A new report says incoming Apple CEO John Ternus feels that “a major design shake-up is needed,” heralding a shift that could bring design boldness not seen since Jony Ive’s 2019 departure—or earlier.
Not long ago, electronic devices were collectible toys for adults. People fetishized the Apple products of the oughts as much for their visual and tactile aesthetics as for their utility—and did so with utter shamelessness. This was British actor/writer/commentator Stephen Fry writing about them in the Guardian in 2007, months after the release of the iPhone:
“Mechanisms so devilishly, stunningly, jaw-dropping clever as the kind our world can now furnish us with are No Good Whatsoever if they don’t also bring a smile to our face, if they don’t make us want to stroke, touch, fondle, fiddle, gurgle, purr and coo. Interacting with a digital device should be like interacting with a baby.”
This sentiment is mostly gone these days. Sure we may literally look at our devices more than our children now, but because of the addictive content they serve, and the quotidian tasks they allow us to dispense with, not because we like them. After the weeklong honeymoon period after we get new smartphones, most of us regard them as no more interesting in and of themselves than the prosaic utensils we use to eat delicious food.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the restructuring within Apple that followed the departure of the legendary Jony Ive was, in retrospect, a design calamity. Jeff Williams, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer at the time, stepped into the gap previously filled by Ive. “Apple replaced one of the most influential designers in history with the company’s top supply chain executive,” is Gurman’s summary.
In 2019, as Apple bled designers, Gizmodo’s Adam Clark Estes wrote:
“Are these seasoned Apple designers leaving because they’re bored? It’s unclear. Are they leaving because they don’t see much of a future for industrial design at Apple? Hard to know. Was his role in the spaceship campus the last great accomplishment of Jony Ive? Time will tell.”
Seven years later, Jony Ive is a distant memory at Apple. Despite some breaks in the overall monotony—notably the Vision Pro and iPhone Air—eye-popping design is less of a profit-driver than plain old competence, as well as consumer inertia.
John Ternus is currently the hardware chief, and before that he was an engineer with a focus on monitors. He may not be an aesthete first and foremost, but his takeover of design last year was a signal of intent to Apple watchers—clearly he was positioning himself for a major promotion.
When Ternus becomes CEO in September, Gurman avers that after the Cook era, with its focus on world-conquering supply chain mastery, Ternus, “needs to prioritize making Apple’s products cool again.”
Gurman apparently peeked at the proceedings of a meeting in which Ternus addressed employees about design, and it’s actually not clear that Ternus plans to revolutionize much of anything. In fact, his emphasis seemed to be on continuity. The company is “going to keep focusing on design, because design is core to what we do at Apple,” Ternus Apparently said, adding that “Apple’s brought truly incredible design to more people than any company in history,” and is “going to make sure that stays the case.”
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