“Jony Ive received a nice gift for the Memorial Day weekend: a promotion to the role of Chief Design Officer at Apple, which will broaden his design duties at Apple while handing day-to-day running of the design team to long-time Apple employees Alan Dye and Richard Howarth,” Luke Dormehl writes for Cult of Mac. “”
“Interestingly, a more hands-on role with the look and feel of the Apple Stores (among other areas) seems to be a big part of Ive’s new focus,” Dormehl writes. “In an accompanying interview for the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper, long-time Apple fan Stephen Fry, the following exchange reveals… ‘Jony will travel more, he told me. Among other things, he will bring his energies to bear – as he has already since their inception – on the Apple Stores that are proliferating around the world.'”
“Although Jony may be stepping away from the day-to-day running of his design team, it looks more like Jony is headed in the direction Steve Jobs was during his last few years at Apple,” Dormehl writes. “That means leaving the more managerial aspects of Apple to someone else, while focusing on the future ‘next big thing’” for the company.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote earlier today:
This is how Apple eases the pressure on Jony while addressing one of their most pressing problems since Steve Jobs was CEO: Succession. Jony Ive is the most important person at Apple. The addition of Marc Newson to Apple’s payroll, in whatever capacity, was one answer to the question. This is the next.
As we wrote yesterday:
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.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Stephen Fry meets Jony Ive, Apple’s newly-promoted chief design officer – May 26, 2015
Jony Ive gives up day-to-day managerial duties to focus on big picture – May 26, 2015
Jony Ive promoted to ‘Chief Design Officer’ – May 25, 2015
Jony Ive is the most powerful person at Apple – December 12, 2014
Jony Ive hasn’t been given too much power at Apple – because he’s always had it – February 5, 2013
Steve Jobs left design chief Jonathan Ive ‘more operational power’ than anyone else at Apple – October 21, 2011
First thing I noticed…..Jony Ive is wearing the GOLD version.
Jony appears to enjoy living the high life. His mansion in SF, his cars, his plane, his knighthood. He’s earned it all, of course. The question is whether he still enjoys working. We’ll see.
He has mansion not only in SF area, but, of course, in UK, and elsewhere.
Johnny is not more important than Tim…
They are equally important in different areas! And as hard to replace..
If anything i believe Tim will be harder to replace .
But no one is leaving… So all this is just speculation.. And IMHO pushes the narrative towards FUD .. Thanks to 9to5 and Seths moment of claim to fame.
Timothy is important not as operative officer with unique and outstanding excellence and experience, but also as devoted follower of Jobs’ vision of Apple, and his principles.
Replacing Timothy with just any other excellent operations guy could ruin Apple in the long run. Without Apple principles, any purely operational excellence is dangerous.
The new structure frees up some time to work on the Wagen. That will take a lot of work. The iPad, iPod, Mac and Watch products are all pretty stable at this point. The Wagen is a pretty blank slate. Jony favors Bentlys, beautiful and luxurious cars, but I’m sure he knows the company can’t serve it’s customers with just a high-end model, just like Watch won’t be successful selling only Edition models. I hope there is an aluminium Wagen as well as a gold one.