Not unsurprisingly, given Steve Jobs’ intense interest in hardware design, dysfunction ran rampant within Apple’s design team after Jobs’ death.
Tripp Mickle for Fast Company:
In 2016, Jony Ive was contending with growing unrest within his design team at Apple. Ive had stepped down from day-to-day management duties, and Richard Howarth was elevated to vice president of design. This had created tension as Howarth had gone from ordinary member to leader of a close-knit group of about 20.
Ive had spent more than a decade working under Steve Jobs to become one of the most powerful people at Apple. His word was final. But Howarth didn’t have that standing. Ive’s absence created a vacuum, and other leaders at the company tried to fill it. For all Howarth’s gifts as a designer, he could become defensive and passionate when engineers challenged him. Such outbursts increased as operationally minded executives and engineers with seniority sought to increase their influence over designs…
MacDailyNews Take: All it took was just one look at Apple’s TV’s original Siri Remote, developed circa 2014, three years after Jobs’ death, to know there was some serious trouble in paradise.
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