In short, Johnny Ive, a former Apple Chief Design Officer and Consultant who is most responsible for the visual appeal of Apple products, turns computers and phones into more than just a vector of features. Helped. Rather, the badge of identity — and his former employer reportedly agreed to break their last bond.
What does this mean for a “mixed reality” headset, which is the gateway to the Metaverse worn over the eyes, according to rumors that Apple may release it in the second quarter of next year? In other words, what does that mean for us, whose willingness to engage in substitute reality can be transformed by such devices?
After all, how the company designs equipment that makes you want to put a contradiction on your face so that you can enter another world while your body is in this world. If you can solve the question of what to do, it will be Apple.
If a company could overcome the precedents of Google Glass and Oculus to create a wearable computer that doesn’t look like a computer, it’s probably the company that did it with laptops, music, earphones, and most of all, smartphones. .. .. If a brand could solve the challenge of making Metaverse fashionable, after all, it’s another issue of making Metaverse fashion, but to make Metaverse meaningful (and accessible). Is just as important to the issue. Become Apple.
Except that maybe no more.
Without Ive, is Apple’s era as a bridge between hardware and software really nearing its end? Are we at a turning point between the old Apple and the new Apple? It’s between one Apple and another, like Phoebe’s Céline and Hedi’s Celine.
What is the Metaverse and why is it important?
origin. The word “Metaverse” refers to a fully realized digital world that extends beyond the world in which we live. Created by Neil Stephenson in the 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, the concept was further explored by Ernest Cline in his novel “Ready Player One”.
In any case, it heralds another kind of paradigm shift.
For most tech companies, the resignation of a designer doesn’t get the attention of the public, but part of Apple’s greatness lies in the way it borrows from the fashion world to drive consumption.
Steve Jobs knew that he could adopt a fashion strategy and apply it to previously boring and boring appliances. As a result, fashion became tactile and visually appealing, thin, smooth and chic, helping the company transcend the industry. It was Jobs who embraced the value of the new model each season. A person who understands how planned obsolescence, which is an essential premise of fashion, can be applied to functions. And how to incorporate a value system into the aerodynamic line of a device, more than the mechanical sum of its parts.
Then, in 1992, he partnered with a young British designer named Johnny Ive from London to define Apple’s look for decades and accessories (iPad covers, iPhone covers) for the entire Fashion Week brand. ) Is provided.
It’s not important that Ive, along with CEO Tim Cook, came out of the shadows and became the face of the company after Jobs died in 2011. If Cook was an unpretentious techno crat, Ive would have been a visionary person. Azzedine Alaïa, a friend of Marc Newson (Lockheed Lounge designer), who advocated the fusion of technology and fashion that happened before and after the debut of Apple Watch. 2014.
The first hiring turmoil broke out — former YSL CEO Paul Deneve became vice president of a special project in 2013. The following year, TAG Heuer’s former TAG Heuer Patrick Prunier was the senior director of the special project. In 2014, Burberry’s former CEO Angela Ahrendts served as Senior Vice President of the Retail Division, and has since expanded.
There was an unveiling ceremony just before New York Fashion Week. A dinner party at Alaia in Paris and an announcement at the concept store Colette. The protagonist of the cover of China Vogue. And finally, in 2016, Ive starred with Anna Wintour as the host of Met Gala.
But in the end (and despite the collaboration with Hermès), the watch wasn’t as confusing as the health and wellness gadgets. Denive left in 2016. Mr. Arlenz and Mr. Prunio became consultants by Mr. Ive in 2019.
Since then, Apple hasn’t had a Chief Design Officer. Apple executivesThere is no single presiding visual point of view. Instead, Ive’s mission was split between Evans Hankey, Vice President of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, Vice President of User Interface Design.
Still, Hanky and Dai have been working with Ive on products such as the MacBook Air and watches for years, and at least nominally Ive seems to have maintained a bond as a keeper of fire and aesthetics. was. ..
until now. That’s why future headsets and their appearance are so important. Perhaps, given the potential timing, it will be the last product to have Mr. Ive’s fingerprint on its design. But maybe it’s a sign of something more.
Apple and Ive declined to comment on their relationship to this article. But if Apple proves that this is the beginning of a new era, not the end of its commitment to style as a signifiant, but the beginning of a watered-down version of the previous one, it could be almost a cliché. A case with tinged edges and a smooth silver — this is the first real test. This is also an opportunity to redesign our thinking about the product, not just the product, or Apple itself. Ive reportedly nodded his headset for the last few years of the deal, but it may be better not to repeat it enough to redefine it.
Indeed, the fact that the watch didn’t prove the motive of the game changer or industry gives Hanky (or someone else who knows) the opportunity to claim himself by creating something new. It means that. brand.
Think of it this way: Gucci and Celine or Max Mara? Will you flip everything we think we know and recreate it for a new reality, or will it go through the movement again and again, if not exciting? All the signs show the Max Mara model, but if fashion can tell us, the brand will survive the designer’s change as long as the company really cares and empowers the designer. I can.
Once upon a time, Apple learned some valuable lessons from fashion. See if it can do it again.
