Ryan Vlastelica for Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. shares inched lower on Friday after it announced that Jony Ive — the chief designer behind iconic products such as the iMac and the iPhone — is leaving the company to form his own firm.
While analysts unanimously praised Ive’s record at the company, with Deutsche Bank writing that he was “perhaps second only to CEO Tim Cook presently in terms of impact to AAPL’s success,” most saw limited long-term impact from the departure.
The stock dipped 0.2%, though it has risen nearly 14% from a low earlier this month.
Nomura Instinet, Jeffrey Kvaal: “While investors may rue a resignation of a long-time executive, we consider this a sensible and even expected time for Mr. Ive to disengage.”
MacDailyNews Take: Clearly the whole “Apple will continue to work with Jony as on eof his new firm’s primary clients” spiel did exactly what it was designed to do, soften the blow of the news to a mere whisper.
Currently, Apple shares are down just 1.10% (-$2.19) to $197.55.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Max Planck
It was time to move on, and let the next generation give it a go.
30 years is sufficient time for ideas to get stale.
“By removing the space between Love and From we were able to reduce the size of our logo by 1mm thereby creating a name that is both minimal and balanced.”
of course! the stock would take out if Tim would call it quits
out -> off
Take off? Not really. There would be some succession uncertainty which would cause the share price to drop. Anyway, there is still the iPhone sales decline problem weighing heavily on Apple and that won’t change with Tim Cook’s departure.
Mmm – did someone say take out – Chinese for me, extra tariffs on the side
Now that Jony is on a freelance contract basis and Apple is the boss should be much easier to keep Jony focused and move Apple forward…
“This may be good news,” veteran Apple blogger John Gruber wrote last week. “In the post-Jobs era, with all of Apple design, hardware and software, under his control, we’ve seen the software design decline and the hardware go wonky.”
Gruber cites the ongoing kerfuffle over Apple’s new MacBook keyboards as the latest example of the company’s “design über alles” approach conflicting with what its users want.
“Today’s MacBooks are worse computers but more beautiful devices than the ones they replaced. Is that directly attributable to Jony Ive? With these keyboards in particular, I believe the answer is yes,” Gruber said.