Apple's legendary design team disbanded, but Jobs is not

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Three years later, the reason why Jony Ive left Apple finally came to light.

Yes, it is indeed related to Cook .

In 2019, the man who was called "the person most like Jobs" gave up his position as Apple's chief designer, bid farewell to his old employer where he had worked for 27 years, and set up his own company.

This is almost the biggest personnel shakeup in Apple's design team.

You know, Jonathan is the creator and designer of a series of Apple products including Mac, iPod, iPhone, Apple Watch, etc. He was once regarded as the successor to Jobs and his reputation was once higher than Cook.

At the time, Jonathan explained his resignation as "new personal pursuits."

Now, with the publication of a book titled "After Steve", the deeper reasons have been exposed to the public:

The concepts are different .

To unravel all of this, we may have to start from the time when Jobs left and Cook took the stage.

Apple Watch is the final straw

Let’s go back to 2014, on the eve of the Apple Watch launch.

After two years of development and polishing, this new Apple product is finally going to be unveiled.

At the same time, it has a more significant identity——

This is the first new product line launched by Apple after Jobs left.

As the design director, Jonathan's say in product design reached an unprecedented level at this time.

His personal bold, minimalist and innovative style is fully reflected in the Apple Watch.

For example, the outer shell is made of 18K gold and paired with soft leather. Both the appearance and texture are close to perfection.

All of this is actually to support his bolder plan: to make Apple Watch a fashion item.

For this reason, he believes that for Apple Watch, getting praise from Vogue is more important than the opinions of any technology critic.

How to deal with these fashion media?

A tent became the key.

Jonathan proposed that they wanted 25 million US dollars (equivalent to about 160 million RMB) to remove the 24 trees at the press conference site and build a luxurious white tent.

To make the event look as "extraordinary" as a high-end fashion show.

The conflict intensified at this moment.

The staff in charge of Apple's press conference found it difficult to understand the practice of "eradicating trees", and could not accept the staggering cost.

Especially after Cook became CEO, Apple has tightened its control over cost expenditure.

They also believe that compared to the ultimate display of appearance, users should be more looking forward to the functions that the watch can achieve.

On the other hand, Jonathan was exhausted physically and mentally from these controversies, and at one point he proposed to Cook the idea of ​​resigning.

In the end, the conflict was brought to Cook's attention .

In the description of the book "After Steve", this scene is full of drama:

As everyone discussed Jonathan's ideas, Cook sat in a chair nearby, rocking gently.

As CEO, he had been counting on Jonathan, whom Jobs called his soul mate, to lead product development.

The designer was so valuable to the company that he worried that if Jonathan left, it would cause investors to sell their stock.

According to executives' estimates, Jonathan's departure will reduce Apple's market value by at least 10%, or about $50 billion .

Thinking of this, Cook sat down in his chair and said:

We should do this.

That is to say, they agreed to Jonathan's "tent plan" worth 160 million.

In fact, this is just an externalization of the different styles of doing things between Cook and Jonathan.

More friction also arises in daily collaboration.

For example, Cook pursues functionality and pragmatism and is not very concerned about the appearance of the product, so he rarely visits Apple's design studio.

But in the past, Jobs would go to the design studio almost every day and work closely with Jonathan.

In terms of team building, Apple wanted to form a design team of hundreds of people, but Jonathan thought the team only needed to be maintained at around 20 people .

In order to stabilize Jonathan and not affect the company's stock price, Cook later began to reduce Jonathan's job responsibilities.

In 2015, he appointed Jonathan as Apple's chief designer.

However, Jonathan, sitting in this high position, was actually full of frustration and fatigue.

Changes in his position and work content gradually took him away from front-line product design.

Product reviews that used to be done every week ended up not being done even once a month.

At the same time, some of Cook's practices also made Jonathan dissatisfied.

For example, Cook hired James Bell, the former Boeing finance director, as a company director to replace marketing director Mickey Drexler, and increased the voice of the company's finance department...

All these phenomena and every single thing are filled with four words: incompatibility of concepts .

In the end, things ended with Jonathan leaving Apple.

In 2019, Jonathan attended his last Apple event.

Soon after, news of his resignation came out.

Although the news was released suddenly, it was obvious that the internal preparations had already been thorough .

In an interview with the Financial Times, Jonathan announced that he would officially leave Apple and set up a design company called LoveFrom. He would also continue to participate in Apple's business as an outsourcing company, and Apple would be his first customer.

On the other hand, Apple also released a statement simultaneously.

Cook commented that Jonathan is unique in the field of design and his role in Apple's revival cannot be underestimated. From the groundbreaking iMac in 1998, to the subsequent iPhone, to the latest Apple's new headquarters - the spacecraft design, all of them are due to him.

Jonathan said that the main reason for his departure from Apple, where he had worked for nearly 30 years, was new personal pursuits.

“Some important projects have been completed, such as Apple Park, which started in 2004.”

From then on, the person who most resembled Jobs officially bid farewell to Apple.

Before leaving, he gathered the design team to watch a movie called "Yesterday".

The film explores the "eternal conflict between art and commerce."

The gradual disintegration of Apple's legendary design team

Jonathan's story is not an isolated case .

Daniel Coster , known as Jonathan's "number one deputy", also chose to resign due to the dilemma of "differences in ideas".

In 1994, Daniel came to Apple and later became a member of Apple's legendary design team.

The first color iMac, which helped Apple make a comeback, was designed by him.

After that, he also participated in the development of various generations of iPhone and iPad, and the Apple Watch strap patent was also named after him.

But a few years ago, Daniel hit a snag when he was trying to completely upgrade the iPad 's appearance.

At that time, his design made the new iPad lighter, with smoother lines, and greatly improved the feel, which was recognized by many internal designers.

However, Apple's operations team rejected the design.

They believe that such a design would mean developing new functions from scratch and redesigning the internal logic of the fuselage, which would cost billions of dollars and would not bring obvious benefits in the short term.

As a result, this iPad design was rejected internally.

This cost-focused philosophy also frustrated many people on the design team.

In 2016, Daniel left Apple and joined GoPro as head of design.

This news caused GoPro's stock price to rise by 16% at the time.

Christopher Stringer , also a veteran of Apple's design team, joined Apple in 1995.

In addition to the iPhone, iMac, and iPad, his representative works also include Apple Pencil and HomePod.

However, in the year when HomePod was launched, he bid farewell to Apple and created his own audio brand.

Because during the development process, he realized that Apple did not intend to launch HomePod as a major product, but just a "hobby."

This will result in a slow development process for HomePod and incomplete functionality.

Moreover, the revenue that speaker products can bring to Apple is indeed very limited, and it is difficult to compare it with core products such as the iPhone and iPad.

As a result, Christopher quit Apple and founded his own brand Syng.

Similarly, these problems also appear in software design teams.

Imran Chaudhri joined Apple in 1995.

He was one of the developers of Apple's multi-touch technology.

In 2017, Imran left Apple, citing the company's fewer and fewer innovative breakthroughs as the reason for his departure.

In addition to the designers mentioned above, there are also many other designers such as Doug Satzger and Daniele De Iuliis, who all left in 2017.

And because Apple is different from other giant companies, the size of its core design team has remained at around 20 people in the past 20 years, so the departure of each member will have a certain impact on the company.

Today, Apple's design team still includes several veterans including Richard Howarth, Evans Hankey, and Alan Dye.

However, from the analysis in the book "After Steve", it is obvious that the number of people who have left their jobs far exceeds the number of people in office.

One More Thing

It is worth mentioning that regarding Jonathan, it seems that without Jobs' control, his designs were criticized for a while.

For example, the Mac Pro is jokingly called the wire inserter.

There is also the first Apple Watch gold version, which is priced at 30,000 RMB and is intended to enter the luxury goods market.

However, this idea was not favored by some people in the watch industry at the time, and later this 18K gold version of the product was also removed from the shelves by Apple.