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If you leave Apple and then build the Taj Mahal, we’ll chop off your hands.
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Ive had a saying that went something like this, according to a person close to the design team: There are two ways of leaving Apple - the good way is you disappear and don’t make press. “The design team is made up of the most creative people, but now there is an operations barrier that wasn’t there before,” one former Apple executive said. Initially, not much will change, because Apple has been operating with partial input from Ive for a few years, someone close to the team said. Ive still only came to the office a couple of days a week, with many meetings shifting to San Francisco, according the people familiar with the matter. One person close to Apple captured the anxiety of the moment: “People who have been there forever don’t want to keep doing incremental updates to current products.” What else could he say? But this echos his constant comments about Apple’s amazing pipeline. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, sought to play down the changes as an “evolution”, pointing to an expanded group of in-house designers that is “the strongest it’s ever been”. Numbers has never been the measure that I turn to affirm or describe the success of a product.” But if you don’t have the space, if you don’t have the tools and the infrastructure, that curiosity can often not have the opportunity to be pursued.” That is fundamental and foundational to most creative endeavour. One of my defining characteristics is almost a fanatical curiosity. And if the supposed reason was that he didn’t get along with Ive, and Ive was shifting focus away from computers and on the way out, anyway… He’s the type of product leader Apple needs. This all makes the decision to fire Forstall look worse.
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It sounds like Ive is blaming Tim Cook for stifling him and for being too metrics-driven.What sense does it make to put Jeff Williams, the operations guy, in charge of the designers?.With so much time to prepare, why couldn’t Apple name a replacement? This gives the impression that the leadership was not doing their jobs or simply doesn’t see overall design as that important-leave hardware and software under separate non–senior VP lieutenants.the loss of Steve Jobs, Scott Forstall, and others)? Are Apple’s post-2012 design problems due to him having more power, or due to him being more removed from the day-to-day product work, or neither (e.g. I don’t know what the effect will be on Apple’s products because I don’t know what he’s been doing over the last several years. This is not at all surprising, given that he seemed to be on the same up-and-out trajectory as Avie Tevanian. Williams has led the development of Apple Watch since its inception and will spend more of his time working with the design team in their studio. Both Dye and Hankey have played key leadership roles on Apple’s design team for many years. While he pursues personal projects, Ive in his new company will continue to work closely and on a range of projects with Apple.ĭesign team leaders Evans Hankey, vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, vice president of Human Interface Design, will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. Apple today announced that Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, will depart the company as an employee later this year to form an independent design company which will count Apple among its primary clients.
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