San Francisco — When Apple’s influential design leader Johnny Ive left the company in 2019, its CEO Tim Cook was monopolized by Ive, who provided the world with candy-colored computers. Reassured customers to cooperate with each other. For many years.
not anymore.
Ive and Apple have agreed to stop collaborating, according to two people who know the deal, and the designers have defined every corner of the iPhone and led the development of the only new product category30. Finished running the year. In recent years, Apple Watch.
When Ive left Apple in 2019 and launched his own design company, LoveFrom, the iPhone maker signed a multi-year deal with him worth more than $ 100 million. That made Apple a major customer of his company, people with knowledge of the agreement said.
The parties have agreed not to extend the contract as the contract is scheduled to be renewed in the last few weeks. Some Apple executives were wondering how much the company was paying for Mr. Ive, and were frustrated after some of the designers left to join Mr. Ive’s company. And Mr. Ive wanted the freedom to take on clients without the need for Apple’s permission, these people said.
Through a spokeswoman, 55-year-old Ive declined to comment. Apple also declined to comment.
According to more than 12 people who worked closely with Ive, Ive said that before leaving Apple in June 2019, Cook focused his increasingly large company on operations rather than a big design leap. I was disillusioned. Designers have shifted to a part-time role as Cook focused on selling more software and services.
In July 2019, Cook called Ive’s frustrated news coverage of Apple “ridiculous” and “distorted relationships, decisions, and events.”
Cook’s strategy validated by investors who added $ 1.5 trillion to Apple’s market valuation in just two years, despite some analysts accusing the adoption of innovative devices as stagnant it was done.
Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams will continue to oversee the company’s design team, with Evans Hankey leading the industrial design and Alan Dye leading the software design. Apple’s product marketing team, led by Greg Joswiak, Senior Vice President of Marketing, plays a central role in product selection.
Ive’s company, Love From, will continue to work with clients such as Airbnb and Ferrari, where Ive will work personally with the Sustainable Markets Initiative, a non-profit organization run by Prince Charles with a focus on climate change. I will continue.
Born and raised in the suburbs of London, Ive joined Apple in 1992 and stood up to lead its design team. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1997 when Steve Jobs entrusted Ive’s team to design the iMac. The bulbous translucent computer became the best-selling desktop in history at the time. It restored Apple’s business and turned Ive into Jobs’ closest collaborator.
“He’s not just a designer,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “He is more manoeuvrable than anyone at Apple except me.”
Ive also helped create iPhone touchscreen technology by developing the white iPod earphones that inspired Apple’s dance silhouette advertising campaign.
After Jobs died of cancer in 2011, Ive led the development of the Apple Watch. The product failed to meet its initial sales forecast, but last year it created a wearable business with $ 38 billion in revenue.
In 2015, Ive talked to Cook about leaving Apple, according to four people familiar with the conversation. The designers were tired of building the consensus needed to build the Apple Watch, these people said. Cook agreed to have Ive work part-time.
Four years later, Ive and Cook announced that designers would leave Apple to create Love From. “We are pleased that our relationship continues to evolve and look forward to working with Johnny for a long time,” Cook said in a statement at the time.
