
- bayareanative 7y agoEveryone should watch the Louis Rossmann channel before lionizing, much less even saying anything good about modern MBP's they don't seem to understand what's been lost and what sucks. It's not been a long-lasting product for at least 5 years: - the batteries are glued in, making them very difficult to change - there's no locking slot - GPU goes out - the unencapsulated (motherboard) is very susceptible to any humidity, which leads to corrosion - the JTAG shorts out traces - the keyboards are crap: noisy, fragile and have to be ripped out violently with pliers - display cable goes out - no availability of official replacement parts - no official component-level repair leading to unnecessary e-waste and unnecessary charges - no longer has MagSafe - thin, bendable and fragile - extremely overpriced - overcharged for repairs - denied data recovery when it's possible - community of unrealistic, brainwashed, tribalist fans who lack perspective and criticism I have a Lenovo T480 which is 10x better than a T490. Snag one while you can, because it's totally ruined in the name of drinking Johnny's brand of Jonestown KoolAid.
- hevi_jos 7y ago"- community of unrealistic, brainwashed, tribalist fans who lack perspective and criticism" Why do you feel the urge to insult those that do not see the world like you do? You call them "unrealistic", so it makes you fell realistic. "brainwashed" so it makes you feel clear minded. "tribalist" so it makes you feel individually intelligent. "lack perspective", so you believe you have perspective. The fact is that some of these people are really smarter than you are and happier and more fulfilled than you are. And have way more money than you have. Some of them will be stupid, but not all like you believe. These people have real reasons to choose an Apple product and they are as valid as your reasons. While everything you say is true, the fact is that these people give them a different value that you do. I have a friend that has a company and earns 2000 dollars everyday, does he cares about an overprice laptop? Not really, he cares about time, and interruptions(he had a Windows laptop that used to interrupt him for hours at the worst possible time), he cares about weight, and malware installed by default that you could not uninstall. Right now I am criticizing your attitude. How do you respond to it is a way to measure your level of "handling criticism ability" that you implicitly presume of. But it does feels different, doen't it? Criticize others is so easy.
- bayareanative 7y agoIDEO competitor? Why not just drop into a VP or C-role of such a firm than build such a company completely from nothing?
- csomar 7y agoAnother possibility: Apple can’t pay him a big salary without a huge IRS tax. With a sole company, he’ll be able to invest his earnings into the company as well as deduct several of the expenses. Significantly reducing his tax rate.
- PedroBatista 7y agoI think Apple CAN spare a penny or 2 to pay his salary.. It's more a divorce/open relationship Cosmopolitan style.
- kurczakov 7y agoMarc Newson is joining as well, this is unexpected for me, since new Mac Pro seems heavily influenced by his work. IMO.
- bawana 7y agotoo bad the 'designers' are stuck on static endpoints like appearance. Functional design is ignored. How many gestures am I supposed to remember? iOS13 is crazy with multiple 'spaces'. Why is no one implementing auditory input? I would like to say 'switch to workspace 1' and have it do that, or 'minimize', or 'next tab', etc.
- junipertea 7y agoYou can. Check voice control.
- hypertexthero 7y agoPlease restore reliable keyboards, MagSafe connectors, and better user interfaces, Apple Computer!
- JJMcJ 7y agoIt's the old "I'll quit and be a consultant and my old employer will be first and only client", except that Ive is, I expect, rich already.
- prsutherland 7y agoHe still will work with Apple although Apple will need a special adapter.
- iamgopal 7y agoI never felt less compelled to buy iPhone.
- jonplackett 7y agoBeen thinking about this and what it says to me is there’s nothing that interesting going to come out of apple for the next 5 years. If something totally amazing - AR glasses etc was coming even reasonably soon, no way he is leaving now
- dependsontheq 7y agoThe most important designer of the 21st century so far, he was responsible for the most successful product of all time and a design aesthetic that reshaped the whole industry. I find it hard to judge individual features and products, because who knows how or why specific decisions were made. An amazing legacy, I really look forward to an autobiography, it will probably the closest we will ever get to the Ives/Jobs team.
- dependsontheq 7y agoKind of sad that this whole thread is blaming him for any kind of problem somebody has with Apple hardware, I find it hard to believe that Ives oder anybody else took those decisions (USB C, thinness) without a clear sense of strategic direction and a very good business reason.
- TheRealDunkirk 7y agoPeople are openly wondering if the next MBP will go back to having things like USB-A ports. As if! We've already bought the new dongles, dang it! I'd be surprised if the next round of PC's doesn't follow Apple's lead, just like the phones did when Apple removed the audio port.
- rubee64 7y agoPersonally I've cringed at every design decision he's brought about since iOS 7 and the flat design push. Skeuomorphism was perfect, and virtually every Apple product has been dragged down since then.
- brandonmenc 7y agoThank you for saying this. After their switch to the ultra flat design, I'm still unsure where the buttons are. It's ridiculous.
- milin 7y agoBye Bye Jony Ive you will not be missed.
- cryptica 7y agoAside from the iPod, I've never liked any Apple product. They feel constraining, less practical, less compatible, less comfortable, more expensive. The value of Apple products is mostly based on marketing. Apple sells products by appealing to people's insecurities. Apple products appeal to status-focused people who want to see themselves as cool and sophisticated to the point that they are willing to overlook the terrible UX. The mouse is so flat, it makes your hand sore. The keys are so low and sensitive that you keep hitting the wrong keys and they easily break. The navigation for most of their UI makes no sense. If you open the laptop while it's sitting on your laps, it will pinch you when you open it. Having to use Command+C to copy stuff by pushing with your thumb is awkward even after years of use. Siri will keep popping up when your finger accidentally touches some random key. Switching between multiple desktops/windows is a pain (e.g. even compared to Ubuntu). Finder is shockingly bad; it's a struggle to navigate; merely copying the current directory path is infeasible... The list of UX problems goes on and on; I'm not even a UX designer but I can see all these problems.