Apple’s 7-11-year Jony Ive exit transition comes to a close

Jony Ive has left Apple, Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash

After a 30-year relationship, Jony Ive and Apple have finally cut ties, a process that seems to have taken just over eleven years, one that began shortly after the tragic loss of Steve Jobs when the Brit-born designer was first thought to want to return to the UK.

One era ends so a new one can be born

Apple’s former Chief Design Officer, who once famously revealed that Apple has its own fishing boat to help provide food for its workers, quit the company three years ago in 2019 to launch his own LoveFrom design agency. He was at that time contracted to continue advising and working with Apple on some projects, and had described this as a multi-year commitment.

“Jony is a singular figure in the design world and his role in Apple’s revival cannot be overstated, from 1998’s groundbreaking iMac to the iPhone and the unprecedented ambition of Apple Park, where recently he has been putting so much of his energy and care,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO at that time.

His departure then caused some consternation, but the company’s achievements and results since then show that Apple was not dependent on one errant knight, but on the genius of many within the company’s collective.

Apple’s 2019 consultancy deal with Ive  was valued over $100 million, though “it restricted Ive from taking on work that Apple found competitive”.  Ive, allegedly, wanted to take clients Apple may not have approved of.  The parties have now agreed not to renew the contract.

It seems plausible that Ive couldn’t design the changing Apple

What happens next?

The news comes following many months in which it has been claimed Ive originally quit the company because he wasn’t happy with the company’s focus on operations above design. Apple’s designers were at one time the gods of the company.

Apple COO Jeff Williams will manage the design teams, with help from product marketing teams who now have a central role in product choices, the New York Times report states.

It is interesting that the final break in the cord is announced during a time of stock market crisis for the company. It is perhaps too easy to think that the timing reflects that a crisis is always a good time to bury bad news.

Apple has lost a lot of percentage points in value already, so losing a few snippets more won’t hurt much. The company will inevitably recover, as new products and new services reach customers, even in a very challenging market.

It also means Apple now has carte blanche to adopt new design ethics and explore fresh ideas. And represents a seven-year transition in which Ive’s exit appears to have been carefully managed to avoid spooking shareholders.

Ive designed today’s tomorrow yesterday

All the same, it’s the end of an era defined by Ive, one in which iPhone, iPad, iPod and the iMac defined new futures for computing, futures which we still explore today. We’re talking a combination of luxurious design ethics and mass market production. We’re talking about software, services and hardware working in harmony. We’re living in a world defined by connected mobility. That’s just how it seems to be.

Ive helped build that reality.

Ive hasn’t left design. Far from it. LoveFrom, will continue to work with Airbnb and Ferrari. Ive will continue working with Sustainable Markets Initiative.

All the same I do note that the projects he seems to have involved himself in do tend toward the high-end luxury part of the market, rather than the democratization of access his most widely recognized products epitomize. At least until his next big leap, Ive has become the designer with the $5.6k tonearm.

“I always think that there are two products at the end of a programme; there is the physical product or the service, the thing that you have managed to make, and then there is all that you have learned. The power of what you have learned enables you to do the next thing and it enables you to do the next thing better,” Ive once said.

It will be interesting to see those ideas turned into reality in future.

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