chinacat
Moderator
AAPL Long since 2006
Posts: 4,426
|
Post by chinacat on Jun 28, 2019 4:48:21 GMT -8
|
|
|
Post by northstar on Jun 28, 2019 5:19:39 GMT -8
Gruber can be cheap and crude. Like Thurrot, he's not so relevant anymore. Anyway, guy scratches his balls in public, nuff said...
|
|
|
Post by firestorm on Jun 28, 2019 7:15:33 GMT -8
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2019 7:33:31 GMT -8
Don’t know what you’re talking about with scratching, but Gruber is a lefty and swears for effect. He’s like a tech bill maher. It does mystify why he thinks tech and politics mix, since I’d never purchase anything from him, but Daniel Eran Dilger is just as bad. I’m always skeptical of the notion a supposedly recently polarized America, but being unconcerned to wear ones politics on one’s sleeve even for business persons is a change.
Horace Dediu is wonderful on business and Apple but when he’s on the topic of micro mobility he sounds like a European bureaucrat. Someday I’ll remind him that Rush’s “Red Barchetta” was about a dystopian future where cars were banned. Now people are longing for it wistfully.
|
|
|
Post by Luckychoices on Jun 28, 2019 8:29:57 GMT -8
There've obviously been numerous stories about Jony Ive leaving Apple but I thought this one should be *somewhat* reassuring to those shareholders who may be panicking a bit even though perhaps not reassuring enough to let them completely relax: Inside Apple's Long Goodbye to Design Chief Jony IveJony Ive has been leaving Apple Inc. for years. When it was finally made official on Thursday, there was nevertheless hand-wringing about the company’s future.
Ive led a stable, close-knit team of designers who created the slick look and feel of Apple’s hardware and software for more than two decades. At least six members of the group have left in the past three years.
The departures herald a new era. The days when Apple could reliably deliver a whole new category of device -- a spare music player, a sleek tablet, an elegant smartphone -- every few years have waned. More recently, the company has focused on iterations of its existing lineup. Now, the company needs another hit, but this one will require fundamental technological innovation, not just the design genius of Ive and his team.
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."
Apple shares slipped less than 1% in extended trading. But the stock has fallen more than 10% since early October on concern about waning iPhone demand and the U.S.-China trade war. "This news only adds to the current agita around the Apple story," Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, wrote in a note to investors on Thursday.
Ive was the mastermind behind the designs of the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and iPod that took Apple from the brink of bankruptcy in the late 1990’s to its status as a trillion-dollar company. When co-founder Steve Jobs died in 2011, Ive became the most important person at the company, ultimately deciding what products Apple would launch, how they would function, and what they would look like.
He was in charge of a roughly two-dozen person design team that included artists whose passions extended to the development of surfboards, cars, and even DJing on weekends. Many of their spouses worked as designers, too.
But after the Watch launched in 2015, Ive began to shed responsibilities. Day-to-day oversight of Apple’s design team was reduced to coming to headquarters as little as twice a week, according to people familiar with the matter. They asked not to be identified discussing private details.
Around that time, Ive told the New Yorker he’d become "deeply, deeply tired." He said the year leading up to the Watch debut was "the most difficult" since he joined Apple. Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs and a friend of Ive’s, suggested to the New Yorker that there could be a "slightly different structure that’s a little more sustainable and sustaining,” while keeping Ive at Apple.
About three months later, Ive was named Apple’s Chief Design Officer, a role that shifted day-to-day responsibility of the hardware and software design teams to a pair of executives, Alan Dye and Richard Howarth. About two years later, at the end of 2017, Apple said Ive had re-assumed some of the leadership responsibilities he had previously given up.
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. That helped him avoid the long commute from his home in the Pacific Heights district of the city to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Ive sometimes met with his team at the homes of his employees, at hotels, or other venues. The design executive even set up an office and studio in San Francisco to do much of his work.
Ive also traveled frequently to London, near where he was raised. He occasionally missed out on Apple product launch events, an unthinkable absence several years ago.
"This has been a long time in the making," according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to discuss personnel moves. "He’s been at Apple over 25 years, and it’s a really taxing job. It’s been an extremely tense 25 years for him at Apple and there’s a time for everyone to slow down."
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.
But challenges loom. And some people familiar with Apple are already worried about the new design leadership. Now that Ive is officially leaving, longtime studio manager Evans Hankey will run the hardware design group, Apple said. Hankey is a great team leader, but Apple now lacks a true design brain on its executive team, which is a concern, a person familiar with the design team said.
Hankey and Dye will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. While Williams is a talented executive, some people familiar with matter believe the shift is another sign of Apple becoming more of an operations company. Apple declined to comment.
"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. "People are scared to be innovative."
Ive reported to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook. The designer also used to report directly to Jobs. The two would lunch together regularly and walk around Apple’s Silicon Valley campus quietly making design decisions.
"Most of the greatest debates at Apple happened between those two as they walked together," said Matt Rogers, the co-founder of Nest Labs who worked on iPhone and iPod software from 2007 to 2010. "For the last decade, Jony’s been one of the great product leaders on the executive team. Who’s going to carry that forward?"
The timing of Ive’s departure coincided with the promotion of Sabih Khan to the role of senior vice president of operations. That part of Apple has become more involved in the development of products at an earlier stage, one of the people said.
The next big Apple product may be augmented reality glasses. Apple’s design group is trying to turn this nascent technology into something that changes people’s everyday lives -- in the way the iPod did for music and the iPhone did for mobile handsets. While the product is still a ways off, Apple’s operations team is already involved in the process, seeking suppliers and methods of production, the people said.
A new product like that needs a "leap" in the underlying technology, while Ive specialized more in perfecting existing technologies for the masses, according to Rogers. Some smartphones had touch screens before the iPhone, but Ive’s team made the feature a delight to use.
"It’s very hard to have large breakthrough hardware innovations every year. It’s more like every five or 10 years now," Rogers said.
The design team is taking on this challenge without veteran members. Christopher Stringer and Daniele De Iuliis, a pair of key Ive lieutenants, kicked off the departures a few years ago, with Daniel Coster leaving to lead design at GoPro in 2016. The team lost three members in the past six months: Julian Hoenig, Rico Zorkendorfer and Miklu Silvanto.
While each Apple designer specializes in specific product lines, they all contribute to each other’s products and plans. That means losing an individual designer is still a big deal, a former Apple executive said. "The design studio has no secrets," this person said. "They all know what each other is working on."
Apple has been hiring younger designers and increasing the size of the team. Joe Tan, who founded a firm called Moreless, joined in late 2015. “The new people have more energy," a person close to Apple said.
Still, the recent departures will hurt. And the cardinal sin is to flourish after you leave.
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 bad way is you make the press. If you leave Apple and then build the Taj Mahal, we’ll chop off your hands.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2019 8:42:06 GMT -8
|
|
chinacat
Moderator
AAPL Long since 2006
Posts: 4,426
|
Post by chinacat on Jun 28, 2019 9:02:04 GMT -8
|
|
|
Post by firestorm on Jun 28, 2019 9:20:37 GMT -8
I've always felt that iTunes was incomprehensibly bad. Poor design. Confusing navigation. It looks like a product of a company, other than Apple, of 20 years ago.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2019 9:40:59 GMT -8
iTunes had to go and it was anticipated for some time. But it was a catch all product that brilliantly allowed Apple to take the world by storm with a simple iPod and expand the product like to iPhone, iPad, and watch. Making fundamental changes to it while not alienating its billion + users is like turning around an aircraft carrier in a lake.
If this brilliant product successfully disappears into the MacOS and iOS along with a few targeted apps without major user annoyance or disruption it will be one of the great software transitions of all time. Apple is known for its shiny consumer goods but its skill in software backend work is under appreciated. It has done major transitions over the years of the sort that has broken many companies. I can only attribute this to obsession over the details of things you don’t see that allows them to do that, along with vertical integration.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2019 10:33:44 GMT -8
Complexity is like risk. You can’t eliminate it, only transform or hide it. iTunes put the complexity of iPod into an app that could handle it better than the primitive iPod and was intuitive for users. It became too complex over time and the devices became less primitive. Soon the complexity will be distributed among devices That are now more complex. There’s no big mystery here why iTunes developed as it did and disappeared.
Failure to come up with a solution to complexity as Apple did destroyed the MS brand with consumers. Not to worry, cloud and subscription has transformed them. Or something. Remember, everyone likes to complain but as Dediu says “bitchin ain’t switchin”. Soon people won’t even remember iTunes and they’ll complain about something else.
|
|
|
Post by longsince98 on Jun 28, 2019 11:57:23 GMT -8
There obviously been numerous stories about Jony Ive leaving Apple but I thought this one should be *somewhat* reassuring to those shareholders who may be panicking a bit even though perhaps not reassuring enough to let them completely relax: Inside Apple's Long Goodbye to Design Chief Jony IveReally great post LC.. thanks for putting it together.
|
|
|
Post by Luckychoices on Jun 28, 2019 16:58:07 GMT -8
Really great post LC.. thanks for putting it together. Thanks! Glad you found it worthwhile.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2019 6:52:49 GMT -8
Neil Cybart’s view on the Ive change. He’s quite perceptive. The gruber take that his continuous relationship might be a fig leaf always comes to mind in business since it can never be dismissed out of hand. But I suspect cybart is probably right in the end though it’s only speculation.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2019 6:53:35 GMT -8
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2019 6:54:23 GMT -8
Can’t seem to paste a twitter link here but easy to find cybart
|
|
JDSoCal
Member
Aspiring oligarch
Posts: 4,182
|
Post by JDSoCal on Jun 29, 2019 9:30:54 GMT -8
A lot of speculation in the Apple media about the effect of Ive's departure. But I don't think any of the commentators are privy to what's really going on inside Apple. I also don't like iTunes. Why Apple abandoned the simple, Open > File convention of every other app in the history of Apple and the GUI for that matter escapes me (maybe I just want to play a freaking song without creating a playlist!). And it's clunky on iOS. But how do you get rid of iTunes for iOS/Mac but still keep a version for Windows? And Apple brags about its curation, but when you go to "top songs" several of the songs repeat. That's just inexplicable. The truth is, without Jobs and Ive, Apple is a completely different company. Fortunately, the installed base is one hell of a Maginot line. But the Germans went around that with ease, rather than trying to breach it. But I'm sure Apple's brain trust knows we won't have phones in our pockets until the end of time. The watch is a half step out of the pocket. But it really doesn't do anything well, other than not be in your pocket (and stave off other companies' wearables). Even the radios' reception are worse than the iPhones'. And I cannot for the life of me believe there is no EQ on the watch (I recently wrote Cook about this, inter alia). I'd imagine someday, maybe when someone is writing Cook's biography after he's left Apple, we'll find out the backstory on moving the Mac Pro to China. Obviously, one has to suspect it was done to appease and keep Apple out of the crossfire of the trade negotiations (I think the term trade "war" is silly. Tariffs are a negotiating tactic, not a policy. A means not an end).
To 300...
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2019 12:48:48 GMT -8
iTunes goes away in 3 months. The problem is there was no simple way to design it for the needs that emerged. It succeeded brilliantly and built Apple into a 250B company and now they’re destroying it. Like I said, one of the greatest applications of all time. What’s it’s done is historically unprecedented. Love and like aren’t the same thing. You can love what you don’t like so if you’ve been an investor you should love iTunes.
You can give meaningful criticism of the apps and OS’s replacing it in 3 months.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2019 18:57:35 GMT -8
John Gruber and Rene Ritchie discuss Apple after Ive. Long read but really great. All speculation of course, but people that flow the company closely can have a lot of valuable insight and much of it is about history and actions of the company anyway. www.imore.com/after-jony-ive-whats-future-design-appleBTW, Gruber is nothing like Thurrot, whatever is the correct spelling of his name. And I give no credit to slanderous accusations without reference.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 30, 2019 7:31:39 GMT -8
|
|
Dave
Member
"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,091
|
Post by Dave on Jun 30, 2019 13:04:32 GMT -8
I enjoyed reading some of the posted comments. What better way to encourage someone to move on than to place them into a position that doesn’t fit. I sure miss Steve.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 30, 2019 14:14:33 GMT -8
People at that level who’ve been employed at a company for decades aren’t as much placed in a position so much as they place themselves.
|
|