Why Jony Ive Left Apple

you're gonna be This isn't in medias race. This is an indus race at this point, which is I know, not real. But let's let's pick up where we left off in the last episode. So I talked about how you know, Johnny Ivan, Steve Jobs had really done a lot, along with lots of other people at Apple to turn the company around, to really put it into the limelight for the mainstream, which Apple really had not been there

since arguably the late seventies early eighties. Because the the IBM PC and the Compatibles and all the Windows PCs that followed those became the dominant machines uh in the market, both in business and in personal use. Apple had kind of carved out a niche in the education sector and had a devoted following among the Apple faithful, but outside of that they had not made much impact. Well. That all changed with the introduction of of devices like the

iPod and the iPhone. Suddenly Apple was making a much bigger impact in the mainstream public. Well. Something that was going on around that same time was tragically the the declining health of Steve Jobs, one of the founders of the company. Um In two thousand nine he would go on medical leave. So he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in two thousand three and had undergone surgery, but

over time his health was undeniably getting worse. Uh. In fact, people were commenting on it all the time because he was a very public figure. He would appear at events like Macworld in order to announce new products, and whenever he was taking the stage, people would comment on his appearance. So in two thousand nine Steve Jobs went on medical leave. He had sat out the Macworld presentation that year. I

believe Phil Schiller took his place. Phil Schiller head of marketing over at Apple at that point, and that was raising a lot of concern. There were a lot of rumors, a lot of people speculating that Steve Jobs would not long be in the role of CEO. At that point he would actually stay on for a couple more years, so go on medically really heightened concerns, and Jobs would secretly traveled to Tennessee and there he had a major operation,

a liver transplant. The Wall Street Journal found out two months after the operation actually took place and published an article about it. You know, obviously Steve Jobs being a just despite the fact that he would publicly appear at these events, would be the sort of the face of Apple. He was a very private person, so this was a

real issue. And plus there were questions then about well, you haven't disclosed this to shareholders at your investors who might find this information important based upon, you know, the money that they've invested in the company, which gets into a really complicated place, right like where do you balance between personal privacy and information that is relevant to the

health of a company. And when it came to Apple, so many people associated Steve Jobs with Apple that they almost treated it like they were one the same, Like the man the company were the same thing, which is a ludicrous thing to do, but a lot of people did it, and it was because Steve Jobs had really kind of created the cult of personality around him and around the company. Well obviously the people at Apple were really concerned about this, including his close friends, which Johnny

I've was one of those. Johnny I've being the lead of industrial design, design had become the prime factor that determined the direction of products, and then the operations side of the company enabled design. Another person very close to Steve Jobs was Tim Cook, the chief operating officer. Now, Tim Cook had come over to Apple and had really started to help on the financial side and was really amazing at at his job, and Tim Cook felt, you know,

very close to Steve Jobs as well. So both men were They considered Steve Job to be not just the the co founder of Apple and their their CEO, but a friend. So Jobs would actually come back to Apple. He was recovered a bit and he came back from medical leave and he did lead the company for a couple more years. In January two thou eleven, he took medical leave from the company again, but he stayed on as CEO for several more months. He didn't step down

from his position until August of two thousand eleven. That's when he did step down as CEO. He named Tim Cook as his successor, and he would pass away on October five, two thousand eleven, a day that was monumental in the tech sector. Every technology journal, every technology podcast, everyone acknowledged his passing, uh and the impact he had on the industry as a whole. And meanwhile, at Apple,

pretty much everybody was devastated by this news. Steve Jobs had kind of a rough reputation, Like he was known as being very demanding, He had extremely high standards, and he was not shy about voicing his opinion if he felt those standards had not been met. Uh. You know, I mentioned in a previous episode that Steve Jobs would fire people that he felt were not living up to what Apple is supposed to be, and that some folks would even refer to the experience of getting fired as

getting jobs. Um, especially after Jobs first returned to Apple and did a massive amount of layoffs of you know, like middle management at the company. Well, his closest friends had been visiting with him on occasion while he was you know, really in decline, and of course they had a better idea of what was going on than most other people were, but it was no easier for them, and Johnny I've was one of the a and Tim

Cook was another. They both lost a dear friend as well as a fierce advocate for their work, you know, and in Johnny i've's case, it was the best advocate you could have for the importance of industrial design. Steve Jobs and Johnny I've together were able to elevate industrial

design to the most important aspect of a product. And in Johnny i've's mind, that was what was right, that industrial design should be the key element, and meant that he got to design things and have them be built to his specifications, to the point where he was given incredible amounts of autonomy to seek out the right materials and the right manufacturing processes. Like Johnny I've had a reputation for just as exacting standards as Steve Jobs. Like

he would. He would scour the world to find the right stuff and the right processes to create why he had envisioned, and if it was even a little off of what he wanted, he would keep looking. So things would change an apple quite a bit over the following decade. Obviously, I mean the company lost its co founder, it's CEO, it's vision, some would argue it's heart, and a lot of the changes that would follow. We're due to the

fundamental differences between Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. Cook, again, he had been the chief operating officer, is absolutely brilliant when it comes to ways to maximize profits and to maximize the corporate value of Apple. Like Jobs, he's not afraid to take risks or make choices that require, you know, a greater expense if he believes in the purpose. Like Cook did sign off on some pretty massive expenses so far,

and I'm sure he will continue to do so. So it's not like Cook is you know, stingy on spending and just one to you know, squeeze out every dime to get as much out of it as possible. That's not the case. However, he did come to his job with a different perspective on industrial design. That was not that was not in his his you know, priority list, That was not top of mind for Tim Cook. It was not something that he particularly had an affinity for.

He could appreciate it, but that wasn't again his passion. So his leadership style was very different from Steve Jobs. Now. It also didn't help that the entire world's attention was on Apple. The company was at a market value of around three hundred billion dollars at the time of Steve jobs As death, which was a huge leap from the organization that had been teetering towards bankruptcy fifteen years earlier. Right, the company went from on the verge of being irrelevant

to becoming a three d billion dollar company. That was when Tim Cook took over, and that meant that Apple now had a reputation as a tastemaker, as a trend setter, a major influence in computers and electronics. So it had become the company for prestige smartphones. So Android devices were at this point out selling iPhones for a while. iPhones were king because one they came out before Android did. Two, they just had a sexy kind of aspect to them

that Android could not match. But Google smartphone had really taken the lead in sales earlier in two thousand eleven, and the reason for that was pretty simple. Apple was the only company making iPhones right the only way you could get an iPhone is to purchase it from Apple, or to purchase it from a carrier that in turn, was working with Apple, so an iPhone was a flagship product.

But Google's Android operating system was open for all sorts of manufacturers, so there wasn't just one line of Android phones. It's not like you know, Google Phone and that's it. There were all these different manufacturers making phones that were

running on Android. There were dozens of them, and that meant Android phones could cover a much wider range of the market, everything from budget smartphones to elite levels, and the feature set would vary as well, right, So that meant that there were just more Android phones out there. So it made sense that they were out selling the iPhones for you know, people who couldn't afford an iPhone, they would get an Android phone, or some people who

just didn't like Apple would get an Android phone. That being said, the iPhone remained a powerful and iconic product for Apple, and people were still tuning into Apple's corporate events to see what was coming next. Like every year, people in droves were tuning in to watch a live stream of Apple's press events to find out what the next iPhone was going to be. Like, you know, and you've got to keep in mind when the iPhone first

came out in America. The way that that contracts with carriers worked was that you would essentially agree to have a two year service agreement with whichever carrier. Let's let's say it's a T and T. You would agree to have a two year service with a T and T, and then at the end of those two years, you could, you know, essentially just stay on the plan, or you

could renew it or whatever. And as part of that, the company would subsidize a purchase of your phone, so you would be able to get a phone for a much cheaper price, sometimes for free, depending on the phone. So you would buy an iPhone for a couple of hundred dollars because it was being subsidized by the carrier, which was going to get way more money because you were, you know, paying a monthly fee to the carrier. For

two years. iPhones would come out, a new one would come out every year, so you immediately had this new phone that was attracting a very passionate base because they love the design, they loved the software, they loved everything that made it the iPhone. And you had people who are willing to buy a new iPhone even though they were still under contracts. So their contract would go over two years. A new iPhone comes out every year and

people are spending huge amounts of money. It was crazy. Um. Eventually the US moved away from that model like that. That was the norm when the iPhone first came out. It is no longer the norm now. Now usually people will buy a phone for full price, uh, and they aren't aren't getting a subsidized phone from a carrier. Usually not always, but you know, that's become more common in the US, and which is kind of the way it

works in the rest of the world too. Now that just speaks to the power of Apple's marketing and design that they're able to create a product that people will they'll endure extra fees in order to be part of the group that gets hold of that product phenomenal. The question was would that continue now that Steve Jobs was gone. I'll talk about that more when we come back after this break. So it was inevitable that people would start asking the question, is Apple going to survive without Steve Jobs?

People have been asking that for years at that point because Steve jobs declining health was no real secret. You could see it whenever he was taking the stage, and there were tons of people who were predicting that once Jobs was gone, Apple was going to unravel and and implode because Steve Jobs it felt like he was the one guiding everything and keeping it together again. It was

this cult of personality. It was also ignoring the fact that there were so many other talented people at Apple who were key in the company's success us so Johnny and I've being one of them. And you know, it kind of makes sense that people were predicting that the company was going to hit on hard times because when Jobs had been forced out of Apple or when he left Apple, depending on your point of view. Back in well, that's when Apple fell into this pattern of bad decisions

that nearly brought the whole company down. But the Apple of two thousand eleven was a very different organization than the one from the eighties and nineties, and Tim Cook was the type of leader who could focus with amazing clarity on goals like increasing Apple's value, which, boy howdy did he do that. We'll talk about that more later

in this episode, but let's get back to Johnny. I've Job's death hit I've very hard, But in early two thousand twelve, I was energized to work on something new Apple had acquired a company that was working on tech in the health sector. Specifically, they were developing technology that could use light to detect glucose levels in blood, which would be phenomenal for people who, for example, have diabetes to have a non invasive way to monitor their glucose levels.

And I've wanted to make a wearable one that would happen to the health space, but it would also serve as a beautiful, fashionable watch. He wanted to make a smart watch that was the best of all worlds, the best in health tech, the best in time pieces, and the best in fashion. He really wanted to create something that would transcend the gadget world and enter into the

world of luxury fashion. It would take two years of work to bring the Apple Watch to reality, two years of design, finding the right materials, finding the right form factor, finding the right components to all make it work proper, really, and you know, figuring out things like how do you have how do you display things on a screen that's going to be small enough to fit on a wrist. All of these were decisions that would take a couple

of years to really hone in on. Not during that same time, something big happened at Apple That was both a blessing and a curse for I've so Later in two thousand twelve, under Tim Cook's watch, the company released a new iPhone which was per usual, and also during that time released Apple Maps. Now. I don't know, my little Drew gis if you remember what Apple Maps was back in the early days. But it wasn't good. It was buggy. It was something you did not want in

a navigation app, right. You want to be sure that your navigation app is actually guiding you to the right place, and you couldn't be sure with that with Apple Maps. There were some notable and hilarious earl years of the app, and Apple got a lot of criticism for the rollout of this product. And just to be fair to the team that had been working on Apple Naps, they had been rushed and it was pushed out before it was

really ready. They knew that they needed more time, They just didn't get it because there was this need for the app to be out there. So Apple wanted to make Scott Forstall, who was the head of the software side, to apologize for the buggy software. Now that was something the company had never done under Steve Jobs. You know, even during the whole antenna gate, which was an issue with a previous iPhone, that's and that the antenna layout

within the phone, uh, began to create problems. If you were quote unquote holding the phone wrong, you were blocking the signal. There was a lot of signal dropping, and uh, you know, Steve Jobs was just saying that people were holding the phone wrong instead of saying that, you know, it was a faulty design. Johnny I was kind of similar on that too, and um, and so that was very notable. People were thinking that Apple was a brazen company for not admitting that it had failed in some way. Well,

this was a very different approach. This was the boss telling Forrestall, hey, you need to sign this apology letter and you need to admit that there was fault in what we released, and Forestall refused to sign it. Now, the rumor is that that is what angered Tim Cook, who then chose to let Forrestall go to essentially fire the head of software. Now, this was a huge deal for several reasons. One is that Forrestall had previously been on a pretty short list of folks who could have

succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO. People thought potentially he was going to step into that role before Jobs named Cook as his successor. Now, obviously Forrestall didn't become CEO. But another a big deal is that for Stall and I've had a fundamental disagreement when it came to design approach, specifically over skew a morphism. Skill morphism is when you make some sort of derivative of an object that retains features that were necessary in the original version of that object,

but not in the derivative. I know that sounds kind of messy to to talk about, so let me give you a very simple example. So, when you're ready to throw something away, something physical, like let's say that you've got a sheet of paper that you're gonna need to throw away, you wad it up and you toss it

into a trash can. So when it came time to creating a Windows icon for deleting a file, it was pretty common to represent the deleting process as an icon that looked like a little trash can, and you could just drag a file over to the trash can and let go, and it would go into the recycle bin or the trash can. Now, there's no reason to make

the icon look like a trash can. Like, it doesn't have to look like that, right, because you're not actually physically tossing a digital file into the opening of the icon of this can in order to throw it away. But the combination of the familiar with the digital process is an example of skew a morphism, the idea being, oh, people know what trash cans are, that therefore they will understand that the process in order to delete a file.

Johnny I did not like skew amorphism. To put it lightly, he didn't like the look of Apple's icons on the digital screens that he labored over designing. So in other words, he felt like he was putting in tons of work to create the best physical product that was showing icons and software that didn't belong on his work of art. Essentially, So, once for stall was gone, there was the opportunity that rose up, and Tim cook I saw that opportunity. He decided to put I'VE in charge of the look of

Apple's software. Namely, i was put in charge of human interface stuff. So instances like the icons that appear on Apple screens that became i've's domain. In addition to industrial design. Now, while I've relished the job of making the stuff that appeared on the screens of the devices he had designed,

compliment those designs, and not conflict with them. This seemingly victory that he had experienced brought with it additional responsibilities, which included lots and lots of meetings, tons of meetings, and i've's life began to consist of lots more meetings, which he found taxing and distracting. And while I've had grown accustomed to working very closely with Steve jobs Like often they would meet one on one to talk about

design things, well, that wasn't Tim Cook's style. Tim Cook wasn't the type of person to take a one on one meeting with Johnny I've and spend an hour or two talking about designs. Instead, Tim Cook would organize much larger meetings and Johnny I've would be part of those. That meant that other departments would have more input into this process. So I've was no longer working directly with the CEO of Apple. He was getting suggestions and directives

from other department heads. So under jobs the design team had become the most important department in the company arguably, and the operations team like I said was meant to enable the design team, but Tim Cook came from the operations side, and he flipped that relationship operations would ultimately determine which design elements could move forward in which ones wouldn't. Now, I've did throw himself into a couple of major projects that kept him busy enough to at least cope with

those changes. So the Apple Watch was a huge one. I've obsessed over the materials and design with the watch. He wanted the watch to have a crown. So, in case you're not familiar with watch terminology. On on classic watches, the crown is the little button or dial that you use on the side of the watch case that lets

you set the time. It's what let's you know, move the hour and minute hands around the watch face so that you get the correct time set on your watch, or in cases with spring watches, it's also how you wind the watch so that the spring can continue to operate the watches clockwork. Now, on the Apple Watch, obviously there was no need to have a crown to to

do those kind of things. You could do everything by touch, but the crown was there because one it was a classic piece of of you know, watch anatomy, there's something you would expect to find on any luxury watch, but Johnny I've also wanted it to be a way to

navigate through menus and things like that. So he wanted to make this watch something that would again transcend tech gadgets and then be worthy in the world of fashion, to be something accepted in the luxury fashion market, because Johnny I've, ultimately he's an industrial designer who wants to make the best of the best. He wants to make the most beautiful thing of whatever it is he's making possible.

So to that end, he oversaw the design of everything with a watch, including things like the straps, which meant that he was looking at thousands of different samples of materials to pick out the right ones to make up the straps for the Apple Watch. He would also obsess over the curve of the case, every little tiny element there. And meanwhile, he was also courting influential figures in the world of fashion. He was meeting with them to talk with them about this role of the Apple Watch playing

a part in the world of fashion. He impressed leaders in the space with his dedication to detail, an obsession over getting it perfect, like those were things that the fashion world understood that was common in the fashion world, this obsession with detail, and it was a way for him to connect to that world, where otherwise the fashion world might just look at a at a smart watch and say, yeah, that's just a gimmick. It's just a gadget. Now, the Apple Watch was an odd product in many ways.

It had a pretty odd launch. The tech world, which had become used to being the target audience of Apple's press events, kind of found itself nudged aside in favor. You know, the the fashion world got favor over the tech world, and that was unusual. It kind of rubbed some folks in the text sphere the wrong way, and it didn't mesh perfectly well. People liked the watch in general, but the Apple Watch when it launched lacked several features.

A lot of the health features that had been planned for the watch ultimately had to get stripped down to like the bare minimum because the tech just wasn't ready yet. So while they knew what they wanted to do, the watch wasn't capable of doing everything out of the box, so they had to ship something. That was the issue was that they couldn't just delay, they had already kind of committed to shipping, so it really meant that they had to strip out some of the features they had

planned for the watch. Enthusiasm in the press for the Apple Watch, both on the tech and fashion side, was initially pretty high, but it flagged a bit once the watch came out. That being said, it would eventually become a monumental commercial success over time. In two thousand and fifteen, there were naysayers who dismissed the Apple Watches just being

a flop. They said, well, this was a sign that the company had lost its way since Steve Jobs had passed away, because it was the first time the company had introduced a new product line since Steve Jobs passing. And I said, well, this is obviously evidence that Apple is no longer the company it used to be. And the watch industry also dismissed the Apple Watch, initially saying that unlike a true luxury watch, which you know, you might spend thousands of dollars on, the Apple Watch wasn't

designed to last the test of time. Like, it's weird to start talking about time and watches, but but a true luxury watch is supposed to be timeless. This idea that you have this classic design that will remain relevant for your entire lifetime, and that you know, you can collect other watches that have different, you know, aspects to them, but that any individual watch should be a thing of

art forever. Contrast that with the gadget world, where like, just like with the iPhone, every year they're gonna have a new model with new features that make the old ones obsolete, and and that in fact, the software running on older models will eventually get to a point where it's no longer supported. So Apple watches, by their nature, because they were smart watches, because they were tech, had a limited shelf life. They would not last the test

of time as it were. Plus, initially the original Apple Watch, you had to pair it with an iPhone, and obviously that limited its customer base. Just like when the iPod first came out it could only be paired with a Macintosh computer, the original Apple Watch could only be paired with an iPhone, and that meant that, you know, you had an entire swath of folks who might admire the watch for its fashionable appearance, but they wouldn't buy it

because they didn't own an iPhone. Apple's second generation watch course corrected to an extent. For one thing, the company decided to drop its attempt to really play the luxury goods space. So when the first generation watch emerged, one of the models that Johnny I've designed was had a had a price tag at an eye popping seventeen thousand dollars, and you know, it was obviously being marketed as a high end luxury good. The second generation, they didn't do that.

They didn't produce these extremely expensive luxury versions of the Apple Watch. Instead, they really focused more on the active lifestyle, health tech side of the market. And obviously that's a different a different message in a different market than high

end luxury brands. So they also eased off on the requirement to pair it with an iPhone, which increased its relevancy, and the Apple Watch would become the dominant model in the smart watch industry, and only that it became so popular that it began to outsell the entire Swiss watch industry. So the watch industry, which had been dismissing Apple saying, oh, they got it all wrong. They don't know what they're

they don't know what they're doing. We know what we're doing because we've been doing this for more than a century. Then it turned around where Apple started to out sell them. So while the initial launch was a bit rocky, they were able to turn that all around. It did cause some waves of Apple, Like Johnny I've was on somewhat uncertain ground because the rollout did not propel Apple in the way that everyone had hoped. It just took a little longer for that to to really take off. All Right,

we're gonna take another break. When we come back, we'll talk more about how johnny Ives time with Apple would come to an end. So before the break, you know, I was talking about how there were a couple of major projects that occupied Johnny I's time that, uh, we're really important. Well, the Apple Watch was one, and the other one was something that Steve Jobs had started but obviously was unable to finish before he passed away, and that was the design of a new Apple campus. I

would take a prominent role in this design. The building would end up costing billions of dollars, and it featured curved surfaces and open office floor plans, and some of that would end up getting criticized by Apple employees because sound would travel really far in the building, like it would travel along the curve surfaces, and it made it kind of difficult to focus if you could hear every

passing conversation going on. But uh but the physical design, like the look of it was stunning and is stunning. So the building is by all measures a phenomenon. If you haven't seen it, you should look at pictures of the Apple Headquarters. Um. It's it's kind of a loop of the building, a circle with a hollow center. There's a courtyard in that in the middle of the building. And some folks would even call this a spaceship because

it had this sort of futuristic, otherworldly appearance. Uh. As as for the grounds, like, it's stunning another element that I've oversaw. So the campus has fruit trees planted all around it. It's got hathways for walking. That's something that Johnny I've really wanted. Steve Jobs also really wanted that. And there are sections of the building where you get an amazing view of the sunset in the evening. It has a theater that looks like it's floating in place.

It's a glass rotunda just kind of it looks like it's just magically suspended from the pictures and videos that I have seen. The headquarters is breathtaking, lee beautiful. I don't know how practical it is, like, I don't know what it's like to work there, but it's undeniably gorgeous. I may have to do a full episode about that

in the future, because the whole story is fascinating. It's obviously a lot more goes into it than just saying, Johnny, I've decided to complete this design project that Steve Jobs had had started. It goes so far beyond that, but I don't want to I want to turn this episode

just into that story. The other important thing to remember now, Johnny I've was tackling these partly because he felt an obligation to Steve Jobs, his friend, and partly because he felt an obligation to Apple, the company that he had fallen in love with. But Johnny I was also burning out. He did not like having to go to all these meetings. He didn't like the interference that he was encountering from

other departments. He did not like the design was no longer at the helm at Apple, and so he began to spend more time away from the office. He was still working, but he wasn't coming in to the office. This was before the headquarters opened, so this was at Apple's old campus, and he just wasn't taking the time to commute in. Instead, whenever he had meetings, he would have people come out to him to San Francisco rather than him making the drive up to Cupertino, and so

his team began to see him less and less. So it probably wasn't a huge surprise in two thousand nineteen when I've and Cook reached an agreement for I've to step down as the director of Industrial Design, several of the top folks in design in that department had already left Apple at that point, so some of the superstars in johnny Ives team had already gone off to to do other things. So the design department wasn't what it used to be when when design was king at Apple.

Not that there weren't talented people. They're They're absolutely word and there continued to be incredibly talented designers who work at Apple, but it was very different. Like I'm sure morale was a little shaky with some of these these prominent people in the department having left, including Johnny I've and you know, maybe it wasn't that big of a of a shock, because I've had seemed to be kind of checked out for the last couple of years. But I want to be fair to Johnny. I've it's not

that I think he just got, you know, tired. He had a family. He wanted to spend more time with his family. Uh. And that includes his extended family who were still back in England and he didn't get a chance to see them nearly as often as he liked. His father had experienced a stroke. In fact, it was at a point where they were just about to hold this big ceremony about the opening of Apple's new headquarters and Johnny I was pulled away because his father had

a stroke. So he traveled back to England to be with his dad. And obviously I was very concerned about his father. Uh. And this was a huge deal too, because I have a dedicated so much time and effort to complete Steve jobs as vision with the Apple headquarters. This was not an easy thing for him. It was obviously the decision that was right for him to go and see his father like that was what was most

important to him. But you know, it's one of those things where you can't really imagine another competing event that would have been as hard to miss out on as the opening of this headquarters that Johnny I has been so long working on. He also was really tired of having to fight against other departments in order to justify his design choices and to have design have a decent

place at the table when working on products. Some stuff that had been in semi secret development, like an Apple car, where anguishing because the projects turned it out turned out to be more complicated than they had first imagined, and that was distressing too. Write like when you spend a ton of time working on something and it never comes out. And it's not that it's you know, like there's any bad reason for that, it's just that things aren't working out.

But that's still very frustrating, it's still demoralizing. So I was ready to take a further step back from Apple, like he was already not showing up as frequently, but

that was not enough. So in two thousand nineteen, he officially stepped down as the director of Industrial Design at Apple, and he co founded a design consultancy company with his friend Mark Newsom, and they called the company Love from Apple would actually be their biggest clients, so I would still be involved with Apple, uh so love from security one hundred million dollar agreement. That agreement included restrictions on

the types of alliance that Johnny I've could accept. So he was prevented from working with any direct competitors to Apple. In other words, like that was against this agreement. He could work for other you know, he could design for other companies that weren't in direct competition with Apple. And the contract also included an agreement that it could be extended on an annual basis. So I kind of took on more of an advisor role with the design team.

He would still have input, but the design team wasn't obligated to follow his direction. It was more like he was providing advice and counsel. And then this year, in two ivan, Apple decided that they weren't going to extend that contract. That this arrangement is over. Apple is going forward without Johnny I've having a place there at all, and it seems both parties are at peace with this. And the Apple of today is an entirely different company

from the one that Johnny ive was part of. For one thing, earlier this year, it briefly hit the three trillion dollar valuation. Now remember it was valued at around three billion when Steve Jobs passed away. So whatever you think of Tim Cook and his leadership at Apple, there's no denying that he made a huge amount of money

and delivered unprecedented value to shareholders. However, more people are looking at Apple as no longer really being a cutting edge hardware company, like it's not defining the esthetic of

electronics and computers anymore. Part of Tim Cook's leadership has been a push towards becoming more of a services platform, with Apple taking a cut of every transaction, and this had subsequently brought the company under a lot of scrutiny, as other companies as well as governmental regulators around the world have been asking if Apple is perhaps is engaged in anti competitive practices in its efforts to redefine the company's revenue model. Cook really lad the charge into services.

He saw that as a sustainable way toward growth. But with this growing resistance around the world, we may one day see Apple have to pivot again, at least if Cook and the executive team wanted to continue to grow now. I don't see this being an issue in the short term, but if we actually do see more regulation with teeth

in it, then that could come to pass. Like we're seeing how various governments around the world are saying, you create the platform, you prevent anyone who builds in that platform to go outside of your own process, and you charge for your process, which that doesn't feel right. If if that continues, an Apple has to give up some of that control, it will really impact the revenue model that Timo has been building toward. And um, that's gonna be tough for the company because that they will have

to adjust for that. They will not be making the same amount of revenue that they have been for the past few years if that fundamentally changes now. I don't mean to say that all of Apple's service fees are going to just disappear. A lot of people, a lot of developers are still going to go through Apples systems. But if enough of them, especially the ones that have some sway, are able to do it in a different way, that is money out of Apple's pocket, if you want

to look at it that way. As for Johnny I've, I hope his new work is rewarding and that it's fun and that he has the time to spend with his family. Johnny I've is definitely not hurting for cash. I was one of the best compensated employees at Apple and amassed a huge fortune. He also has been knighted. He is Sir Jonathan. Uh. He was, so he has a knighthood. The guy is not hurting at all. Uh he he rides around in Chaufford Bentley's he is not He's not sporting one of those change verses that when

you open it, just moths fly out of it. I should also add there were some other Johnny I've designs that I didn't really cover in these episodes that we could chat about. They are important things. I just had to make cuts ultimately, because I mean four episodes is

a lot for any topic. But I didn't talk about the MacBook Air, a laptop so thin that you could fit it in a Manila envelope that was viewed as a gorgeous, phenomenal design to be able to create a form factor that slim, that could still hold all the components necessary to be a good computer. Then there are other I've designs that didn't get so much so many accolades. I guess I should say, like the Apple TV S

he remote, the first generation. I don't know if you've seen these the the remotes, the first generation remotes were they had black buttons on a black remote, which means that if you were watching television in a dim room. Let's say that you've got the lights turned down, the shades are pulled because you want to be able to view your o lead screen and see it in vibrant color. Suddenly you can't find the remote because it's black on black.

It's like spinal tap had created a remote control. Or then there was the Magic mouse to this one also was a design that a lot of people kind of joked about because the Magic mouse, too was it was a wireless mouse and you would charge it by plugging it into a cable. But the port for the charging cable was on the underside of the mouse, So I mean, if you wanted to charge your mouth, you had to turn it on its side or or flip it upside

down to plug it in. And it moreover, mint you could not use the mouse while you were charging it, right there was no way because the cable would be in the way. You could not use it and charge it at the same time. And a lot of people said, that makes no sense, that is a huge design flaw. Then of course, there was the cylindrical Mac Pro that came out in UH, and like the power Cube before it, I talked about that a couple of episodes, the Mac

Pro was a revolutionary design. I mean, I guess you could say it was literally revolutionary because it's a cylinder and you know, you could revolve around it. Never mind, but it got some great initial reviews because it really was the most powerful Mac produced up to that point. But over time some of the shine faded from the perception of the Mac Pro. UH. Like the Cube before it, the cylindrical power Mac lacked the capacity for internal expansion.

It had a lot of parts so you could do external expansion, but you couldn't upgrade the guts of the device because of the the decisions that had to be made in order to make this cylindrical computer possible. And eventually some folks would derisively call this the Mac Pro trash can I honestly think that's going too far. Some

of my colleagues might disagree with me. I think Matt Frederick Tyler Clang both had strong opinions about this, but they they're also Mac devotes because they worked in video production for so long and Max were really important in that field. But yeah, that one didn't go over so well. But um, but you know, you're always going to have some misses along with the hits. And the thing is, Johnny ives hits were out of the park, like, they weren't just a decent hit, they were grand slam home runs.

As for Apple, what's it going to be like without Johnny I've Some would say that I've had ceased really being a prominent force and Apple a few years ago, even before he stepped down. So there's an argument to be made that it's probably not going to be that much different than the Apple we're seeing right now. There are also plenty of talented, brilliant designers who work at Apple. Like, you know, it's not like Johnny i was the one

and only. The process of design is different. Design no longer holds the prominent spot it did back when Steve Jobs and Johnny I've were kind of defining Apple's company process. But again, it's not like the design department has just tumbleweeds floating through. It may well be that Apple's most breathtaking successful product has yet to come. We have to wait and see the company is working on some stuff that's really exciting like mixed reality headwear. And you know,

maybe one day we will see the Apple car. So I wouldn't write it off, but it is it's impossible to say. It's impossible to deny the fact that Johnny I've and Steve Jobs together defined the aesthetic at Apple for a stretch of incredible years. Whether that aesthetic continues or if it transforms, we'll have to see. Um. I suspect we will start to see it slowly gravitate into some other design aesthetic. But I think there's going to be a piece of I've at Apple for the foreseeable future. Anyway,

that concludes these episodes about Johnny I've. Hope you enjoyed them. Please reach out to me if you have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Eight