When Apple announced the Apple Watch in 2014, it did so at De Anza in Cupertino, a few miles below its then-Infinite Loop headquarters. It’s kind of like a sacred site for Apple, the place where Steve Jobs debuted on both the original Macintosh in 1984 and the iMac in 1998. And on the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh, the first product to potentially change the game after the deaths of Steve Jobs, Apple – and Johnny Ive, Apple’s chief designer and longtime collaborator with Jobs – wanted to shut down all stops.
Well, not all stops, it turns out. And the battle for the logistics of the event and the $ 25 million price that Ive asked to make it, according to reports, is one of the moments that led Ive to eventually leave the company. That’s according to a new report in The New York Times, excerpt from reporter Trip Mickle’s new book, After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul. Ive was eager to portray the watch as a fashion accessory, Mickle writes, and wanted to present it with pomp and appropriate circumstances.
I eventually made it, but I felt unsupported by Apple’s new regime. This was reportedly the beginning of the end. After years of reports that Ive is increasingly involved in the company, he eventually left to start his own design firm, LoveFrom, in 2019. (For what it’s worth, Apple CEO Tim Cook has always rejected the idea that I’ve been frustrated or unhappy, and I’ve continued to work with Apple through LoveFrom.)
The Times story also goes through some of Ive’s legacy and influence at Apple, from the colorful iMac that Ive helped make “joyful” to the relentless perfectionist atmosphere in the company that Jobs and Ive encouraged and thrived. Over time, as Apple shifted from a flat-out product company to the relentlessly optimized giant it is today, and especially as it focused more on services, Ive reportedly saw a company in which it is less important and can do less. And after he left, Michel said, Apple’s products remained “largely as they were when Mr. Ive left.”
In the case of the iPhone, iPad and Watch, this definitely seems true. But the Mac is a different story: after Ive left, Apple’s laptops and desktops got significantly better, thanks to both the M-Series chips and the fact that Apple has returned to its computing roots. Mac has ports again! And keyboards that really work! Better Macs also made better-selling Macs. And of course, there are rumors and reports that Apple is close to releasing its next big thing: AR glasses. So the death of Apple products may be somewhat exaggerated.
After Steve comes out on Tuesday, and Mickle will be a guest on Vergecast this Friday. (Send us questions!) The whole book is worth reading, and Ive’s story in particular is a good microcosm of how the company changed – for better or worse – in the post-Jobs era.
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