The Apple industrial design group that was led by Jony Ive — one that designed Macs, iPods, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and more — is now almost entirely dissolved.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Duncan Kerr, one of Ive’s few remaining design colleagues at the company, has informed Apple that he’s leaving soon, according to people who asked not to be identified because the move isn’t public. Kerr joined the company in 1999 and was instrumental to developing several generations of the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
With the departure, Ive’s team of about two dozen closely knit employees has been almost entirely dissolved. In the years following Ive’s own exit in 2019, top designers like Jody Akana, Joe Tan, Anthony Ashcroft, Andrea Williams, Jeremy Bataillou, and Eugene Whang left. The outflow continued over the past year, with major players like Bart Andre, Colin Burns, Shota Aoyagi, and Peter Russell-Clarke departing as well.
Evans Hankey, Ive’s successor as Apple’s head of industrial design, left Apple last year. Alan Dye, the company’s chief of interface design, remains in place, but his team has also lost several members in recent months. The last remaining industrial designers from the Ive era are Richard Howarth, Molly Anderson, and Ben Shaffer.
A large portion of the team at Apple has left for LoveFrom, Ive’s new design company.
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
MacDailyNews Take: The end of an era, hastened by operations guy Tim Cook laughably putting a team of designers directly under Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams where they obviously (to the non-myopic) do not belong.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
The good news is that the average age of outgoing CEOs across the S&P 1500 is 61.6 and Tim Cook will turn 64 on November 1st. 🕚 – MacDailyNews, May 7, 2024
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
Sad!
Thanks Timmy!
At least we have all those dildo and toilet plunger emojis!!
Not sorry. You guys messed up with AirPods Max design. Mine died after 5h listening (right after warranty ran out). Repair costs 350€ and as the design is the same, there is no point to repair them.
Perhaps this is why the designs are getting better actually. That team needed to be reined in by SJ to not fall into form over function.
Steve’s biggest mistake was not treating his cancer correctly of course, but his second biggest was appointing that China loving sissy the CEO. The whole thing makes me want to puke.
The month Jobs died – October, 2011 – the stock closed at $14.46. Today it closed at $182.74.
I’m very happy with that “China loving sissy” as he has done an awesome job guiding the company through some very challenging times for nearly 13 years.
We should all appreciate what he’s done as CEO.
I concur. I’m bemused by the recent hostility from MDN after seemingly approving of him for years.
Steve had his fair share of failures too, including nearly missing the MP3 revolution (which caused the stock to crash when no-one was buying the CD-burner-less iMacs). He managed to quickly pivot, giving us iTunes then the iPod, and the rest is history. Not unlike Tim’s currently playing catch-up on AI (though admittedly Siri should have come a lot further by now).
Shepherding a company for over a decade already stocked with a roster of superstar products and several in early development (all of which Cook had 0 role in creating) is not rocket science. While Tim Cook didn’t majorly F-up Apple, he has NOT been a good leader. A 20-year Apple employee I spoke to recently also sees the weird focus on identity politics, cringey presentations and a misguided project strategy. He did the best he could, time to show him the door, the company needs a hard reset.
Here, here!!! EXACTLY right, Nick.
NO, Locutus. I do not appreciate Cook dragging Apple the company into partisan biased woke politics. Nor do I appreciate dumbing down of Mac OS, removing chargers from iPhone purchases, removing useful features, me too products and updates, and soldering boards ALL to make more money.
The Apple fanboys worshipping their returns are too blind to see REALITY.
Cook is Steve’s worst mistake and needs to be replaced — PRONTO!…
A rising percentage of Apple’s workforce never experienced Steve Jobs’ leadership firsthand. Additionally, an increasing number of Apple personnel come from companies outside Apple that have been acquired. While this shift isn’t inherently good or bad, it does shed light on the evolving dynamics within the company and underscores that the responsibility doesn’t solely rest on Tim Cook’s shoulders, though he’s obviously a major contributor.
Can’t say I’ll miss those who designed the so-called “Magic” Mouse. What an abomination. The logical descendant of the infamous ‘Hockey Puck’ mouse.
we can tell. the camera placement in the new ipad is a definite tell. samsung like. i hate it. the cut out in the macbooks for a camera, making it look like the phone, makes no sense at all. yeah apple is done. well it was a good run.