Ondrej Holzman At first glance, it can be the appointment of Jony Ive as design director Apple (Chief Design Officer) is just another step in his unstoppable progress through the company hierarchy. On the other hand, he could no longer go much higher in his current position, so speculations arose as to whether there was something else behind the "promotion" of Jony Ive.
The apparently random change, at least in the title of the company's in-house designer, appears after a more careful examination to be a precisely elaborated step, by which Apple seems to be not only watching Jony Ive gain more powers across the entire company. Already in his role as senior vice president of design, he had practically unlimited influence, influencing hardware, software, as well as brick-and-mortar stores and the shape of the new campus. Only Tim Cook was higher, and we can only speculate that often perhaps only by virtue of his position as executive director.
Circumstance number one. The two men who will take over the day-to-day running of the design departments after Ive have been systematically prepared for their promotion, primarily from an outward perspective. Alan Dye was in April introduced in an extensive profile to Wired (original <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>) as the key man behind the Apple Watch. Richard Howarth was not left out in an absolutely exhaustive Ive profile v The New Yorker (original <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>) and was credited with the very first iPhone.
Until now, the design at Apple was mainly embodied by Jony Ive. However, the PR department of the California company tried to introduce other important figures in recent months, so that we have an idea of who the new vice presidents actually are. Howarth will lead the industrial design division, Dye will handle user interface design. Paradoxically, this goes against what it was for in 2012 finished Scott Forstall.
At that time, Tim Cook had a clear ambition to unite the divisions of industrial design and user interface, so that the products work together in the maximum possible harmony. There was no one better for this than Jony Ive, who in addition to product design took under his patronage also the form of the user interface. The changes were seen almost immediately in iOS 7.
Although the holder of the Order of the British Empire continues to have complete supervision over all the design activities of the company, the harmony is a bit fractured on the floors below him, where the new two mentioned vice-presidents are. It is a question of how much of an impact it will have on the company's operation, and it is possible that there will be none at all and that these are only formal changes that have already existed in practice for a long time.
On the other hand, it is here circumstance number two. Apple decided to unconventionally announce the reorganization of the top management through the media. A privileged opportunity was won by the British The Telegraph and Ive's great friend Stephen Fry. Jony Ive never resented his native country and it is reasonable to believe that the well-known comedian Fry was his choice, not Tim Cook.
In his text, Fry writes about Ive's new position, his next role and involvement in all kinds of Apple activities, but he also made one interesting note. With his promotion, Ive will be traveling more. Many immediately associated it with the one destination Ive always gravitated towards - Great Britain. The world-renowned designer has never hidden his strong bond with England.
Ive regularly flies to the islands to lecture at the university, and he and his wife Heather have previously said they would like to send their twins to an English school. That was in 2011 The Sunday Times in your profile they wrote, that Ive is far too valuable to Apple and there is no way for him to perform his duties remotely from overseas. At least that's how a family friend of the Ives, whose diary he contacted, interpreted it, and that's what Tim Cook should have told Ive.
So in retrospect we come to what the promotion of Howarth and Dye to higher positions actually means. According to Apple, it will primarily be about taking over everyday matters that Ive no longer necessarily has to deal with. On the contrary, he will be able to fully concentrate on purely design projects, but it is not excluded that his plans include not only Apple, but also his family.
For most, the end of Jony Ive at Apple is probably a completely unimaginable scenario at the moment. Only Steve Jobs in the last decade embodied the world's most valuable company more than a well-built English gentleman. However, it is not the first time that there has been talk about whether Ive still has any motivation to continue at Apple. He's already accomplished what it would take others several lifetimes to achieve in the tech world, and it's possible that the call of home will eventually prevail.
Then there's more circumstance number three. Apple chose a national holiday to announce its major reshuffle of its design division. The last Monday in May is Memorial Day in the United States, and the stock market is closed. Thus, when Tim Cook announced the transfer of his clearly most important subordinate, he did not risk any unwanted movements on the stock market, if shareholders became as suspicious as journalists.
The fact that he became Jony Ive's design director, Chief Design Officer, is certainly no confirmation that his era at Apple is ending. It's just one way to interpret these changes. Jony Ive will end up in Cupertino sooner or later anyway, and Tim Cook knows very well that he has to be ready for it. In the end, however, it may turn out that Jony Ive is not going anywhere yet, and with his new position he is only confirming his ever-increasing powers. He plays a key role in the construction of the new Apple campus and is preparing the remodeling of Apple Stores with Angela Ahrendts. What's more, for example, he builds an Apple Car in his secret laboratory.
Everyone who screwed up the design of iOS and OS X should leave... Ive didn't design bad hardware products, it really was and is great, but what he showed in the software area is something horrible, terrible and incomprehensible...
leave it alone!
I don't understand your reaction... If you have nothing to do with the topic, why are you reacting?
even if he gives up, it doesn't change the fact that he's telling the truth, he cursed it so much that now I'm going to start rebuilding the whole system.
It's all a matter of opinion :) iOS and OSX are very successful in design and you can see that it's going in the right direction. Maybe I'll change my mind over time :)
Just a matter of opinion. I prefer iOS from version 7 to the old eumorphism. :)
For example, do you read fine white text on a bright green background in the SMS application?
I have no problem with that at all
You yourself admit that something is wrong. The design should also be pleasing to the visual perception, so that people like it, and not to irritate or at least not have a problem with it...
I admit that something is wrong by writing like I don't have a problem with it?
If you were in his place and preferred, for example, blue font on a gold background... I would like to read the opinion: designer DusanK fucked it up... A thousand people, a thousand opinions. Your disapproval clearly resonates with, I assume, most of the world. If you surround yourself, like me, with people who have the ability to imssg, one green in a month can't throw you off. This is and will be a controversy about iOS being iOS... Accept it as fact or get the green louse...
I read first the 9to5 and then the telegraph today and I can't shake the impression that this article is just a translation... but if you think this is the way to write...
That's the absolute majority here. :) Just watch macrumours and 9to5 and you know everything basically.
Sure, but it's important to realize that jablickar.cz is a small Czech newsroom, so they probably won't have really personal sources directly at Apple, and thus in the United States ;)
Personally, I'm glad that someone translates those articles and publishes them here (I don't have to look for them or sift through them myself) and as for my own articles, you have a comprehensive review here, which, unlike foreign reviewers, will show you, for example, the use here at U.S.
I'm just saying that when I open an article on jablickar.cz, I hope that I need to read some new or at least a slightly different opinion on the same thing, but not that I'm going to read an article that I don't really need. This is not about the source, but about the fact that I want to share my own opinion with the readers. I regularly read 9to5mac and BGR, even when I report on the same thing, but a little differently, and then it's fun to read both...