“According to numerous reports said to be out of Apple headquarters, the company’s Chief Design Officer Jony Ive hasn’t contributing much to Apple’s consumer goods design as of late, and has been more interested in architecture and similar projects for the last few years,” Mike Wuerthele reports for AppleInsider.
“Based on comments that he had heard over time, long-time Apple journalist Jason Snell and John Gruber speculated that Jony Ive is focused on Apple’s “Spaceship” campus and store design with retail head Angela Ahrendts,” Wuerthele reports. “‘I’ve heard that he has lately been checked out or not as directly involved with product design and that he’s been largely focused on architecture,’ said Gruber on his The Talk Show podcast.”
“he pair discussed the possibility that Ive ‘has assumed a Jobs-like role’ within Apple,” Wuerthele reports. “Gruber and Snell postulate that Apple’s car project, recently rumored to be dramatically scaled back, was originally started at Ive’s bidding, and the rumored collapse is the herald of Ive’s future departure from the company. Potentially reinforcing that belief, the pair discuss rumors floating about that the recent coffee-table ‘Designed by Apple in California’ tome was ‘decreed’ by Ive, is his swan-song, and acts as a portfolio of the designer’s work.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, Jony certainly wasn’t involved with the design of the Apple TV’s Siri Remote – unless he was drunk during the 20 minutes that were lavished on its so-called design.
What Jony wants, Jony gets.
The fact is that Apple without Jony Ive is worse off than Apple without Tim Cook. Tim Cook is easier to replace than Jony Ive.
Steve Jobs called Jonathan Ive his ‘spiritual partner’ at Apple. He told his biographer Walter Isaacson that Ive had ‘more operation power’ at Apple than anyone besides Jobs himself — that there’s no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do. That, Jobs said, is “the way I set it up.” — MacDailyNews, May 25, 2015
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Prescience:
Steve Jobs is 48 years old. Reportedly, he is a vegan and in very good health. May he live to be one hundred! May he live forever, but that’s probably unlikely. So, I’m back to the beginning; what happens when Steve Jobs dies? Or, a bit more hopefully, when he doesn’t feel like leading Apple Computer, Inc. anymore and decides to kick back and relax? Since Jobs returned to lead Apple, every Apple shareholder, employee, and avid company watcher has asked themselves this question at some point, “whither Steve Jobs?”
Pixar has John Lasseter and a crop of young, talented directors to carry on post-Steve. But, who will lead Apple? Is Steve grooming someone, yet? Is it too early to worry about it? …I mean, come on, we all lived through the Scully, Spindler, and Amelio years; Apple barely did. On the face of it, the closest Apple has to a successor-in-grooming is Phil Schiller. No offense, Phil, but the RDF hasn’t rubbed off. Leading Apple is a very tricky proposition. Only one man so far has pulled it off successfully. Twice. The key ingredients seem to be a quest for perfection, a passion for the technology and the company, and the ability to relate Apple’s ideas to the world with style. Jobs is truly the charismatic force that propels Apple forward in the face of tremendous odds.
Right now, it looks like Apple’s best hope, and a very good one at that, is Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Vice President of Industrial Design, the London Design Museum’s “2003 Designer of the Year,” and chief designer of the original and current iMacs, iPods, iBooks, PowerBooks, Power Mac G5, and more. He seems to work well with the engineers responsible for the hardware. He is obviously a meticulous genius. And he has “that certain something” which, importantly, comes across on camera and in person. Whether he has the extremely rare “vision thing” that Jobs possesses; well, that’s still an open question.
— SteveJack, MacDailyNews, August 20, 2003
SEE ALSO:
‘Designed by Apple in California’ photo book chronicles 20 years of Apple design, dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs – November 15, 2016
Steve Jobs left design chief Jonathan Ive ‘more operational power’ than anyone else at Apple – October 21, 2011
