Tomorrow it will arrive on the market After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soula book written by the journalist of the New York Times Tripp Mickle, who will basically tell the evolution of Apple after the death, in 2011, of its charismatic founder Steve Jobs. The title suggests quite obviously what the general tone of the book is, and apparently represents quite precisely the thought of Jony Ive, the company’s legendary chief designer, which ultimately led to his decision to leave to start his own business. Yesterday, Mickle himself published an article on the Times which, based on the book, focuses precisely on the events that have distanced Ive from the Apple, first on a philosophical level then in a more concrete way.
The extremely concise concept is that, regardless of mutual respect, Ive and Cook didn’t see things the same way on a number of key topics. For Ive, form has always been the top priority, we can say, while Cook has had a more pragmatic and utility-oriented approach over the years. It has often been said recently that under I’ve probably never had a Mac Studio – but the same goes for MacBooks of recent years – with all those ports (and the memory card reader!) Due to the designer’s passion for clean and minimalist lines of the products he created. It is one of the most emblematic examples, but the first fractures date back to 2014, on the occasion of the launch of the Apple Watch.
For Ive, Apple Watch had to be a luxury product. She envisioned an extremely glitzy presentation, comparable to a high-fashion show, in a $ 25 million white pavilion aimed at impressing more Vogue than any other high-tech expert. Cook agreed, but only up to a point, and after a long series of discussions that led to Ive feeling unsupported by his own company for the first time. Over the years, as we know, Apple Watch has become a relatively popular and mass-market product, and has increasingly focused on fitness and health, with the luxury versions increasingly marginalized.
Cook has always tried to please / indulge as much as possible Ive, because he was afraid that his passing would have had serious repercussions on Apple’s share value. At the same time, however, Ive was increasingly stressed due to the significant increase in his workload following the departure of Steve Jobs, when he became full manager of the design division. Almost overnight, he found himself in charge of over 100 employees, versus the 20-person team he had managed for years. Cook attempted to offer a compromise by allowing him to work part-time and wanting from home, abandoning day-to-day managerial duties and focusing only on new product design. But ultimately it didn’t work, and at the end of 2019 the creator of revolutionary products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad said goodbye to the company he had worked for since 1992.
That the situation was this was already clear enough for some time: articles and rumors more or less on the same notes circulated almost immediately after the news of the dismissal. The article, which you can find by following the SOURCE link below (Paywall, in English), reaches a level of detail never seen before, and bodes well for Mickle’s book, which is configured as a must-read for Apple enthusiasts. and high tech in general. However, we still have one question left: Better Apple than Ive or, as Bloomberg argues, the post-Ive one? Better the clean lines or the many doors? What do you think about it?
