acknowledged that the iPhone’s cutting edge
was eroded “about two or three iterations
ago”. Incidentally, back when Ive took up his
current role as Chief Design Officer in 2015,
speculation suggested that the designer was
actually edging towards the exit door.
THE POTENTIAL SILVER LININGS
OF THE IVE-CLOUD
Shortly after Ive’s future exit was announced,
9to5Mac’s Ben Lovejoy suggested that “Jony
Ive leaving won’t doom Apple, and may even be
a positive”. He opined that it’s largely just a case
of “2015 all over again”, adding his suspicion that
“Ive wanted to leave then, but Apple was able
to hold onto him by letting him go play with his
new toy – Apple Park – while handing off his
other responsibilities”. That idea has apparently
been backed by a Bloomberg report.
Published just before the Lovejoy piece, the
report cited “people familiar with the matter”
claiming that after the Apple Watch’s launch,
Ive had started shedding responsibilities. A
man who had customarily overseen the work of
Apple’s design team day after day was reduced
to visiting headquarters as infrequently as twice
weekly, the report added. “This has been a long
time in the making,” one of the sources told
Bloomberg about Ive’s eventual exit from Apple.
Given these circumstances, many Apple
employees could actually recognize Ive’s
departure as the long-awaited resolution of a
disconnect that had been bubbling for a while.
This was very much the picture painted by a
Wall Street Journal report published days after
the Bloomberg piece. The Journal quotes one
person who worked with Ive as commenting to