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OK, so my theory on that is that it was all Jony Ive fault. Back in the days when Jobs was still around he was a natural counter balance to Ive. He wanted every
by 8draco8 7y ago
OK, so my theory on that is that it was all Jony Ive fault. Back in the days when Jobs was still around he was a natural counter balance to Ive. He wanted everything to be not only 'beautiful' but most notably just working. Ive was great source of new design ideas for him and he was usually throwing away bad ones (from technical point of view) and leaving the god ones (of course there was some mistakes but over all it was working just fine).
At some point Ive became to have major role in making decisions of what's going in to production. Jobs had serious health issues, couldn't keep his eye on everything and finally he passed away which made Jony the guy who was making decisions pretty much on his own. I bet that trashcan MacPro, butterfly keyboards, "thinness war", sticking for too long to one design etc., those are all his ideas that he pushed trough.
Quite recently Apple realized that leaving everything in Ives hands is not that good idea after all and I have a feeling that redesigned MacPro and decision to ditch butterfly keyboards from newest MBPs was forced on Ive and that's the real reason behind him becoming external contractor for Apple. They couldn't fire him completely but they needed changes and Jony didn't liked restrictions on his design choices so they've split.
As for the future, we already saw that story in the past and as we know history like to repeat itself. In the next 2-3 years Apple products will become more in line of what users wants. They finally started to listen to people and it will result with better products, at least in short term. Times has changed and I hope that history will not repeat itself in the next step when, like in the 90s, Apple will become shadow of it's former self, trying to build products based on financial statistics and polls and not on engineering and design talent of their employees. After all we think we know what we want but in reality there will be products and solutions that we can't imagine right know and no amount of polls will give the answer to a question what's next, what's behind the horizon.
- cujo 7y agoI want to believe this, and as there is no evidence one way or the other, it sounds good enough that it makes me hopeful for future products. My question is, what did Ive do that was truly great? I honestly don't know and his name is mostly brought up with respect to designs that didn't pan out. What did he do that everyone seems to respect him as an uber-designer? I do think, for a while at least, apple's design was eye catching and cool. But for a long long time now it's been stagnant and copycatted all over the industry. So much so, that it doesn't really stand out any more. That's all fine, but it makes me wonder what Ive has been doing for the last 5-10 years, because not much has changed.
- 8draco8 7y agoPretty much everything what Apple made since original iMac G3 was Ive design and I think the biggest thing that he did was that original iMac G3. The story is pretty simple, Ive became Apple employee around 92 so before Jobs big comeback. Back in those days he had soft spot for translucent plastics. This showed beautifully in his first serious design for Apple, Apple Newton eMate. When Jobs came back to Apple he was looking for cool designs and he felt in love with Ives designs and translucent plastics (Jobs was crazy on making even PCB look good and idea of showing that work to the clients was appealing to him). So that's how arguably one of the biggest tech bromances started. So yeah iMac was the design that brought back Apple to living. Other most notable designs was iPod, iPhone, iMac G4, MB, MBP, slim iMacs, list goes on and on. The difference is that all those designs was under supervision of Jobs. So ideas like charging port on Magic Mouse wouldn't fly under Jobs supervision (and they didn't) but when Jobs passed away then suddenly those ideas went into production. The story of how they met is from Jobs and Ives biographies, I highly recommend reading at least Jobs biography by Isaacson
- cujo 7y agoThanks for the background. Ive's wikipedia page didn't have much.
- Mindwipe 7y agoI don't think it was Ive specifically - it appears that Ive really hasn't done anything but Apple Park and collect his paycheck since the Apple Watch shipped tbh - but the lack of any one in management to push back against the rest of Ive's team in the way Jobs would have done is obvious.