The Knight of Apple’s Old Republic
Between the lines of Jony Ive’s exit from Apple
To me, all information is about triangulation. Any single source, no matter how close to the situation — and often times because they’re too close to the situation — lacks full clarity. Rashomon ensues. That’s what I found myself thinking when reading over the many — many — pieces about Jony Ive’s departure from Apple this past week.
When the news hit, it was both shocking and entirely not shocking as the writing has seemingly been on the wall for quite some time. The subsequent interviews that Ive and Tim Cook and others at Apple gave to the Financial Times around the news basically made the latter point. Then a report from The Wall Street Journal dropped which painted a decidedly less rosy picture. Then Tim Cook responded to that piece in an email to NBC.¹ Subsequent reports from Bloomberg and The Information seemed to at least partially back up some of the WSJ reporting. Then others countered some of those narratives.
And we’re actually still going round and round…
Having read all of the pieces in question, I do think there’s a way to square such circles. Because the world is not black and white, stories about the world or the people that reside here are not black and white. Things are not 100% true nor are they 100% false. Every story, no matter how it is presented, is nuanced. Because people are involved. And people are nuanced.
Given that preamble, here’s my best read on the Ive situation.
Following the passing of Steve Jobs in 2011, Ive was effectively made an “untouchable” at Apple. While Jobs may have wanted to ensure that Tim Cook didn’t just try to mimic what he would do as the new CEO of the company, he seemingly made it clear that Ive was now the de facto soul of the company and could be trusted to continue at least some semblance of the vision, because he and Jobs saw eye-to-eye on so much.
This situation worked well for a time. Tim Cook did what Tim Cook had always done: execute. He took Apple, with the groundwork laid by Jobs, to new, completely unforeseen heights. Not just for Apple, but for any company. The hits kept coming (in a good way), and kept getting bigger. As they were largely variations on old hits.
Things hit a bit of a snag when Apple decided it needed to ditch Google and go it alone in mapping. This was an unmitigated disaster. At the same time, behind the scenes, it seemed that a battle was brewing between Ive and Scott Forstall — Jobs’ other chosen son. The software yang to Ive’s hardware yin.
Forstall, who by most accounts, was very divisive — you were either one of his people, or you weren’t — had rubbed too many people the wrong way, perhaps as a result of the power vacuum on the product side left when Jobs was gone. It sure reads like Ive was one of those people and given his exalted status inside the company, once the Maps debacle got to the point of heads needing to roll, Forstall was a clear and obvious fall guy.²
With Forstall out, Ive’s role expanded. He was called in to help bring in some order to the software side of Apple’s equations. Or, at the very least, to give iOS a fresh coat of paint. That he would be replacing all of Forstall’s skeuomorphic poker table felts (and even Jobs’ digital leather stitching), was likely just non-textured icing on the plain pound cake.
This was… different. Ive had not been in control of software before, and it seemingly showed in some ways big and small. But that view is also easier said in hindsight. At the time, “flat” design was all the rage, and Ive did make iOS look fresh and lightweight again after years of rather heavy design.
At the same time, all indications are that Ive clearly did not enjoy managing such a large group of people and/or projects. The one thing that seemingly every story can agree upon is that his industrial design team was both small and very tight knit. Ive was being spread too thin.
As this was going on, the talk continued to grow louder that Apple needed their next hit. But it was actually already well into the works and presided over in a major way by Ive: the Watch. Ive saw a path to take Apple to the next level of truly personal computing: a wearable. And because he was a watch guy, Ive also saw another clear path towards a passion: fashion.³
Eventually, two paths diverged for the Watch: a more practical, functional computer for your wrist, and Ive’s preferred golden bauble. The latter was a mistake, and at the very least, likely sidetracked the former.
It took a few years — with one more ostentatious attempt in the form of ceramic (it’s well known that Ive loves to experiment with different, new materials) — but eventually Apple iterated the Watch into a success. And this was seemingly in no small part thanks to now COO Jeff Williams (see: his stage time over the years, always talking about Apple Watch health & fitness).
This was probably not Ive’s finest hour. But it was already onward to the search for the next piece of hardware on which he could leave a mark — a TV screen, a car… But first came the time to focus on a truly massive project — certainly the biggest hardware project yet: Apple Park. Ive seemingly gladly handed off day-to-day managerial tasks to commit himself fully to the last true Steve Jobs project.
By the time he came back, it seems as if Ive perhaps didn’t want to fully come back. And this seems perfectly understandable! He had been at Apple since 1992. 1992! He had originally been planning to leave when Jobs came back in 1997 and convinced him to stay — for another twenty-plus years.
He was commuting to Cupertino from San Francisco. That drive on the 280 is better than on the 101, but only slightly. That commute probably dwindled more and more over time. There were undoubtedly some internal grumblings with this situation because it was probably harder to get some things done but also because who wouldn’t want to work more closely with an Apple legend? Less resentment and more, “this isn’t an ideal situation”.
He was spending a lot of his time elsewhere, including his native UK. He was undoubtedly spending more time with his family. Illness in said family (mentioned in multiple stories this week) probably only exacerbated the apprehension in fully coming back — something which we can all relate to. With Apple Park complete and the realization that it would likely be the last major hardware “win” chalked up for years, that writing starts to come into focus on that wall…
At the same time, it’s a strange time for Apple. The company is in the midst of a massive shift in strategy to be more services-oriented. Undoubtedly, no one wanted Jony Ive to leave, but without question his skill set was better suited for the “old” Apple Republic. Cook and others had to know that Ive would just become more and more removed as they executed their new strategy which was less hardware-centric, and not even really software focused either — at least not in a traditional Apple sense.
Still, hardware iteration isn’t just going to stop at Apple, and this leaves a massive hole on the product side of the equation. Some might argue — as I have recently — that there’s been a hole there for quite some time already.⁴ And yes, that may have been because many were looking to Ive to fill that role. But even though he may have shared Jobs’ vision, he may not have wanted that responsibility. To me, the key quote in all of these pieces is this one by Ive to Tim Bradshaw at the FT about Jeff Williams:
“I’ve worked with Jeff for decades. He is a very close friend and an extraordinarily talented guy.
I worked with Jeff at the very earliest stages on Apple Watch and he, I think, represents an extraordinary combination of the optimisations that are necessary in creating a singular product. He has a tremendous intuition and judgment around products. That is combined with an extremely deep sense of the engineering pragmatics associated with developing complex products.”
Many people have been pointing out that Apple seems to be positioning Williams, who again, is COO right now, to eventually be Cook’s replacement as CEO. But I think it’s even simpler than that in the short term: they’re trying to position Williams as the new product guy.⁵ He saved the Apple Watch, let’s see what else he can do with more purview on the product side, seems to be the thinking.
And that’s why I don’t think it’s as crazy as it may seem at first to have the new design leads report to him. Apple is not going to run the same way as it did under Jobs, that has been well establish for almost a decade now. But it’s also not going to run the same way that it has with Jony Ive in the fold. And that’s undoubtedly the right call for now, but only time will tell how this will work.
Speaking of work, I don’t think it’s completely disingenuous of Cook and Ive to say that collaboration will continue with Ive full time at his new design house. Beyond the car stuff — which seems years away, at best — Ive has undoubtedly been fairly integral to the vision — quite literally — of the glasses product. That this is Apple’s next stab at the “next big thing” has been a poorly kept secret for at least a couple years at this point. It’s coming sooner rather than later. Maybe next year. At worst, the year after. Which means prototyping has been going on for some time.
Of a wearable. With a major design component. Who does that sound like?
Whatever Apple’s Glasses end up being, I’m guessing they’re going to showcase lots of love from LoveFrom.
So that’s the story I’ve come to in trying to boil down all these pieces. It’s perhaps less bombastic than some narratives, but it’s also not entirely without drama. This is now one of the most valuable companies in the world. It was on death’s doorstep not all that long ago. And Ive, more than anyone else at Apple, has seen the entire arc. There has to be some level of ego in that.
The timing was never going to be perfect for someone like Jony Ive to leave Apple. But this seems to be as natural of a time as one could hope for — from both Apple’s and Ive’s perspective. If there were absolutely no tensions on either side, perhaps he stays longer. Or maybe if something like the Watch became a bigger hit in fashion, we’re having a different discussion. But it was hard to see a world in which Ive stayed forever. And it was hard to see a world in which he should. As someone Ive knew well used to say, “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”
¹ Which still seems wild to me — as he didn’t actually refute anything directly. It’s one step removed from saying “fake news” and I just feel like you can’t do that in this day and age without directly addressing any specific issues with the reporting (and for what it’s worth, I have heard there are indeed some issues — but that doesn’t make the piece entirely wrong, and certainly not “absurd” — again, it’s a far more nuanced situation).
² Which leads one to wonder if Forstall could come back to Apple in the post-Ive world. It seems highly unlikely, just given the way he was dismissed by Cook. But someone else once came back to Apple, which also once seemed highly unlikely. (It’s not happening, but is sort of fun to think about!)
³ And one has to wonder if this is also what led others, like Angela Ahrendts to (and from) Apple. Her tenure clearly wasn’t John Browlett-bad, but it did seem to be a bit of a sidetracking for the Apple Stores. As she morphed them to more fashion-forward showcases and then to something more akin to community centers when the fashion element wasn’t working out, it seems that the hallmark customer service fell by the wayside, unfortunately.
⁴ And a quote in one of the FT stories all but confirms this notion:
In their separate interviews with the FT this week, Mr Cook and Sir Jonathan insisted that no single person at Apple decides which innovations graduate from its R&D labs and which are sent back to the drawing board. “The company runs very much horizontally,” said Mr Cook. “The reason it’s probably not so clear about who [sets product strategy] is that the most important decisions, there are several people involved in it, by the nature of how we operate.”
⁵ I’m still not 100% convinced this shouldn’t be Craig Federighi, but admittedly that is based on little more than his clear command of so many parts of Apple (and yes, his charisma on stage!), on the software side, at least.
