Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company in addition to his role as the leader of Industrial Design. His incredible design aesthetic has been the driving force behind the look and feel of Apple’s products for more than a decade. – Apple Inc. press release, October 29, 2012
“For all of Ive’s incalculable impact on Apple’s products since the late 1990s, he’s been a hardware person; other people have run the software for Macs, iPhones, iPads and other devices,” Harry McCracken writes for TIME Magazine. “Generally speaking, the arrangement seems to have worked well — certainly, Apple has had the smoothest integration of hardware and software of any company in its field.”
“Now Ive will call the shots for the whole Apple interface experience,” McCracken writes. “To my knowledge, the only other Apple employee who exercised that responsibility in the past was Steve Jobs… The bottom line: Ive has always been one of the most important people at Apple, but with this reshuffling, he gets the opportunity to become the most important person at Apple. That makes this the most important thing that’s happened at the company in the post-Jobs era.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Zulkifli” for the heads up.]
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Apple: Forstall pushed out by Cook, source says; news met with ‘quiet jubilation’ inside Apple – October 30, 2012
Apple CEO Tim Cook executes major management shake-up at world’s most valuable company – October 30, 2012
Tim Cook takes full control of Apple: John Browett and Scott Forstall out; Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi get expanded responsibilities – October 29, 2012
Apple software designers sick of doing things Scott Forstall’s way; ‘civil war’ said breaking out – October 10, 2012
Tim Cook open letter: We fell short with new Maps app; we are extremely sorry – September 28, 2012
Apple newbie John Browett brings Dixons to Apple Retail Stores – August 17, 2012
An Apple CEO-in-waiting, Scott Forstall, sells 95% of his company shares – May 2, 2012
Software UI/UX is not the same as hardware. Hope he can do it.
Spoken by an unimaginitive man with no insight.
Ive can sketch up a great UI, within the hour, getting it to work programing wise takes a hell of a lot longer.
He will be responsible for the overall look, feel and interaction concepts within the UI it will be for the technical types to discuss how to make it work. The reason Apple has been superior to competitors is because non tehs have devised much of the interactive elements that the user is familiar with. When techie design it you get a Japanese tv remote control that does everything badly. Gret move.
Hence the famous blinking 12:00 LED plaguing ordinary people for twenty years. Hell, I still have to do a study every time the microwave ovens reset after a power outage…
He will be responsible for the overall look, feel and interaction concepts within the UI it will be for the technical types to discuss how to make it work. The reason Apple has been superior to competitors is because non tehs have devised much of the interactive elements that the user is familiar with. When techie design it you get a Japanese tv remote control that does everything badly. Great move.
As long at it’s an OUI, it’s way overdue.
Snap judgments on the internet? NO WAY.
OP is hopeful, and you somehow deduce that he lacks imagination.
Do you talk to people like this IRL?
Thank you for trivializing what UI people dip all day. HIG are difficult to curate and maintain. Stop thinking that everything is so trivial.
“The anchor problem must be mastered…let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.”
–Churchill to the engineers responsible for a floating harbor on the Normandy beaches.
Brilliant
Sir Jony, we wish you the best and have lot’s of confidence in your abilities.
He understands simplicity. This is where Apple has always led in UI/UX development. He’s the man.
Exactly!
It’s all on Jony now. No excuses permitted. No one else to blame. Eyes on you, lad. Are you ready and able?
Hopefully, JI stops this inane trend of making OS X act and feel like IOS. Please bring back a more functional GUI to OS X. Mail and Contacts need some big time love.
OS X and iOS are now under one person the combining will only get done faster, what makes you think Scott Forstall had anything to do OS X, at his firing he was in charge of iOS.
Seriously??? That IOS footprint is all over OS X a la mission control, mail, contacts, launch pad…need I go on?
Right. Scott had a lot going on, but he lit too many matches….
Scott was in charge of Leopard, Scott’s team won the in-house os war and came up with iOS from a stripped down OS X kernel.
So Yeah, Scott had a lot to do with OS X..
Agree. iOS and computers are different tools.
Like the flying car, not a good car, not a good airplane.
Agreed. I’m ok with some iOS integration. However, the Mac OS needs to be its own OS again.
I’m looking for power to manage various forms of documents. A better interface with the user. Less Facebook, less family oriented photo-gimmickery.
I hope they integrate, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers into the OS for both the desktop and mobile OSes all through iCloud.
Give you us an iTunes 11 with better music editing/conversion features beyond an equalizer.
Give iPhoto more Aperture like editing features and get rid of Aperture because it sucks.
Apple should make an HTML 5 web page editor and bring back iWeb.
Add more tools and functions with iCloud and the integrated Pages, Keynote, Numbers with the Mac OS so that a power user can edit the same document on any Apple device and have it available on your iCloud web page created by iWeb HTML5. Edit and publish a book in the same fashion. Apply these features to a school programs for course study and assignment presentation.
Make the next Mac OS the kick ass OS for the future.
I bet those non-functional “pages” in the iOS Contacts will not survive a single a single revision under Jony Ive.
Jonny is gonna create some amazing things.
Speaking as a creative consultant and designer for nearly 30yrs Ivan say that this is an amazing creative opportunity for jonny to spread his creative wings and go into uncharted creative waters.
If I was jonny I would be so excited about this fantastic opportunity!
Go for it jonny, you have the talent and the design sense to make ape great in the post jobs era.
Ive is going to speak at the next Apple event! Can’t hide anymore.
We’ll see. He really shies away from public speaking.
He has agents and will send his message through them. He can’t actually appear in person, you see; you’ve seen his videos, haven’t you?—they all appear in a featureless space, white… kind of like in Heaven…
A war broke out between Ive and Forstall and Tim Cook chose to ride with Jony Ive. Great, decisive leadership from Tim. Guess this is a big reason why Steve wanted him in charge: he was confident that Tim would keep the gang together, allowing Apple to thrive for years or perhaps decades to come.
How do you know that happened? Are you just speculating based on anonymous rumors?
good contradiction,
“he (Jobs) was confident that Tim would keep the gang together”
Lol – TIm isn’t thinking anything but listening to the customers. Maps is not so bad. Siri still isn’t out of Beta. Tim messed up several times this year… Down with Cook.
You’re out of your mind.
This was a simple choice based on what makes Apple an attractive product.
Want creative products use creatives, work backwards in the process: positive, easy, useful, user experience use creatives to make the edges look complete and attractive, then make the engineers build it according to a model stressing stability, last, give it to sales and make them do the job they have.
How to ruin a company, have engineers involved in sales and UI design and or sales in management and making engineering or UI decisions.
Of the above, sales in management, and engineers in UI and public relations is a disaster.
It’s obvious that Forstall’s temperament was at odds with Tim Cook and Jonny Ive. That might not have been much of a problem if Forstall was the kind of genius that Jobs was. But he’s not. He’s a charismatic guy if you like him – he’s a weasel if you don’t, but he hasn’t shown himself to be a design genius on the level of Jonny Ive. If you have someone in your organization who’s jockeying for power and neglecting their core responsibilities as Scott appears to have been doing – you have to can them.
Cook did the right thing.
I think it becomes clear that Jobs put his faith in Cook as CEO because he could see that Cook is someone devoted to getting the job done and getting it done well before he is interested in boosting his own ego. Apple didn’t need another abrasive egotist to ‘replace’ Jobs – and no one knew that better than Steve himself. Apple needed someone who could steer the ship and keep things running well.
It took a year for Cook to let the threads left by Jobs’ departure play out. He could see where the inefficiencies were and he could see how the structure of the organization needed to change only after enough time had passed.
Cook did the right thing.
Very perceptive and cogent. I agree.
The key thing for Apple followers to understand is that Steve Jobs, knowing he was dying, and believing in the transcendental importance of his vision and with the future of Apple on the line, entrusted all that to Tim Cook.
He may have bonded with Scott Forstall as a fellow visionary and a kindred soul, but he must have been a more nuanced observer of character than we knew.
And with Tim’s recent decisiveness and simplifying reorganization, it does look like, once again, Steve knew what he was doing, turning over the crown jewels of Homo sapiens to Mr. Cook.
Ive’s rise will assure that the user experience of macs and idevices will remain unmatched — nothing is more important, to a fanboy like me, when it comes to making computing devices’ purchases. Awesome!
I think Jony Ive will do a great job.
I dare to think different.
The state of Apple design is stagnant.
Real innovation and change in Design have not come from Jony but from the engineering side — however, engineering must remaining on that original path which Jony set first. Jony’s vision is a a slow evolution in design the yearly advancements have all been internally to the hardware.
Ives totally FAILS at FORM and FUNCTION of industrial design.
Simplicity of complex things is the true beauty. Not merely simplifying things until you are left with a plane of glass.
Only time will tell.
Radionics, are you completely deranged? Ive fails at form and function of industrial design? Seriously? You really don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, do you? Who, exactly, do you think has been responsible for Apple’s industrial design ever since the first iPod and the jelly-bean iMac?
Ive
I’ll continue what I was saying, Ive is Head of Industrial Design. You are right in that as far as Ive is concerned, the simpler the design, the better, but he’s following Dieter Rams and other industrial designers on that path, and to any industrial designer who knows engineering, the perfect machine has no moving parts. When you finally grow enough brain cells and understand that, then you’ll also understand that a flat sheet of glass that functions as a pocket computer is precisely what Ive should be working towards.
I understand design. You don’t.
Overrated, he is. In my opinion.
Overrated, is he? Can you name another designer or company that mass produces products with the craftsmanship, quality and desgin as Apple? I am genuinely interested to know if Ive is over rated who is better.
Over rated eh?
How many designers do you know that has wont almost countless design awards and has his products in the most prolific design museums all over the world?
The guy is a genius and a one off like Steve jobs.
Within the creator community jinny I’ve is one of the most widely respected creative people in the world.
He is a true genius and exception in a world of mediocrity and poor design.
Come now, he started making toilets.
And I’ll bet that they were very nice toilets. As if that has any relevance to his current abilities. I just don’t understand your point. If it was intended to be humor, then I missed the signals.
I started out in landscaping and as grunt labor in a small family chemical factory. Nothing wrong with either of those jobs, and they both contributed to who I am today. I have moved on since then.
Because Petey boy,
THOSE who are in POWER write HISTORY.
It is not to question of talent but to say Ives is over rated is simply that… over rated… given far too much praise for the job he should remain doing yet seems to have been sitting on his butt. iPhone 5 is not a new Design. Basic over seeing of things. Not bloody design work. iMac is a result logical to the trend of technology. Thinner – Lighter – Faster. The basic design remains true from years before. The man never needed to lift a finger… just direct engineers to compact tighter configurations.
He was in the right place at the right time. He did a great job at hardware design.
Are we all agreeing now that THERE IS NO NEED for hardware design and Jony can do UI now???
I do not doubt he can over see this new position… and most likely marriage the state of both UIs as one; on both hardwares.
Yet, I also believe Jony mostly is merely a lucky man and yes over rated.
That is easily the daftest post I have ever read on these boards, and that includes Zune Tang’s posts!
“Basic overseeing”, hahahaha that cracks me up. You really are crazy!
The hockey puck mouse called, it wants to be sure you still love it. After all, Ive designed it, it must be genius..
Wow you just pretty much blew whatever hope of credibility your opinion could ever have. Bravo.
Keep it up, sparky!
Thanks Yoda.
Wow. Seriously?
Ive is without a doubt one of the greatest industrial designers ever. Seriously. He’s that good.
I fully expect that one day his work will be looked upon the same way we do Ludwig Mies van der Roh and others. So much of his work is amazing – people who are not into design don’t see it because they just live with it.
Ive’s work has had an enormous impact on your life and all current industrial design.
Check your Mies spelling. And to comment on Mies, I think it sad most of the award winning architecture we see is Miesian (admittedly on steroids), and I cannot understand why there is not more imagination in most of this architecture for certainly life is richer than what is being presented.
Ive’s done a great job, and this is a big opportunity for him – but he has earned it.
🙂 I see I dropped an “e”. Typing quickly from an iOS device while multitasking is never good.
And you’re totally right about the lack of creativity in the majority of “award winning” modern architecture.
Totally Agree with you Krquet !!!!
BRAVE comment.
I think you don’t understand what exactly an industrial designer does.
If he is overrated, who do you think currently is a better ID? Seriously, I’m genuinely curious.
I happen to agree, he seams very overblown.
I’m not a fan of ‘hero worship’ and he seems to have reached the level of unrealistic hype. It comes across as unhealthy, obsessive fanboi behavior. Even the slightest criticism seems to bring such heated reaction. He doesn’t seem like a ‘genius’ to me so much as a self absorbed, grandiose hipster. He displays a high level of passion for sure, he is clearly a great designer. I just think the genius tag and worship of him to be a bit much.
Not all of his design is ‘genius’, there have been duds, the first and foremost on my mind being the hockey puck mouse.
I can also see where people are feeling the lines are a little stale. We expect, thiner, lighter faster, it is the trend and has been for some time. We know Apple can do it. Now I want them to think differently and show me something different and exceptional. The recent updates felt evolutionary.
I definitely agree with you about the puck. That was a very poor design. It was nice to look at, but ergonomically, it was a nightmare. I don’t know of any designer who has always been 100% on point in their execution though. Ever.
I’m just curious who do you think is a better contemporary though?
Design is something I’m very passionate about, so I enjoy discussing these things.
What seems to happen with designers who produce such a large volume of commercial designs over a short period of time is that people get “used” to the design language and begin to take it for granted.
But I can’t think of many mass produced objects that so many people use on a daily basis that sill inspire people who are not even interested in design to occasionally stop to just admire it, or pause to appreciate the feel of it in their hand. I have seen many people that think I’m crazy for my design awareness do just that with Ive’s designs. I think that says something about his work.
Jonny will be pushed right into his level of incompetency. Next up …. lets let him be Apple CEO, right you morons?
Ive and Forstall are the only two people who should have been CEO at Apple other than Tim. has to be tech person no matter what (at any tech company).
Can’t wait to see the elegance of the Air etc. move further into the UI instead of these ugly throwback designs of calendar, contacts, etc.
Jony Ive created the hardware designs and Bob Mansfield’s engineering acumen made them happen.
Cannot the same thing happen in software?
Apple’s OS X, iOS, most of there other software has been the best in the tech industry, asking Geeks about this does not count.
Asking geeks about this does not count—quite right, precisely the point. Architects are not geeks. Obsessed, yes—more than a geek would like. The Grand Architect gives context and meaning to everything, and mortal architects emulate that vital impulse. Geeks are scarcely more than masons cementing the gargoyles and spandrels in place.
Only as long as sculley jr allows him
Lots of commenters are reacting like Ive is going to tear down what’s here to do ‘amazing things’.
Finder, Menu Bar and Dock are not going to get thrown to the dogs.
Apple’s systems are fairly well defined, so Ive is going to do what is needed when refining what is already there in the OS.
You don’t have to write code to be a UI genius. You just have to understand how the feel of what’s in your hand should be married to what’s on the screen.
Sounds simple. It’s not.
I think we’re going to see on the software side is exactly what we’ve gotten from the hardware for years — power and simplicity.
When it comes to the code itself, that’s for the engineers.
I also think we’re going to begin to see a real unification of the software programs so that they look and behave even closer from first party app to first party app.
I’d like for my hand to be ‘married to what’s on the screen’ but Halle Berry won’t return my calls.
Lol!
I deserved that . . . sicko.
I agree. Tim Cook and Jony Ive together at the top is the combination of talents Apple needed. A small step – a big jump. I feel a lot better for Apple now. not just as an investor.
painfully dumb
So now we are going to have form over function in software too?
We already had that with a lot of Scott’s UI choices.
Although I like a little form with with my function in my UI. Otherwise, I would just stick to CLI…
In due time, we will have a Royal British Knight at the head of Apple, Inc.
A title Steve didn’t want to take part in, although he could have had.
FYI, only a citizen of the British Commonwealth can receive a KBE and call themselves Sir. For example, Bob Geldof has an honorary knighthood and can’t call himself Sir Bob as he is an Irish citizen.
=:~)
Interestingly, Apple now has both a Sir and a Siri.
A year or so ago, I remember reading about how Ive wanted less responsibility so he could spend more time in England with his family. Now, he gets more to do. Keeping-up all of these amazing products and technologies is a lot of work. I hope they’re not overworked by all of the new responsibility.
I like Mr. Cook’s play, I like it a lot. Now, will we see Sir Jony as part of a product keynote/launch?
I greatly admire Ive, but playing the devil’s advocate think about this:
Ive has been involved in everything: iPods, Macs, iPhones etc yet in the last 5 years the vast bulk of growth in sales and profit was due to iOS.
Macs with beautiful Ive designed hardware only grew 1% last quarter from year ago.
Forstall was in charge of iOS. He won the hard fight to put OSX into mobile (iOS) against those that wanted an ‘iPod Phone’. His team produced a full functioning computer rather than a ‘music phone’ that works at the core level much better than android (you need faster processors for android to run smoothly and the apps tech is poorer)
Today iOS devices make more money than all of the rest of apple put together. Practically all the stock gain from $100 to 600 was due to iOS devices.
I contend that although beautiful hardware is important, at least 50% of apple’s success is due to software (and the integration of hardware software). Beautiful hardware alone (even Apple TV is nice) doesn’t sell in huge amounts.
Perhaps it was right due to personality etc issues to can Forstall but those are the facts and I hope Cook , Ive etc can lead Apple higher…
The phone, pod and tablet are all design classics. Their success is very much integral to the form factor – other phones, PC tablet etc – before Apple showed everyone what they could be like – were clunky, heavy devices. Software is an equal partner with hardware not superior to it. What ‘grips’ sometimes is the imposed hardware barriers to using other technologies – like iPads not having SD card slots or upload capabilities through the connector.
“Software is an equal partner with hardware not superior to it.”
not much different from what I said:
“I contend that although beautiful hardware is important, at least 50% of apple’s success is due to software ”
what I’m pointing out that numerous comments here and elsewhere are putting Ive on a ‘solo’ pedestal and downgrading (really blasting) Forstall.
IPods, Apple Tv had Ive design from the start and the last few years its been in a downward trend sales wise.
Like I said before Great hardware design is good but doesn’t move stuff without good software integration i.e success is the ‘whole widget’ (including ‘ecosystem of content, support’ etc ) .
Ive has the designers feel for what is right – minimalist, form and fit of the highest spec, everything understated but quality ingrained using the very latest in manufacturing process .
The biggest challenge is the Screen UI which has shown little innovation and change since Gen 1 iPhone. The ‘Game centre UI is a real ‘dog’ on both Mac and iOS.
There are possibly millions of Apps out there but how many survive beyond a week or two of interest – not many, So the key ones need to be right. Maps is one of those and Apple’s app needs a lot of work.
Lets hope Cook provides the ‘top-cover’ and delivers the support, finance and logistics mgmt that leaves Ive to do product design and not get bogged down in process thing.
well, hallelujah! ; )
finally Sir Ive is at the helm.
bleedin’ time!
u got to love his consistent, quiet, unassuming, unaggressive, but infinitely smarter approach to getting up.
not through greed or ego but humbly, meritoriously, smartly.
he more than anyone was close to Steve Jobs, so i don’t know why so much reference online is made to Forstall being Steve’s man.
Ive is the one who had the office next to Steve!
Ive has Steve’s/Apple’s DNA, not Forstall.
Ive is as quietly powerful & passionate & visionary as Apple, who ascended from near-bankruptcy in 1997 to phoenix-like rise, unprecedented in human business history.
both Ive & Steve were very private men,
Steve was only louder in charisma,
but Ive has his own brit charm.
Ive, if anybody, is the man to think different, like iSteve.
It’s beyond bizzare how Apple fans worship the executives of that company. People see Jony (stupid way of spelling johnny) as some kind od savior now that their beloved “Steve” is gone. This is truly fucken bizzar behavior. These people need to get out more .