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Why Jony Ive left Apple to the ‘accountants’
- whatever_dude 4y agoThe intro story soured me on the guy. Millions of dollars to move a few trees for a party feels like a maybe waste of resources. That's not the sort of mentality I expect from design leadership on any company, even Apple. And tbqh Ive always represented the worst of form over function to me. The puck mouse was ridiculous, as was a bunch of stuff he created or sponsored. Good riddance.
- daviddever23box 4y ago...an infomercial for the author's new book? Weak sauce, NYT.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoI completely cut nytimes out of my life. I don't think I'm better informed, probably worse, just happier. Definitely happier.
- pegasus 4y agoIgnorance is bliss, then?
- HidyBush 4y agoSince when do newspapers equal knowledge?
- photochemsyn 4y agoI quit viewing the NYT as a reliable news source after they sold all those lies about Iraqi WMDs to the American public on behalf of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld neocon crowd. It's not hard to say informed without relying on such corporate media outlets with obvious ulterior motives. For example, if I want to read about Apple's M1 Ipad (I do like ipads, though mostly use Linux now), just go to DuckDuckGo and enter Apple M1 Ipad "engineering" design Flip through the first 50 results, you'll get a better view on what's up than the NYT provides, with its drivel about 'the soul of Apple' and similar fluff nonsense. You can try it on Google as well, but then half the page is just ads. [edit: one thing I discovered by doing that is that the M1 Ipad is going to be very difficult to repair, which is a huge negative for me]
- Bud 4y agoSo who did you choose as a reliable news source going forward, then, instead? I think you need to be mindful that NYT got duped just like Powell did. It doesn't magically mean they are all bad journalists. It doesn't. You can fantasize that it does if you like, but it doesn't. NYT is not an in-depth tech reporting organ, so I agree with you on that. But if you want detailed global-scale investigations of complex new issues? Good luck, in the US at least, finding a substantially better source than NYT. You won't. It's not there.
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- somenameforme 4y ago"To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful, I should answer ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. it is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood. nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. the real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. general facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 [1] That's one of my favorite quotes that's becoming more relevant by the day. The reason, among many, is that that was written more than 200 years ago. It emphasizes that the brief window of media that many of us grew up within was some weird brief bubble of competence, integrity, and accountability that was for seemingly most all of the rest of humanity's existence, not the case. And we're now simply returning to the 'good ole days.' [1] - https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5737 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5...
- daniel-cussen 4y agoCouldn't follow the link.
- jaclaz 4y agoIt is truncated for some reasons, the document is: From Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 11 June 1807 This one, even if it is truncated in the view on HN, seems to be working: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5737 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5...
- ghaff 4y agoI see a disclosure right at the very top. And an article adapted from a book, that most of us won't get around to reading, seems like a perfectly reasonable topic. ADDED: I'm actually more inclined to read an article written by someone who did the research/put the effort into writing an entire book on a subject.
- jessriedel 4y agoAgreed. Both book authors and journalists face comparable financial motivations to distort facts for the sake of story telling (and in this case the author is also a NYT journalist).
- trowawee 4y agoI understand the thought, but a weird reality about book writing is that, since the author bears the cost for fact-checking books, they're often less extensively fact-checked than longer reported pieces for newspapers or magazines.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago> It was 2014, and Apple’s future, more than ever, seemed to hinge on Mr. Ive. What? I was there then and long before, and that's just nonsense, fabricated nonsense by whoever Tripp Mickle is. What a sensationalist assertion. The engineering, hard-core engineering, was a not entirely hidden powerhouse, and still is.
- ghaff 4y agoThat seems like a very engineering-centric view of the world. The engineering (both software and hardware) of Apple's products has certainly been important. But, especially as they were transitioning to increasingly be a consumer electronics brand, design was certainly a key piece that set them apart.
- tptacek 4y agoDesign still is a key piece that sets them apart.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoAgreed, and, to both your points, it's interesting that there is significant engineering never trumpeted in the press about the teams doing engineering to make the designs (physical designs) manufacture-able. it's a super interesting world where mechanical engineering and aesthetic design crossbreed.
- dctoedt 4y ago> whoever Tripp Mickle is NYTimes journalist, before that, WSJ. https://www.linkedin.com/in/trippmickle/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/trippmickle/
- sydthrowaway 4y agoAre you sure? Engineers have no control over the isolated designers
- stephen_g 4y agoRead the whole thing, I was really not convinced. Ive had some brilliant hits, but I think became more of a liability in the end. Look at what happened to the MacBook Pro, losing most of its ports and the thinness causing them to put a much worse keyboard in it that caused massive problems. Sacrificing a bit of thinness and going back on those changes with the newest iteration has been much better. Honestly to me the M1 era of Apple is the more exciting than things have been in years. The article linked is really negative (saying Apple only have “legacy products”) but with the M1 series they seems to be smashing it out of the park…
- philistine 4y agoThey just released a brand new computer, the Mac Studio. This is not a legacy product.
- nojito 4y agoI don’t think that was due to Ive but more so that he couldn’t excel without Steve around. It's also clearly stated in the article that this was one of the reasons that Ive was given the CDO role. So that he could do less of what Steve did for him.
- ceejayoz 4y agoThis. It seems clear Jobs served a “you made it very pretty but it sucks to use” role in feedback.
- kergonath 4y agoThere are many counter-examples, from the original iMac’s mouse to the iPod Hifi. Jobs said no a lot, and that was a good thing, but he did not have absolute good taste. To his credit, he was good at learning from mistakes, even though he very rarely acknowledged them in public.
- ceejayoz 4y agoDon’t have to get every single one right to still play the role. The man was effective, not infallible.
- Gualdrapo 4y agoUnpopular and potentially downvoted to oblivion opinion, but have to say this - this kind of reverences to Ive make me physically ill. He's still to be accounted -alongside Apple- as one of the culprits of today's trend of irrepairability (and the consequent planned obsolescence) on devices for the sake of 'minimalism' and Dieter Rams wannabe designs.
- ghaff 4y agoIMO, you're giving Ive too much credit for both shaping consumer preference and forcing competitors to follow his lead. For the most part, people like thin and light and care much less about upgradability and repair.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoI agree but Ive was also a megaphone.
- solenoidalslide 4y agoTo what ends? I don't think people care too much about diminishing returns. At that point it is a matter of which upgradability and repair tradeoffs. Was there a recent line of products that they offered featuring upgradability and repair we can compare to?
- ghaff 4y agoGo back to about 2010 or so and MacBooks were reasonably repairable and upgradable by a fairly casual person. Batteries used to be routinely swappable in both phones and laptops.
- solenoidalslide 4y agoThe good ol iphone 3G days
- Bud 4y agoCan we stop this silliness. Computers do not become obsolete due to them being difficult to repair. They become obsolete because they become obsolete. Let's not just throw whatever we can find on the "right"-to-repair heap in an effort to desperately justify it. Justify it on its own terms. Or don't.
- jessriedel 4y agoWhat were Ive’s most notable accomplishment after Jobs died? The author suggests he would have produced amazing things if he had retained more power, but it’s not clear to me why we should think this.
- Bud 4y agoApple Park and Apple Watch. I worked on Apple Park and was in meetings with Ive. He was amazing.
- jessriedel 4y agoThanks. Apple Park of course wasn’t a consumer product, and Apple Watch has only been modestly successful (and isn’t particularly beautiful or useful in my opinion). I read half the article and didn’t see anything about the design of the Apple Watch being compromised. It mostly discussed how Apple did not follow Ive’s preferred marketing approach. of course, he could’ve been right that it would’ve been more popular if they had marketed it as he recommended. What did you find impressive about him?
- mmmpop 4y ago> Apple Watch has only been modestly successful Oh come on, no need to be an edge-lord with this sort of comment. They’re utterly ubiquitous and the next closest competitor is probably Garmin. I never see Android watches outside of the Verizon store.
- tpush 4y ago[...] and Apple Watch has only been modestly successful [...] It is literally the most popular and most profitable watch (not just smart watch) in the whole world.
- armadsen 4y agoApple's Wearables business is a ~$8 billion per quarter business. That includes AirPods and a few other products, but Apple Watch is obviously a major part of it. To me, $8 billion per quarter is far more than "modestly successful". Of course, comparing anything to the iPhone's success will make it look modest.
- easton 4y agohttps://archive.ph/y3on0 https://archive.ph/y3on0
- interlocutor 4y agoIve may have done great work under Steve Jobs, but his work since Jobs' passing has been disastrous. Let's consider Jony's performance on software design first. This is what some prominent people have said about iOS 7: The Verge wrote in their review: "iOS 7 isn't harder to use, just less obvious. That's a momentous change: iOS used to be so obvious." Michael Heilemann, Interface Director at Squarespace wrote, "when I look at [iOS 7 beta] I see anti-patterns and basic mistakes that should have been caught on the whiteboard before anyone even began thinking about coding it." And famed blogger John Gruber said this about iOS 7: "my guess is that [Steve Jobs] would not have supported this direction." And what about Jony's other responsibility, industrial design? The iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and other Apple products from Jobs era are all amazingly well designed and breathtakingly beautiful. But these products weren't designed by Jony Ive all by himself. He designed them under Steve Jobs's guidance and direction. Steve was the tastemaker. Apple's post-Steve products are nowhere near as well-designed. Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors were horrid, and when you added those Crocs-like cases it looked more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen holding. That the 5c didn't do well in the market shouldn't surprise anyone. As an Apple shareholder and customer I am glad Ive is gone.
- 88840-8855 4y agoPersonally, I found the 5c colors nice. I dont see much of a difference to those huge (ugly?) cases that people wrap around their phones today. I dont know many people who are using naked phones today and my feeling is that phones today are not designed anymore to be case-less: the camera bump, razor-sharp edges, too thin bodies. The 5c flopped because of other reasons: it was artificially made worse than the 5s. It started with 8GB memory that was already WAY TOO LITTLE back then, it had no touchid, it had a bad camera and so much more - and yet, the price was high. Apple learned from the mistakes and changed their segmentation strategy and it worked since then (with the exception of the weird XR thing).
- perardi 4y agoI had an iPhone XR from work. It flopped…but it was a good phone, and it was not necessarily an obviously bad idea, in my opinion. People like big phones. The idea of a big iPhone that has contemporary guts but lacks some of the really wild camera abilities of the Max models didn’t inherently seem like the wrong plan to me. But it just kinda went nowhere, probably because you can just go buy last year’s iPhone model.
- amelius 4y agoWhy do we ever only read stories about Ive, and not nearly as often about people who made software design decisions, who work on the OS or security, or who made strategic decisions such as Apple's walled garden? The only technocrat who triumphed seems to be Ive.
- sremani 4y agoBecause Ive is a public figure and he was show cased during SJ era. I am not trying to diminish Ive's contributions but the software guys will never get the mainstream love as the design guys. If stories about Software guys are written that would be tech media which is heavily dropping the ball, because they have some product to unpack and try it for a day and given it some useless score.
- toomim 4y agoYou must mean software vs. hardware, not software vs. design. Software is designed. Hardware is designed. Design is not how something looks on the outside. Design is how something works.
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- armadsen 4y agoI agree with you, but it's worth noting that shortly after Jobs' death, Scott Forstall was kicked out, and Jony Ive took over software UI design as well. The result was iOS 7 and its flat UI.
- victoryhb 4y agoThe bottom line is Apple products post-Ive have improved dramatically in terms of practicality, efficiency, and even design. Without Jobs, the guy should be without jobs.
- barneygale 4y agoHDMI ports and SD card readers ftw
- shuckles 4y agoIf that’s true, shouldn’t one of the underlying concerns - Apple’s shift in priority from hardware to service products - be even more disappointing? How many innovative and user friendly gadgets are we being deprived of so the company can focus on US-only credit card and content streaming services?
- gumby 4y agoWhat a testament to ego. Rather than the Apple watch being a Vogue-celebrated product for the 1%, it’s an attractive and high quality product for many people. I see it on the wrists fashion icons and on the wrists of people working at my local grocery store. Billionaires and ordinary people can have basically the same phone, watch, and AirPods. That is the true genius of Cook, reviving the “computer for the rest of us”. I do think Apple’s design has become a little stale, but if there has to be a choice of once vs the other they are currently picking the right one. Let’s not forget that the vaunted focus on design has given us a mouse with the charger on the bottom as well as innumerable other botches over the years. I am glad Apple was willing to push the envelope, but some of that stubbornness has worked against them.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoStale is not a bad thing, design for design's sake is. Apple had some pretty nice stuff before Ive, I see no reason it won't have amazing stuff in the future without him.
- perardi 4y agoAnd the new MacBook Pros seem to indicate they’re steering out of that “thin and sleek above all else” whirlpool.
- librish 4y agoI think this highlights how not black-and-white this is. Some of the focus on design are clearly what made Apple so popular and tech people can be dismissive of that. The magic mouse is so much better than any other mouse I've used (because the scrolling is so much better) and the charge port being on the bottom has not been an issue a single time over multiple years.
- nottorp 4y ago<looks at the broken keyboard on his 2018 emoji macbook pro> ... and you're missing Ive... why?
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- barnabee 4y ago"a shift in strategy that has made the company better known for offering TV shows and a credit card than introducing the kind of revolutionary new devices that once defined it" I nearly stopped reading here. Does anyone think that's true? Sure they make much more money than they used to but to everyone I know apple is still very much a hardware and product company.
- perardi 4y agoThe sheer ubiquity of AirPods in ears I see at the gym would sure suggest that people know they are a hardware company, and have in fact bought new hardware products introduced post-Jobs.
- seltzered_ 4y agoRegarding the title with "technocrats" reminded me of Bret Victor referring to it as a "designer aristocracy" - http://worrydream.com/#!/DynamicPicturesMotivation http://worrydream.com/#!/DynamicPicturesMotivation (2011 , mentioned later on in the essay) -- The 2011 Bret Victor essay: "I spent a few years hanging around various UI design groups at Apple, and I met brilliant designers, and these brilliant designers could not make real things. They could only suggest. They would draw mockups in Photoshop, maybe animate them in Keynote, maybe add simple interactivity in Director or Quartz Composer. But the designers could not produce anything that they could ship as-is. Instead, they were dependent on engineers to translate their ideas into lines of text. Even at Apple, a designer aristocracy like no other, there was always a subtle undercurrent of helplessness, and the timidity and hesitation that come from not being self-reliant." -- The 2022 NYT article "technocrats triumphed at apple": "Mr. Ive’s absence, the designers say that they collaborate more with colleagues in engineering and operations and face more cost pressures than they did previously."
- scns 4y ago> the designers say that they collaborate more with colleagues in engineering and operations and face more cost pressures than they did previously Great! This is how it should be IMHO.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoThis is actually a thing in design, and it's inexplicable. Too many designers think like architects. They design the case to look good, and aren't interested in the much more demanding process of productising an item so it looks good and isn't feature constrained. A lot of design is pure fantasy. There were some renderings of Mars habitats being sent around a year or two ago, and they had wood panelling - pretty for sure, but not exactly easy to find on Mars in industrial quantities.
- philwelch 4y agoIf you’re living on Mars in the first place, you’re going to need to grow some plants just to have food. I don’t think it’s inconceivable to also grow some bamboo.
- elefanten 4y agoThis article is from some clown that wrote a book with an opinionated story (this same one) about Apple. It’s an advertisement for his book and dovetails with NYT’s crazed and rabid need to attack the tech industry that diluted their chokehold on discourse. There is nothing serious going on here.
- Apocryphon 4y agoOn the flip side, one wonders what the departure of Scott Forstall meant for Apple, and where it would be today if he continued to be in a decision-making position.
- snowwrestler 4y agoI think Forstall’s trajectory after Apple shows that he was ready to be done with being a technology leader. If he had wanted to stay, he could have.
- scrlk 4y ago> In the wake of Mr. Jobs’s death, colleagues said, Mr. Ive fumed about corporate bloat, chafed at Mr. Cook’s egalitarian structure, lamented the rise of operational leaders and struggled with a shift in the company’s focus from making devices to developing services. I think this is particularly clear when you compare Apple's current product introduction keynotes to ones from the Jobs/Ive days: nowadays, they to forego the bit where they talk about how the device was made. Ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SjIuzhdd_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SjIuzhdd_g (Apple Watch Steel introduction video, with a heavy focus on how it's made)
- vikbytes 4y agoI had completely forgotten about these. I have to say I do miss this kind of detail in the presentations these days, even if I like the products of late way more than the ones that came in the latter half of the 2010s.
- lvl102 4y agoJony Ive was Steve Jobs’ extension. Steve needed Ive at Apple but Cook didn’t really need him because Apple fast became something entirely different since the introduction of iPhone. In my view, Apple will always be in its best form guided by engineers. I think there was a period (a couple of years since Jobs’ passing) where Apple was playing “What-would-Steve-do?” and I am so glad the executives leapfrogged that mentality of chasing after an icon’s shadow.
- jdrc 4y agoCar design is much more interesting than the wholly homogeneous world of mobile and computing. Hasn't anyone come up with a nice idea for 15 years?
- rpmisms 4y agoFranz Von Holzhausen has been doing great work over at Tesla, albeit as Elon's editor, rather than the inverse Ive/Jobs relationship. Elon: let's make a truck out of folded steel. Franz: OK, I'll make it look decent. As opposed to Apple, where it was more like Jobs: let's make a nice laptop. Ive: OK here's a block of aluminum Jobs: bro, it needs a screen Ive: Fine I guess the users aren't evolved enough yet.
- dr_ 4y agoThe article leaves out some of the consequences of focusing on design over practicality and usability. The MacBook Air keyboard had become a disaster. It was as close as one could get to just typing on a hard surface. It was around this time that I switched to a Surface laptop because it felt to me Apple was giving up on their own laptops in favor of the iPhone. Fortunately, they’ve now fixed this.
- dschuetz 4y agoI think Apple has lost its mojo when they have started to sacrifice function to form, to make their Laptops even thinner. Remember the "revolutionary" butterfly keyboards that could not survive outside a clean lab? That was the moment. Btw, the watch struggled rightfully so, because the battery still does not last a day. I can imagine how hard it was to sell it as a fashion accessory. It needs daily care, charging at least one time a day. Staggering! I have a different smart watch product that lasts a week! Now that's a fashion accessory!
- mdasen 4y agoI think the problem that happened with Ive's designs is that he kept trying to out-do himself in the same direction. I've was important with regard to making really nice products that felt really good. Even a plastic iPhone 3G felt really solid compared to the creaky Android phones that would keep coming out years later, never mind an iPhone 4 with its amazing metal and glass feel. However, Ive kept wanting to push things in the same direction. Apple made wonderful and thin MacBooks that were solid with unibody enclosures. I remember the thick, creaky, plastic PC laptops of 2008 and the MacBook Pros were just amazing in comparison. Later, Ive wanted to shave 0.25mm worth of keyboard space and we ended up with MacBooks that no one wanted. I think labeling this as "the technocrats won" is way overstating the case. Ive's legacy is all around Apple's new products. It's in the Mac Studio which is a small and quiet machine made out of nice materials. It's just a tad more balanced with the practical implications of managing heat. Instead of trying to make the Mac Studio as small as humanly possible, they've made it small and nice. It isn't anything like the mini-towers that are typical. The new Apple Watch really pushes the display to the edge. It's amazing. I think part of it was that Ive didn't have a lot of places to go. He'd won. Apple had moved over to his way of thinking almost entirely - with tiny exceptions like "I'd like a functional keyboard." The industry has moved over to his way of thinking a lot. Android phones aren't creaky plastic nearly as often - you can get ones with nice materials and build quality. Once everyone is won over to your way of thinking, where do you go? In fact, I think a lot of people really like attention. For a long time, Ive got attention. He'd get positive attention from Apple fans who loved his nice designs and negative attention from those who would complain that the iMac didn't have a floppy drive or whatnot - but he was sure he was correct. Fast forward to 2016 and what was Ive really doing that would garner such attention? Apple's product line was all Ive'd. The industry had copied him in a lot of ways (even if they were potentially bad copies). In a way, he wasn't a thought-leader anymore because people had all accepted his thesis. If Newton were around today talking about gravity existing, we'd all be like "yea, we know...got anything new?" As time went on Ive would either need to find some amazing new way of pushing things forward or his work would just be passé. Oh, another unibody MacBook Pro. Oh, another computer like the last one. He didn't have a battle to fight anymore. Back in 2000-2010, he could be telling engineers "you need to make it this way because it's better" and most of the time he was right. Once he'd proven out the fact that he was right over that decade, everyone was on board because they saw the value. What would the next thing be that he was right about? Maybe there wasn't a next thing. Maybe they'd taken computers to the right level of design. Apple's whole lineup is basically Ive's legacy - with a tiny bit of extra room for a decent keyboard or cooling.
- Zigurd 4y agoRock star designers leaving big companies is nothing new. I happen to like "Bangled" BMWs like the original Z4, before it was watered down to a retro-ish design. But I also know I'm in the minority. Apple's primary advantage is gaining unique capabilities and protecting them through domination of the supply chain. Not all of these succeed (vide large sapphire crystals) but these kinds of competitive moats are actually more important than unique designs.
- MBCook 4y agoI’ve always gotten the impression that Ive may be a truly great designer be he needs an editor. He had that in Steve Jobs. Once he lost his editor the designs Apple shipped moved more and more towards being perfect designs at the expense of thoughts of usability. And now he’s known as the guy who helped “ruin” Apple’s products until they kicked him out. Unfortunate. For the lack of an editor.
- bornabox 4y agoI think your comment on Jobs being Ives editor is spot on. They worked as a team and complemented each others shortcomings (at least to a degree). There was apparently never this kind of relationship between Cook and Ive. But to say Apple kicked Ive out seems wrong to me. They rather wore him out and he left.
- bborud 4y agoWe can speculate why he left. But I think a lot of people agree on the observation that he had probably been irrelevant for a good while by the time they parted ways.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoNot so much irrelevant as superfluous, and possibly a negative influence. To give credit to Cook he listened to the chorus of complaints and acted on it. The results aren't as pretty as the Ive era designs. But they give users a lot more of what they really want, instead of a nice case with missing useful features. Ive actually had a lot of misses, from the gradients and flat look in iOS 7, to the infamous butterfly keyboard and missing USB ports, to the early versions of Watch, to (at a guess) the touchbar. There were also Jobs-era failures like the hockey puck mouse and the Siri Remote for Apple TV. And personally I'm not a huge fan of the current Apple typography and branding. So - not really missing his influence. I'd love to see Apple find a new design head who could inject more personality than the current products have, but I don't think Ive's departure was a terrible loss in any way.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoYou can tell finance took over. They are deleting soft(ware) cultural relics because not enough people use them. The many pennies saved!
- gnicholas 4y agoThis frames his departure as being about conflict with the 'accountants', and it doesn't mention the laptop thinness debacle. I have zero inside information, but I understood Ive to have been pushing for thinness, even at the expense of functionality. The company went down his path for a few years, but it has recently made an abrupt about-face. It seems strange not to mention this dimension of Ive's work and the possible conflicts it could have caused. OTOH, this guy apparently conducted hundreds of interviews, and I'm just some guy who's been watching from the outside! Maybe I'm way off-base.
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- trzy 4y agoThis is a “debate” that exists only on HN. Laptops are not what propelled Apple to become the most valuable company in the world and their importance inside the company reflected that until fairly recently.
- bayareabadboy 4y agoI used to worry that Apple was slipping. Apple TV+ especially made me question the direction of the company. Then I got a MacBook Pro with an M1 chip. It’s honestly stunning.
- kappuchino 4y agoQuestion: After reading some comments here, I still think I might be in a bubble? I think its all becoming better now that Ive is not responsible for then mac design any more. All the mac hardware (mini, imac, macbooks) became smaller, less repairable and overdesigned to the extent of being impacted in usability after steve jobs died and Ive was running without counterweight: The magic mouse you could not use while charging. The horrible keyboard that died from merely a few crumbs. having only two ports on a computer so you would always need a couple of dongles. Just to name a few. Sometimes clever design has to be combined with boring choices, like still having a hdmi port and micro sd slot. A decent, resilient keyboard. Now I long for a macbook that has replaceable/repairable memory (ram, ssd) again as well as a battery that is not glued in place ...
- paulcole 4y ago> The magic mouse you could not use while charging Do you think this just slipped past everyone at Apple?
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- jmrm 4y ago> The magic mouse you could not use while charging. I totally think they done this on purpose to prevent anybody to use the mouse while charging it. In that way, there isn't anybody continuously using the mouse without removing the cable, making the product look like is wired instead of wired, and breaking that minimalism design they want to. Apple is a company that not only design product to look good in a shop window or an ad, but also in how other people will use the product and what image will give to the rest when its in use.
- 9935c101ab17a66 4y ago> I totally think they done this on purpose to prevent anybody to use the mouse while charging it. In that way, there isn't anybody continuously using the mouse without removing the cable, making the product look like is wired instead of wired, and breaking that minimalism design they want to. There's no way apple is that petty or instructive. The wireless keyboard can be charged while in use, so your theory kind of falls flat. I'm certain that apple just doesn't care. There were probably some tricky engineering problems during the design of the mouse which pushed the product team towards having the charging port on the bottom or it was a purely aesthetic decision — a recess / inlet for the lightning charging port probably didn't look great, and the designers rejected it. So, they went with the port on the bottom. I'd wager the way Apple sees it, having to wait two minutes to get 9 hours of battery life if your mouse dies unexpectedly isn't the end of the world, and the battery lasts ~2-3 months on a full charge, so what's the problem? I sort of agree with the hypothetical take I presented above. Yah, it would be nice to be able to use it while charging for those rare situations where you forget to charge it, but it's not the end of the world. Even if you disagree, it's astonishing to me how much ink has been spilled roasting apple for the magic mouse 2.
- fmajid 4y agoJony Ive is a hack without the firm hand of a Steve Jobs to keep his self-indulgent tendencies in check. He is responsible for the butterfly keyboard fiasco. Scott Forstall was famously fired for refusing to apologize for the Apple Maps first release woes, but AFAIK Ive never has for those garbage key switches, and I’m sure there are multibillion dollar class-action lawsuits working their way through the legal system. It is notable Apple has not named a new Chief Design Officer. Ive’s failure is so manifest he’s destroyed designers’ seat at the table in the company that was the poster child for design.
- illwrks 4y agoI don't disagree with anything you've said however I think if apple were to name a new chief then that person would have to be as good or better than his/her predecessor. That's a lot of pressure from the public on day 0.
- fmajid 4y agoWell, Cook made sure designers never hold sway and cause damage again the way Ive did, the top design position at Apple (which is not at the C-suite or SVP level when relatively minor specialties like Machine Learning are represented) has been split between two people, Alan Dye and Evans Hankey, and they report to COO Jeff Williams, a mechanical engineer by training: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/06/28/who-are-alan-dye-and-evans-hankey-the-design-leads-replacing-jony-ive https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/06/28/who-are-alan-dye-...
- astrange 4y agoChief Design Officer isn't a "best designer" position, it's a "promoted through the roof" position where you actually do less work. Phil's current Apple Fellow title is the same. The "realest" position is SVP, which admittedly no designer currently is.
- mrcwinn 4y agoHow was this ever going to work? If I worked for 20 years with one of history's most influential entrepreneur, and we had a deep working partnership sustained by mutual respect and trust, and then that person died, I simply don't know how I'd continue showing up every day. Keep in mind that when Jobs returned to Apple, Ive was not at all influential within Apple and on the verge of leaving. To go from that place to one of the world's most influential industrial designers — gosh, I'd have some ego too. I'm grateful for his contribution. And I'm also grateful that his departure seemed to have opened new avenues of creativity and flexibility of thought at Apple. After all, it was Jobs himself at the Stanford connection who said that death (or, thought of another way, departure) is life's change agent.
- innagadadavida 4y agoNo one talks about the mega disaster that is Apple Park. When you inside it mostly feels like hospital or airport. The glass cleaning is a major pain to do. Apple bought a quarry in Italy so that the wall tiles can line up or something. Will be fun ti see what happens when it gets damaged. The sinks are all carved out of one block of stone. Last but the least the chairs are 7k and are the works ever to sit on. There are som many apple buildings in Cupertino and collaborating with another team is quite painful. Ive without Jobs was definitely a disaster. After spending those billions on that building that looks like a tomb for Steve Jobs, I wonder what purpose was achieved.
- zxienin 4y agoIt has always puzzled me. Why Steve Jobs chose his ops head over product ones, to succeed him?
- davidhariri 4y agoIt's interesting that the article attributed the shift in Apple Watch's marketing strategy to Tim Cook. I am pretty sure that Jeff Williams led that change. He is a smart guy who doesn't get the press he deserves, in my opinion.
- turingbook 4y agoNot much information, very verbose. The only valuable information is that Apple's strategy under Cook has shifted from devices to more profitable services.
- soheil 4y agoI think he created the Apple look and feel which will stay with the company probably forever as something to distinguish it from all the other products in the marketplace. For this reason he should be celebrated. Sure we can blame him for the terrible butterfly keyboard and the nearly port-less MacBook major blunders, but in the end without Ivy Apple hardware would not be distinguishable from a generic laptop running Windows. Without a rigorous and function-first engineering mindset it's dangerous to let designers run havoc. An Ivy without Jobs was doomed from the get-go.
- BonoboIO 4y agoJony Ive‘s „design is everything, function is last“ approach. I think Apple „grew up“ a little bit in the last years and realized, that they can not deliver any more or such substandard products. - Like the Mac Pro (2013) which was thermal limited even with the launch configuration and could not be refreshed because more power would mean less power through throttling - Magic Mouse 2 which well u could not use while charging - Macbook Pro Touchbar which is there because there was nothing else to „innovate“ - MacBook Pro Keyboard which is so thin and lookin good that the owner has to replace it every 6 month
- jasoneckert 4y agoBack in 2017, many of us were frustrated with Apple's Mac offerings (price/performance/features). In other words, Apple seemed to be stagnating hard at the time, forcing us to move to Linux on better hardware. I also remember people throwing out lines at the time, such as "Apple needs to focus on not making things thinner" or "Price with Apple is only an issue in the absence of value". Since the introduction of the M1, Apple has regained all of that lost momentum in my opinion. And from judging Internet commentary, most others wholeheartedly agree. People wanted speed/performance/battery/ports rather than another millimeter of thinness. The only gripe I hear today with Macs surrounds the pace of innovation with macOS. I think this article would have been better received if it were released before the introduction of the M1. Moreover, the ending paragraph states "the designers say that they collaborate more with colleagues in engineering and operations and face more cost pressures than they did previously. Meanwhile, the products remain largely as they were when Mr. Ive left." I can't see how this engineering collaboration and cost accountability would be a negative thing for consumers or Apple, and the products are definitely a lot better (and faster!) than before Mr. Ive left.
- curious_cat_163 4y agoIve seems to have left because he was no longer powerful enough. He was likely burned out. He got a good amount of money out of leaving as well. I don’t know what any of that has anything to do with Apple being run by technocrats? I don’t know if the person who wrote this truly understands how much creativity is needed to pull off the engineering feats that Apple seems to have been pulling off for better part of last two decades.
- bingohbangoh 4y agoI listened to this author's interview on the A16z podcast. An important detail is that Scott Forstall brought him up through Apple over the years. Scott Forstall, the head of software for Apple, later lost a power battle after Steve Jobs' death to Tim Cook & Jony Ive. One wonders if this is coloring his opinion.
- scarface74 4y agoJony Ive leaving Apple was there best thing that could have happened. The horrible keyboards, the form over function trash can MacPro, the removal of ports, the one port MacBook (“the adorable”), the gold Apple Watch, are all the fault ultimately of the design team under Ive.
- spenrose 4y agoShirky's review is much better than the excerpt: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/01/books/review/after-steve-tripp-mickle.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/01/books/review/after-steve-...
- socialdemocrat 4y agoIt was the Jobs Ive combo that worked. I think Ive was making too many form over function decisions towards the end which benefitted neither Apple nor its customers. Cook is a bean counter. That does not neat to be all bad as much as I hate to say it. That is why I liken get he new Apple to Microsoft with all of he pros and cons that entails: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/apple-is-turning-into-the-next-microsoft-b080102051ed https://erik-engheim.medium.com/apple-is-turning-into-the-ne...
- yalogin 4y agoThe article doesn’t delve its title that technocrats thrive at apple. It only focuses on what it calls “accountants”. However is it possible that Ive himself was just done? With artists , either composers or of the visual arts, they usually have a stock of good ones they churn out and after that the output is usually a repetition or a hodgepodge their previous work. It’s possible Ive reached that point too as the iPhone kind of became an all in one computer that killed a lot of accessories, so any idea for a new kind of device is killed automatically. In that scenario, I don’t know what else is there after a watch.
- Valkhyr 4y ago> [...] struggled with a shift in the company’s focus from making devices to developing services. Boy can I ever empathize with that. This shift is the worst thing that ever happened to Apple. Personally, it was maybe the biggest reason I got disillusioned working for them and quit (I should note I was only a Retail employee, nothing big).
- starky 4y agoThis is where most companies are trying to go if they can though. Unfortunately it has been proven that people will willingly pay for a service every month above purchasing it outright and shareholders love it because it means that revenue from each user is consistent. The future is one where you don't own anything and companies nickel and dime you for features and services.
- amznbyebyebye 4y agoDon’t they do extensive user testing on these products ? Surprising some of the design decisions they make with the amount of resources at their disposal
- tempnow987 4y agoWhat a weird take. A lot of the changes the "accountants" have made recently are responsive to user request to my eye. So so many more ports on the new products. I absolutely love this. I hated the pure design direction things were going under Ive. Battery life once again going big. I love this. Usability again the key. The trashcan Mac Pro? Too much design. Give folks a square box if you need to crank power up. Self service repair program? Only one out there from what I can tell? I like it. Iphone mini - yes I was one of the few folks who bought this. Sorry to see this go away, I like the small phones. But giving a range of options was great. And this list goes on. My wife keeps her stuff (iphone / macbook) around FOREVER - software updates on phones going back 5+ years? Fantastic. Their run rate is now something like $400B++ per year? With nuts gross margins (maybe getting close to $200B in gross margin?!!) They've done this with almost no acquisitions (relatively speaking). And throwing off $150B in operating cash flow (6 months). I think stock buybacks are lame but what can they spend this on really? A moon launch and base? This is the reward for being trusted (in my view) far FAR more than many other players in the market despite the complaints you see on HN. I know they are considered a "ripoff" but if someone has a monitor / keyboard, dropping $700 for a mac mini, you can basically do all the programming / video editing / photo editing you could want.
- Affric 4y agoRight... but the take presented in the article which is that Ive believed Apple should be innovating more in product categories and moving further and further into peoples lives through devices rather than milking their customers for subscription services. I think it's a salient point that Apple has moved more into a phase (not permanent) where getting us to give them $$ per month is more important to them than creating the future. I was relieved when things got a bit thicker, batteries got better, thermals got better, Apple Silicon came to the Mac etc etc but that's not independent of what the article states Jony was getting at.
- randomsearch 4y agoI wonder how much of that shift to services was a necessity due to the pandemic. It’s very difficult to ideate new software products when everyone is wfh, I imagine that’s doubly difficult with hardware. Perhaps Apple’s drive to get people back in the office is because they’re worried the product pipeline has stalled.
- magpi3 4y agoWanting to cut down two dozen trees to put up a white tent perfectly encapsulates everything I dislike about Apple.
- ineedasername 4y agoI'm not sure that a $25 million tent & tree relocation really counts as a triumph for the accountants. Objecting to that expense seems fairly reasonable. The fact the Ive had to fight to get it done doesn't really tell me that the accountants have won out over quality product design. I certainly don't have any recollection of the trapping of the watch launch nor any coverage by vogue. In general this conveys to me that Ive was growing increasingly out of touch with what was truly important rather than bean counters winning on $$$.
- HNHatesUsers 4y ago
- csours 4y agoI want a phone that knows I'm going to put a screen protector on it and put it in a case. So what if it's thinner? I'm going to put it in a case that makes it huge. Design it with the case in mind. You put a stupid camera bulge on it. The whole phone could be the thickness of the bulge. Why do I have to put a screen protector on it? Why doesn't it come from the factory with a screen protector? I don't know how to design a phone that knows it will be wearing clothes, but it should be obvious to designers that many people do not use a naked phone.
- samsin 4y agoI don't use a case or a screen protector, but I know cases have a cutaway for the camera bulge so it doesn't actually increase the size. If you added thickness to the entire phone to remove the camera bulge then your case will be thicker too, it just means the camera will be 'sunken' into the case which would be a less efficient use of space. In fact the camera bulge disappears when you use a case.
- peter303 4y agoI cant wait for Apple Glass. I wonder if Ive has contributed to that product.
- KKKKkkkk1 4y agoIn 2016, the Apple Watch was selling so badly that Apple was giving it away to its employees at an 80% discount. If any engineer at the company were responsible for such an epochal failure, he would have been tarred and feathered and then hanged, drawn and quartered. Instead, the manager responsible was allowed to let his RSUs vest for 4 years, and then let go with a $100m parachute deal.
- 1270018080 4y agoHow many billions of dollars do you think Jony Ive cost Apple with his bad design? $100 billion?
- perfectstorm 4y agoif he was the reason why MacBook Pro had that terrible keyboard or if he was the reason for removing the MagSafe connector, I say good riddance.