“Following friction between top Apple Human Interface Vice President Greg Christie and Senior Vice President Jony Ive, Apple’s hardware and software design is being dramatically shaken up, according to sources familiar with the matter,” Mark Gurman reports for 9to5Mac.
“After adding human interface design direction to his responsibilities in 2012, Ive will soon completely subsume Apple’s software design group, wresting control away from long-time human interface design chief Christie, according to sources briefed on the matter,” Gurman reports. “Previous to this shakeup, all Apple software design has been led by Christie, who has reported to Craig Federighi, and Ive has been attending interface design meetings and providing instruction.”
“The design shakeup at Apple will result in Christie soon leaving the company, with all software designers now working directly under Ive with the rest of his industrial design team instead of within Federighi’s engineering group,” Gurman reports. “Sources say that Christie’s upcoming departure is significant and stems from a falling out with Ive… Christie also has hundreds of Apple patents in his name such as the iconic ‘Slide to Unlock’ patent… Christie has been a part of Apple and the technology industry long enough to have worked on the first Newton and the transition of Mac OS to OS X and its Aqua interface in the early 2000s.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: When it comes to Apple design, Jony owns it all now. This should help Apple deliver even better, even more copacetic, unified products.
Unfortunately, the masses aren’t out buying the mobile OS that all of the people here have released.
Apple has always offered appearance options, both in iOS and OS X. Even in Mac OS 9 they allowed third-party utilities to make your desktop UI resemble Vampira’s antechamber or the gunwale of the Bismarck. For blindingly obvious reasons they decline to ship a GUI quite as customisable today.
I disagree with the MDN take. The more I’ve controls, the worse Apple’s UI gets. He should stick to hardware.