“Long time Apple industrial designer Christopher Stringer is leaving the company in another shakeup to Apple’s vaunted design team,” Reed Albergotti reports for The Information.
“Mr. Stringer, who was at Apple for 21 years, was involved in the first iPhones and iPads and has a rare semi-public profile,” Albergotti reports. “He was a key witness in Apple’s years-long legal case against Samsung, testifying about Apple’s painstaking industrial design process. ”
“Apple’s design team has gone through multiple changes in the last two years as Jonathan Ive has stepped back from running the team. Richard Howarth now leads the team on a day-to-day basis,” Albergotti reports. “The shifting leadership precipitated some defections—rare for the group, which inside Apple is known for its loyalty. Apple designer Danny Coster left to join the design team at GoPro last year.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good luck to Stringer in his future endeavors.
As we wrote last April when Coster left: A rare, singular example of turnover out of Ive’s (Howarth’s) usually tight-knit group or is this the first break in a long-pent-up dam? Only time will tell.
Looks like time may now be blabbering all over the place.
That said: Breathe.
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. — Lao Tzu
SEE ALSO:
GoPro hires longtime Apple designer Danny Coster to head up a new hardware design group – April 13, 2016
Apple execs, former and current, including Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall, may testify in upcoming Samsung damages retrial – January 23, 2016
Uh oh, Apple’s new design leads report to CEO Tim Cook, and not Jony Ive – July 2, 2015
This is the beginning of the end of Jony Ive’s time at Apple – May 28, 2015
Apple designer: Our ‘maniacal’ industrial design team obsesses over details – August 1, 2012
Steve Jobs left design chief Jonathan Ive ‘more operational power’ than anyone else at Apple – October 21, 2011
Like the quote mdn…
I Ching… the inevitable ….
not to be confused with..
Ka Ching… the emolumentable…
Agreed. MDN is onto something profound within Apple lately.
First up, Ive was subject to an unheard of Apple firestorm resulting in criticism for designing a flat iOS 7. Not just because it was uninspiring and confusing symbolism, but it also broke from Steve’s and Scott’s rich visual vision.
Scott leaves before the debut, Coster last year this month and now Stringer.
Steve warned us about the pitfalls of salesman, bean counters and Wall Street genuflecting by industry giants.
Fingers crossed Apple is not there and will not go there, as they soon settle into state of the art spaceship minimalist and green friendly digs.
That said, PUHLEEZE Apple, just offer me a NEW MacPro that blows every computer EVER made, OUT of the water — for ALL time! And remove the internal design chains to keep it upgradeable … 😎
The morale must be terrible at Apple by now, especially from the contrast with pre-Pipeline Timmy days.
Totally agree.
Apple needs to get its act together beyond Wall Street, the liberal media and feckless shareholders …
Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .
The Apple culture change occurred with the death of Steve, to be sure.
But a hidden in plain sight is an Apple-cultural deficit, and has to do with Apple’s lash-up with Wall Street, and particularly Goldman Sachs.
There is no long-term good in this, for it promotes the exact opposite spiritual aspects that made Apple a notable company – essentially, you could say that Wall Street’s culture is literally sucking the life out of Apple, over time, and will, in the end, leave a dry husk.
Sad.
Niffy
While I work overtime to maintain a positive perspective of Apple Inc., I fear what you say may come to pass …
I feel sorry for u fanboys now. Year after year you keep hoping… you keep waiting… you keep faithfully amd blindly following Apple. But year after year, the same thing happens.
You wait for something that never materializes. The Apple TV unicorn with Apps channels as Apps that a person can subscribe to and build their own programming, eliminating the cable companies: that never happened. The Apple Car: appears frozen or dead as a project. The iPhone Unicorn with wireless charging, edge-to-edge screen… has happened yet. Updated Macs: terribly outdated. New iPads with edge-to-edge screens, wireless charging: nothing but old stuff with new commercials.
We have the Apple Pencil that’s have as good as Microsoft’s Surface Pen. Hardly any software for Apple actually works with the Pencil.
How old is the Mac Pro?
And now we get to tbe bottom line. It’s been over 5 years since Jobs as passed, and Cook has done nothing. but ride his momentum. No real innovation has occured at Apple since, with the exception of a very few minor things.
There comes a time when you have to wake up from a delusion.
I do not agree with all of your Apple criticisms. But I do agree with over 90% and don’t feel good about it.
Apple needs to do better …
Isn’t the Industrial Design group at Apple pretty small too? Like, less than 10 people? If so, it’s pretty huge on a percentage basis to loose at least two in the past year. Someone will correct me if I’m misstating things.
Maybe the designers were bored. It’s not like they have had to come up with new hardware on the Mac side for years now other than the new touch bar.
Nice sideswipe.
So someone who worked for probably the most sought after company in the world, and worked on the most successful and game changing devices the world has ever seen, has left to go and work for another company that makes a few cameras.
Read that through again and let it sink in, and tell me that Apple isn’t undergoing a fundamental shift in focus that will destroy the company that we all know.
Dollars and position count too. If someone is offering 3X your current salary and a VP position, that’s a strong temptation.
Same problem. If it’s a money issue, and the highest market-cap company in the world with over $250 BILLION in the bank can’t offer a high-value employee the salary he wants, but GoPro can… then that’s another beancounter problem at Apple.
You’re right on job position though; you can only go so far in a company, even Apple.
Why not ask why a supposedly great designer could only get a job at a company that makes a few cameras?
Who knows what the hell is going on at Apple I often wonder if even anyone in the management knows actually. Certainly applying logic is a wasted art these days.
….great new products in the pipeline.
Its an uneasing development…
but never the less there are no shortages of kick ass industrial designers out there…
If Apple wanted to, they could have a team of 50 rather than just 18-20
Curios is why he left ?
He’s correct to not want to work inside the round monument to Fascism where the building contains all and its round shape conformity and everyone marches in lockstep. Its curcularity may point to a big zero in innovation.
Apple might have left behind its Classical innovation after Job’s death and entered a Middle Ages with the ascent of Cook where all is mere elaboration.
How long will we have to wait for it to emerge into a Renaissance where innovation is paramount and where the use of “pro” means professional and the prestigious MacPro is once again for professionals reather than for pro dilletants?
Hahahahahaaa. loser
Why begin an Apple criticism by drawing attention to one of the most beautiful structures ever created: the Apple Campus building? That is like saying Trump sucks because his wife is hot.
The post also lacks wit because it reveals your lack of basic knowledge. You use the number/digit zero to represent the word nothing, which is a word, but in reality is meaningless because there is always something. For example, a beautiful building is something, or even the vacuum state has something – e.g. the Casimer effect.
Instead of nonsense you could of said something timely like the designs lack advancements similar to Congress’s attempts at passing legislation or Cleveland’s attempts to win the World Series (today was day one of the 2017 baseball season). You could of also equated scarcity with something tech related like the inability of Microsoft to achieve 1% smartphone marketshare, the inability of Google to build a secure operating system, or the inability of Samsung to produce a non-exploding premium phone.
Once you decide the work of the entire American Military-Industrial Complex can be done on a iPad, well, mission accomplished. I’m out.
The Justice Department warned employers Monday not to discriminate against U.S. workers by over-hiring foreign workers under the H-1B visa program.
Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division Tom Wheeler said in a release that the Justice Department will “not tolerate employers misusing the H-1B visa process to discriminate against U.S. workers.”
you hear that, Timmy?
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/justice-department-warns-companies-not-to-discriminate-against-u.s.-workers/article/2619175
Ive lives in a bubble…he did well with the sunflower iMac, but a thick box on the wrist is no futuristic design…no appeal…no real boom of sales. The apple Watch does some nice stuff, but the design is horrendous and is not Apple. Can’t believe no-one else thinks this but me. Just like the iPhone, a visual streamlined device should have come out first with basic features, then gradually adapt in visual with ever growing features. 40 yr old men designed the Apple Watch for them, not teenager/20 somethings who would stimulate growth. It should be the hottest fad out there, but it is not. If you are a runner, do you really want to put on that thick thing to go run?
So, I inquire: Is there a relationship between this departure and Apple’s renunciation of the failed Mac Pro trash can design?
Very interesting and insightful question. The corporate political intrigue and damage control plot thickens.
Who to blame as we have witnessed two major design departures in one year and Jony reassigned?
No matter. Bring on the best Mac Pro EVER, Apple …