Steve Jobs left designer Jony Ive more power than anyone at Apple

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/21/steve_jobs_left_designer_jony_ive_more_power_than_anyone_at_apple.html

by ashishgandhi • 15 years ago

353 155 15 years ago

jinushaun• 15 years ago

But yet, you never see him up on stage... There's a cult of personality around Ive on the Internet—everyone wants him to replace Jobs as CEO, but is that even realistic? Sure, he can design, but can he run a company?

Tyrannosaurs• 15 years ago

More than that would he want to run a company.

I'm fairly certain the answer to that is no.

ugh6• 15 years ago

Is there anyone who can replace Ive in his current position?

If you think there’s not then you already have the answer to the question whether Ive could become CEO. His ability as a CEO doesn’t even figure into it, at least not very much. He can’t be CEO and designer at the same time and a designer like Ive is at least as important for Apple as a good CEO.

I used to like the idea of Ive as a CEO but in hindsight that’s foolish and shortsighted. Sure, it sounds good but don’t you dare start thinking about it.

MatthewPhillips5• 15 years ago

Not promoting someone because they're too good at their current job is a mistake bad companies make.

fdb• 15 years ago

Have you heard about the Peter Principle?

From Wikipedia: "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position at which they cannot work competently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

Knowing what somebody is not good at is almost as essential as knowing what people are good at. I guess both Ive and Apple know this.

pak• 15 years ago

If you believe in the Peter Principle, you might be interested in the Gervais Principle (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/) which uses characters from The Office to wax philosophical about organizational structure. At the very least, the first part is worth a read. It diverges from the Peter Principle in a number of thought-provoking ways.

geophile• 15 years ago

There is a subtlety however. At most companies, you need less competence the higher you rise. What gets rewarded is playing the game, not competence.

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/rule-zero-how-things-reall...

jonnathanson• 15 years ago

I don't think Ive wants the CEO position. He has his dream job right now, and he's the best in the world at it. And he's certainly been well compensated for it.

nobody314157• 15 years ago

He doesn't have to run a company - that's what VPs are for - he has to LEAD a company.

In the 70s you lead by having the best hardware - you needed Woz at the head.

In the 80/90s you lead by having the best OS - that's why Next mattered.

Then you lead by having the best design - it would have made sense to have the designer at the head.

Apple is currently winning because it has the best production management in the world. It got their by having the best design but it's unassailable now because it totally owns the manufacturing business. Who else can get Samsung to produce cheaper parts for it's tablet than they can supply to their own tablets!

tormentor• 15 years ago

I think he gives Ive more power because of his experience with Paul Rand and the Nextstep logo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb8idEf-Iak

In short Paul Rand tells Steve I will make you one design and I will solve your problem. Since then I believe he has given designers (Jon Ive in this case) their space to design whatever they want. Trust in the designer.

swah• 15 years ago

I suppose Ive is Taste, now that Jobs is gone.

technoslut2• 15 years ago

Interestingly enough, there is a quote from the Jobs book, from Ive, that was tweeted by Bianca Bosker, who works at the Huffington Post:

https://twitter.com/bbosker/status/127357233632788480

"Jony Ive:'I pay maniacal attention to where an idea comes from...so it hurts when [Jobs] takes credit for one of my designs'"

As much as Jobs considered Ive a 'spiritual partner' there was still a power play that existed between the two.

AllenKids5• 15 years ago

Well then next time Apple introduces a new design, he better hauls his ass up on the stage to receive the applauds.

I personally would love that.

bomatson• 15 years ago

I second that notion, creative talent of this magnitude needs to be recognized more often!

jsz0• 15 years ago

I wonder if this is why Apple started showing their little 'how its made' videos at the end of new product announcements that have often featured Ives talking about design.

emehrkay• 15 years ago

Funny, not really, that he wasn't in the 4s' video. Didn't have shit to say that wasn't said in the 4's vid.

ary2• 15 years ago

Apple has been showing "how it's made" videos for a very long time.

http://vimeo.com/11899632 (see 35:05 to 39:00).

siglesias• 15 years ago

Jobs has never taken credit for a design, has he? People who are uninformed just assume it's Jobs, and that perhaps is what Ive is referring to. He probably meant "it hurts when [Jobs] gets credit..."

If you look at the Objectified interview, along with nearly every promotional video that Apple puts out, it's very clear that Ive is the design guy.

ugh6• 15 years ago

Could be an internal thing. I really can’t remember Jobs ever publicly and personally taking credit for design. But maybe he did inside the company?

I guess we will have to wait for the book for more context.

ArbitraryLimits• 15 years ago

He didn't have to take credit for any particular designs, he just took credit for all the designs because of his unofficial role as "taste maker." That's way harder to refute. It's like giving Chuck Norris credit for all living things because he's allowed them to live.

lawnchair_larry• 15 years ago

No one even knows who Ive is. Ask 10 random people not on hackernews and I bet you will get 11 blank stares.

There is implied credit being given, and Jobs knows this. He doesn't bother to correct it, document publicly who designs things, or let Ive speak to the press and take credit himself. All of these are tantamount to taking credit. If credit comes your way and you do not deflect it or recognize the true author, you are taking credit.

And Jobs has done this ever since he worked on Breakout with Wozniak, so it is unsurprising.

azulum4• 15 years ago

we've been working our asses off.

so it was the royal 'we' this whole time?

aantix• 15 years ago

Personally, I think it'd be a much more intellectually honest viewpoint if Apple started showing off this creative process instead of the word "magic" being tossed around so loosely.

It's not magic; it's hard working designers iterating, researching, collaborating, and then iterating more to make a great product. And it's damn hard work.

Lift the curtain Apple and give Ive (and the others) their due.

radicaldreamer• 15 years ago

Isn't the process a part of their competitive advantage though?

forensic• 15 years ago

The entire point of the design process is to produce magic. Why would you want to destroy that?

It's one thing to give insider looks like Valve does with developer commentaries. It's quite another to give up on providing and selling magic. Magic is the goal of technology.

chrischen• 15 years ago

Well obviously it's not "magic." Magic is just a marketing term anyways.

chugger• 15 years ago

at the end of the day. Steve Jobs had the final say on everything.

Jayasimhan• 15 years ago

" [Jobs] " in the quote was added by the person who quote's Ive. He might have meant anyone.. These injected words change the meaning of a sentence.

burke2• 15 years ago

It was almost surely edited from "he", which would have been obvious by context.

ryanklee• 15 years ago

What you are looking at is part of a standard, accepted and necessary editing practice whereby pronouns such as "he", "she" and "it" are replaced with their antecedent pronouns; in this case "he" was replaced with "Jobs". There's nothing suspicious about it.

thought_alarm• 15 years ago

It's been said of Steve, at least in the early years, that if you wanted to know what Steve thought of an idea of yours, you would tell Steve your idea, he would tell you "that's shit" and come up with half a dozen reasons why your idea is shit, then he'd go off an meditate. If Steve comes back as says "hey everyone, I just had this great idea" then he liked your idea.

shawndumas• 15 years ago

"There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people [...] ever imagine that they are guilty themselves.

I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards.

I do not think I have ever heard anyone, [precious few], accuse himself of this vice.

And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone [...] who showed the slightest mercy to it in others.

There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.

And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is Pride. . . .

. . . In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, “How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?”

The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride.

It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise."

-- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, chapter 8.

tomelders2• 15 years ago

It staggers me that time and time again Apple lays out the reasons for it's unrivalled success for all to see, yet non of it's rivals seem interested in copying their methods and opt for simply copying their products.

Fortune favours the brave.

mattgreenrocks• 15 years ago

Probably because Apple's approach to design isn't what they teach in business school...which obviously means its an anomaly!

zipdog• 15 years ago

At its heart, design is a risk, because it looks to create what isn't. Most businesses are focussed on improving what is. The unknown is unquantifiable, and doesn't fit well into a spreadsheet

Cushman2• 15 years ago

This applies to Silicon Valley in general, I think. We take risks, we bet on long shots, we try to serve markets with zero demand and squeeze blood from stones. We spend money like it was just paper, and when we don't have money we give our time away for free working on things we believe in.

According to traditional business management practices, no startup should last more than a couple of months. And most don't. And yet, somehow, Silicon Valley as a cultural economy is the most innovative, successful, profitable(?) place in the world.

What the MBAs don't get is that a rising tide lifts all boats. If my company creates a new market, can't meet demand, and goes under, I can easily find great work with the competitor that put me out of business. Or start a new business that serves their customers in a new market. Shoot, even if all I get out of it is that I can use their product, that's great. I'm still better off, even though I "lost".

And as long as we have this understanding with each other, that failure won't be punished, but rewarded, not with a golden parachute, but with more chances to fail-- then we're not afraid to take risks. We're allowed to be crazy. We're allowed to innovate.

Bet our future on an insanely great new project for which there's no demand, why not? We have nothing to lose. It's just a company, there will be more like it. We might not get rich, this time, but we'll know we made a dent.

Steve Jobs might not have invented that idea, but he sure taught it to a whole bunch of us.

gte910h• 15 years ago

I've added this to my snippet's file. Very well written.

peterb• 15 years ago

Indeed. Industrial design is important and it needs to be given attention from the highest level of an organization.

But this introduces a paradox. If the top levels of your organization do not understand design, then they cannot hire or promote the best designers.

Herring• 15 years ago

Process takes a long time to change because you have to overhaul the entire bureaucracy or get entirely new companies. They are trying. It might take them 10, 20 years.

technoslut2• 15 years ago

I wonder if that is true. By the time Jobs came back in '97 he had recognized Ive's talent and they released the iMac in '98. It took Apple one year to make that adjustment. How long should it really take others to do the same?

MatthewPhillips5• 15 years ago

Could you be more specific on what these reasons are? You seem to imply that it's easy or obvious but I think it's neither. Success is never easy. There is no magic bullet, there is no blueprint.

tomelders2• 15 years ago

Design is King.

There are queens and princes and other high ranking royal family memebers in this metaphor, such as marketing, sales and operations. But they all take their orders from the King. And Design is the King.

Anyone who thinks that is "harder than it sounds" isn't thinking straight. It's hard producing, marketing and selling badly designed products. It's hard motivating a work force who aren't happy or proud in their work. It's hard trying to compete with a company that's better than you at designing products. It's hard whichever way you choose to go.

nobody314157• 15 years ago

Twas ever thus. Ben Rich was Kelly Johnson's assistant at the original Lockheed Skunkworks (creator of the U2, SR71, etc) - he was regularly approached to leave and create skunkworks for every other aerospace company.

As soon as he talked to them they enthused about the Skunkworks setup and how their version would be better since it would be in the main plant, with it's own set of VPs to supervise it and be properly intergrated into the main business etc.

ps. Read his biography http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/d... if you think any of this Silicon Valley stuff is new

chrislomax3• 15 years ago

I personally think it's impossible to replicate what Apple have done. It's not just one thing that has caused a change but a series of changes starting when they introduced the iMac.

Apple is more of a "love mark" than a technology company. Back in 95, Microsoft was a love mark, people loved it when a new version of windows came out, now people dread it.

People started looking for an alternative and Apple was there, all different and shiny. It wasn't 1 year that turned them around, its the result of 12 hard years.

Microsoft released a tablet back in 2000, did anyone care? Apple does it and millions rush to buy it, they have created a following, this is not easily replicated. They innovate, amaze and move onto the next thing. There is nothing simple about this process.

nobody314157• 15 years ago

You could take everything you just said and apply it to Sony in 1980. Then their founder, Akio Morita, retired with poor health and they diversified into lots of sensible business decisions about owning studios

Then some little computer company in California moved in on their territory and began making beautiful, simple, well made upmarket products.

gfodor• 15 years ago

To be fair there is little in common between the iPad and Windows Tablet computers, it is a shame they both manage to be called the same thing simply for lack of a physical keyboard. The windows ones, with the stylus, certainly deserve the name, as they are identical in spirit to a stone tablet: the defining feature is the ability to write freehand. Definitely not the case on the iPad, in fact, we use a digital keyboard on the iPad! It's no "tablet."

jad2• 15 years ago

A big reason for this is that what Apple does is very, very _hard_. It's really hard to build physical objects with design good enough to be featured in museums. It's really hard to build your own software ecosystem, from operating system to software distribution to entertainment services. It's hard enough just to do them; it's extremely hard to be great at them.

Even if other companies _wanted_ to replicate Apple's way of doing business, it's like Paul Graham pointed out in his Great Hackers essay: you have to have great people at the top to know how to identify the great talent below that actually dooes the work. Excellence has to permeate the entire organization. Do you see that coming from Samsung, HTC, or Motorola? They clearly don't have the capability, so they get the software from somewhere else, and then make it worse by adding their own differentiating layers.

Google or Microsoft can obviously make the software, but, unfortunately, they choose not to make the hardware, and in my opinion their products suffer for it.

bluekeybox• 15 years ago

>It's really hard to build physical objects with design good enough to be featured in museums.

True, it's hard, but not that hard. These guys did it on a regular basis: http://www.lushpad.com/articles.php?id=16&pag=1

The true reason as you point out is organizational and it is the same as that age-old killer of creativity: fear. The subordinates are afraid of doing something the boss does not want. The boss is not pushing ahead either because he/she is afraid of making decisions that may entail risk.

vixen99• 15 years ago

Here are some method:- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/21/tanya-go...

tobylane• 15 years ago

I'd fear giving Ive too much power/ego/etc, he needs to be grounded to do what he does. At the other end of the scale, it has been said he wants to be in UK more (duh :P), don't know what has changed there.

raheemm2• 15 years ago

Guess I'm buying this book. It'll be my first time to buy a book during first release. Good marketing by the publishers. This is sort of like Freemium model, no?

Fjolle• 15 years ago

I'm afraid that i will know everything from the book by monday if this press coverage continues.

ugh6• 15 years ago

Turn all the sentences into separate news articles!

raheemm2• 15 years ago

Good point!

blumentopf• 15 years ago

To those familiar with car history, there's a striking similarity between the Jobs/Ive duo and the Daimler/Maybach duo:

Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach lead the automobile industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s just as Jobs and Ive lead the computing industry in the late 1900s and early 2000s. Maybach was the engineering genius who pioneered countless innovations in engine design, while Daimler had the intuition to get the right products to market and do the industrial power play.

Kliment• 15 years ago

Those are some damn nice CNC mills in the background of that photo. Wonder how much use they get.

ugh6• 15 years ago

That’s a screenshot from the documentary “Objectified”, here is the interview with Ive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0fe800C2CU

It sounds like those CNC mills are anything but decoration.

jcurbo• 15 years ago

Speaking of that photo, the documentary it's from (Objectified) is very good and is on Netflix Instant Queue. (Might be available other ways but that's how I watched it)

roadnottaken• 15 years ago

If you like that, the same group made another documentary called 'Helvetica' that is all about fonts and, specifically, about the history and ubiquity of Helvetica. It's also available on Netflix-instant and is a pretty good watch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica_(film)

krobertson2• 15 years ago

If he is a designer who understands the manufacturing process, then that is awesome in my book.

My father owns/runs a CNC manufacturing business. Sometimes the designers/drafters (more the case they have a background in CAD) don't understand the subtleties of manufacturing and materials. I mean, they aren't big gaps or anything.

Best comparison is maybe coder vs tester. Both technical, but look at the same thing from two different perspectives.

nobody314157• 15 years ago

It cuts both ways. There are designers who build things that can't be made - and especially things that can't be mass produced cheaply and easily.

But there are also people with 20years of manufacturing experience who don't what that we can do more things cheaply and easily with 5-axis CNC mills and hot-wire cutters than you can with a casting.

sbuk2• 15 years ago

Manufacturing process and material science are critical to the education of industrial and product design. A designer that isn't thinking about how a product will be produced isn't really a good designer.

DodgyEggplant• 15 years ago

There was one Steve Jobs. If only two people can replace him, it's a little miracle. A master manager, and a master designer. They can continue w/o the ego fights. Like Bill Hewlet and the other guy (JOKING! Please spare my carma). They will do it, we all need them to do it.

michaelfeathers• 15 years ago

Who did they leave in charge of making sure people listen to him?

afdssfda• 15 years ago

Tim Cook has been in charge for ages.

sgt• 15 years ago

This fact alone left me feeling quite a lot better. Now I know Apple is in good hands at least for the time being. Tim Cook is also brilliant at what he does, and I am sure he trusts Ive as much as Jobs did.

nknight• 15 years ago

Great, but... Ive only does industrial design, as far as I know.

The other side of the coin is the software, and if that declines, Ive's going to be creating very well-designed paperweights. So who does Apple's software design?

alexwolfe2• 15 years ago

I imagine he has some voice in the aesthetics of the software design. But it's true that the whole package (hardware and software) is the combination that makes apple products great.

coob• 15 years ago

Forstall appears to have same tyrannical streak as Jobs.

jad2• 15 years ago

> So who does Apple's software design?

Scott Forstall is responsible for iOS. My understanding is that Eddy Cue is responsible for the iTunes Store, including the App Store, and now, iCloud. He was promoted to Executive Vice President back in August. I'm not sure who's in charge of Mac software.

You can see brief profiles of the various people here: http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/

Timothee2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure who's in charge of Mac software.

It used to be Bertrand Serlet until he left last March. I'm not sure why he hasn't been replaced, at least from an outside perspective (no one is shown as in charge of Mac on the page you linked to).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Serlet

smountcastle• 15 years ago

_I'm not sure who's in charge of Mac software._

I believe Craig Federighi is in charge of the desktop/server software. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20046998-37.html

Timothee2• 15 years ago

That's a good point. Jonathan Ive is in charge of Industrial Design and when you hear him, he's talking as a designer.

On the software side, we don't really hear so much about the UI/UX design process the same way we do on the hardware side with Ive. What I mean is that I don't get the same hands-on feel from Scott Forstall when he presents new features of iOS.

I've been curious about who is behind some of the UI concepts and details of iOS but I can't point to a specific person like I could with the hardware. (NB: though I understand well that it's probably not just a single person :))

edit: I was watching this video again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0fe800C2CU In it, you can see Jonathan Ive touching the products and you can tell he would personally make sure that it would be changed if something didn't feel right. On the software side, someone has to make a decision on how much bounce the lists on iOS should have, on how fast animations should be, etc. but it doesn't seem to be Scott Forstall. I'd like to hear more from the software/UI designers at Apple.

george_morgan• 15 years ago

I’ve also wondered this. iOS and Mac OS both have a penchant for faux-realism and pastiche which always seems strangely incongruous with the austere industrial design. It’s a trend that seems to be getting stronger, just look to the most recent version of iCal for example.

Apple’s current industrial design patterns seem to have a solid foundation in quite traditional modernist values, such as ‘truth to materials’, so for instance you would never see Apple ship a product with a plastic case coated to look like brushed aluminium. They would always use real aluminium.

It seems the software design team isn’t grounded in quite the same set of principles as the industrial design team.

I do wonder if the ID guys would rather see their designs running an interface such as WP7 (or even Plan 9, xMonad etc.), which isn’t as tied to real world metaphors and in a sense show more ‘truth to software’ (or to put it another way, there is certainly no ’true’ interface for digital information, but if there were one… I can’t imagine faux leather would be it.)

ludwigvan• 15 years ago

Interesting point. There were some rumors that surfaced last week that Ive only met Forestall in the presence of Tim Cook, and did not talk to him otherwise. Not very probable, but still too bad if that is so.

derefr• 15 years ago

> to put it another way, there is certainly no ’true’ interface for digital information, but if there were one… I can’t imagine faux leather would be it.

I've wanted to make this argument in favour of sometimes using skeuomorphic (e.g. faux leather) design for a while:

All the other applications that come with Mac OS (say, iTunes, Mail.app, or iPhoto) have clearly-defined, strongly-typed content "atoms"—respectively, songs, messages, and pictures. The apps themselves just serve as magical databases with filters and specifiers to find and manipulate that content. They don't have to look like anything, because they're just "the box you put your music in" or "the box your get your mail from."

iCal and Address Book are the two main applications in the default set that break this pattern: they don't hold a clearly-defined type of content at all. It's just raw information: information about events, and about people, respectively. Because of this, you could get away with simply using text files for the same purpose, and nothing of value would be lost. It would even be as easy to sort and search, if you have a good text editor.

So Apple needs to offer a value proposition that makes a user want to use Address Book rather than a text file: familiarity in function and ease of learning curve. In a more design-oriented view, in cases where the data itself is arbitrary (you could technically store anything in a vCard), the software must bring over the rules and constrictions of the physical medium to give the proper context for the controls in the UI to actually afford their proper use.

A set of overlapping boxes means nothing; a set of overlapping boxes on a screen that looks like a calendar suggests what you should use the boxes for. A set of blank index cards seems to suggest no use whatsoever, until you bind them into a familiar rolodex-like facade.

You can see the same thing play out with the iOS apps that Apple has given design awards: the kind that hold strongly-typed information tend to get the UI out of the user's way, and let the information stand paramount; while the kind that hold raw data retain a strong skeuomorphic metaphor to suggest use over-and-above "put text here."

alexwolfe2• 15 years ago

In some ways because Ive was the head designer he had more power than anyone else regardless of Steve's extra effort. His work would impact every level of the company so immediately regardless of peoples personal opinion.

brown9-2• 15 years ago

Of course, any new CEO/board can undo what previous CEOs and boards have set in stone.

artursapek• 15 years ago

I think they all have too much respect for Steve to change anything like this for a while.

0x12• 15 years ago

The hard part will be when reality rubs up against things set in stone. The big trick will be to determine exactly when change is needed versus when some people just want to change things to make their mark.

zach2• 15 years ago

By comparison, John Lasseter has more power than anyone at Pixar. I think the situation could be similar.

Now, sure, he has to commit to budgets and timeframes but if he really wants something you have to figure it's going to happen.

And of course, he's not the top manager, the CEO equivalent in charge of the studio itself — Ed Catmull is. And yes, everything creative gets picked apart by other directors so it's not like he's the only voice.

But you'd have to say John Lasseter has more power than anyone at Pixar, assuming you wanted to look at things that way.

You could also say he's the creative heart of Pixar.

It's sure nice that those two things match up.

Edit: I explored this subject in my Quora answer on Pixar, Valve and Blizzard for those interested.

http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-commonalities-in-how-Pixa...

AllenKids5• 15 years ago

Yeah, sometimes we get the toilet seat cover iBook and Cars 2, but by and large having a creative guru under nobody else's thumb seems to work well for both companies.

danilocampos2• 15 years ago

Say what you will about the original iBook, 14 year old me would have killed anyone you asked to have a Tangerine model. Loved that design so much. And it had Airport, which was science fiction shit at the time.

gallamine• 15 years ago

Actually, John Lasseter defends Cars 2: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/movies/john-lasseter-of-pi...

Apparently the "critics" were far harsher than audiences.

ary2• 15 years ago

I thought this about the first Cars (I've yet to see Cars 2). What you have to keep in mind is that kids loved the first one, and probably the second one too. Even Pixar is going to bow to commercial viability now and again so they can make things like Wall-E.

malkia• 15 years ago

Loved the Quara answer! Cheers, Zach!

MarkMc• 15 years ago

Well, not THAT much power:

'Ive wants to spend more time in the UK where he wants his sons to go to school, the Times claims, but the Apple board has refused to support his relocation. The story quotes a family friend as saying that "they have told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them".'

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/feb/28/apple-j...

Sounds to me like HP-level stupidity from the Apple board.

pedrolll• 15 years ago

...or that's his excuse for staying in the U.S.

AllenKids5• 15 years ago

Is not that just a story with no reliable source whatsoever?

And the true tabloid Daily Mail actually interviewed some of Ive's friends and they all said never heard of such a desire from Jony Ive himself.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Appl...

maxmcd• 15 years ago

I guess we'll all find out on Monday.

ltamake• 15 years ago

>true tabloid Daily Mail

I seriously hope you're being sarcastic...

msbarnett• 15 years ago

That's from back in February, so even if it were true it says nothing about how much power Ive has post Jobs, and there's little reason to believe it's true, since it was heavily denied by even its claimed sources when other publications talked to them subsequently.

psawaya• 15 years ago

I think it's interesting that Jony Ive came to Apple before Steve returned. Jobs didn't have to recruit him, and he fit perfectly into what Apple became.

sirn• 15 years ago

'I often joke that my tombstone will say, "The Guy Who Hired Jonathan Ive",'

- Robert Brunner, Apple's former Chief of Industrial Design

sylvinus• 15 years ago

He didn't recruit him but he got him out of the closet where he was hidden and put him in charge of the design team

moizsyed• 15 years ago

Right now Ive has the best of both worlds, he has more power than anyone at Apple, and hes not the CEO. The CEO role comes with an extra layer of public scrutiny.

Knowing that Jony Ive has more power than anyone at Apple gives me a certain amount of relief about Apple being on the same trajectory for the next foreseeable future.

Bratwurst• 15 years ago

Jony Ive is just the Shigeru Miyamoto of Apple.

driftsumi-e• 15 years ago

ha, that's a great parallel to draw. miyamoto is behind many of the most iconic videogame characters AND game designs ever seen. so, in fairness to miyamoto, he's got a little steve in him as well.

gaius2• 15 years ago

Where did the abbreviation "Jony" come from? It's Jonny.

verisimilitude• 15 years ago

Straight out of a keynote: http://technology.automated.it/wp-content/uploads/HLIC/b08b7...

gaius2• 15 years ago

I suspect then this is like Colin Powell being known as Coal-in... He's stated himself his mother calls him Colin!

markerdmann• 15 years ago

This brings to mind a blog post published by Darryl Jonckheere in January that argued for making Jony Ive CEO:

http://www.darryljonckheere.com/2011/01/24/why-jonathan-ive-...

aik• 15 years ago

I wonder how Jobs' death affected Ive? I would think Ive must be hugely grateful for what Jobs saw in him.

maranas• 15 years ago

I'm not surprised - Ive deserves it. The designs he came up with were the driving factor in Apple's success.

anactofgod• 15 years ago

Interesting. And a Bloomberg Businessweek article has Scott Forstall as Jobs' heir-apparent at Apple.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorc...

Apocryphon• 15 years ago

Jony Ive? Yet another man behind the man.

TechnoFou• 15 years ago

It's interesting how the soul of Steve Jobs stays in Apple to control the company even after passing out. A company that functions through the power of will, creativity and beliefs.... it's different from all the corporate VP's and Executives we all see so organized at other companies!

Steve Jobs left designer Jony Ive more power than anyone at Apple

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