Uh oh, Apple’s new design leads report to CEO Tim Cook, and not Jony Ive
“Apple updated its executive bios to reflect changes in its design team that were announced earlier this year,” Chris O’Brien reports for VentureBeat. “But the updates came with an unexpected twist.”
“The bio of Jony Ive now includes his new title, Chief Design Officer,” O’Brien reports, “It also added bios for Alan Dye, the new Vice President of User Interface Design, and Richard Howarth, the new Vice President of Industrial Design”
Not sure if there’s anything to make of it, but both Howarth and Dye and are described as reporting to Tim Cook, not Jony Ive. – John Gruber, Daring Fireball
“But from the outside, it seems to leave room for speculation about who is making the major design decisions,” O’Brien writes, “And it certainly seems likely to provide more fodder for people who saw Ive’s title change as a gradual stepping away from the company.”
Jonathan Ive, Apple Chief Design OfficerMacDailyNews Take: The smooth succession is underway. Slow and smooth in order to assuage investor fears.
This info isn’t dumped just before the long U.S. holiday weekend by mistake.
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. – MacDailyNews, May 25, 2015
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. – MacDailyNews, May 26, 2015
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.”
