Apple Design Guru Jony Ive Named Chief Design Officer

An anonymous reader writes: Jony Ive, Apple's senior VP of design has been promoted to the role of Chief Design Officer. Ive became Apple's chief of industrial design in 1997. Under Ive's direction, Apple's put out an impressive list of products including the iMac, iPod, and iPad. "In this new role, he will focus entirely on current design projects, new ideas and future initiatives," said chief executive Tim Cook in a memo. "Jony is one of the most talented and accomplished designers of his generation, with an astonishing 5,000 design and utility patents to his name."

Comments

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[garyisabusyguy]

C-level, it's all the rage

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[rodrigoandrade]

A pay raise. You don't want Johnathan Ive working for a competitor.

The guy is full of himself

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't stand the guy, he acts almost in love with the stuff he designs? Apple to me has gone from building eloquent well designed hardware. To fluffy impractical hardware for the wealthy geek 1%. Does anyone remember how a Power Mac used to be a power house of computing? Now it resembles something like a vase for flowers. With no potential to ever upgrade graphics or CPU. Or how about the new Macbook with one USB C port?? How functional is that? Apple has become the technology boutique for the wealthy and Jony Ive has help turn Apple from a technology future paver to a fluff tech maker. Only concerned about profits and looks.

Re:The guy is full of himself

[UnknowingFool]

I'm going to take it that you don't actually use a workstation much less a recent computer.

Let's start with OOD which I assume you mean optical drive. When was the last time you used one? Most people haven't used one in years. So removing it is like when computer manufacturers removed the floppy drive. Apple was one the first; others took years to do so even when it was apparent no one used them anymore.

Now let's talk about the HDDs. Yes they removed them. If you are using a workstation, you need speed. With most professionals using networked drives for collaboration, the need to have personal drives only comes from a small percentage of pros. Since the Mac Pro is for pros and not consumers, this was an understandable choice.

Now let's talk about eSATA. It isn't a standard that Apple has ever supported. Their standards has always been FireWire or Thunderbolt.

As for "underpowerd PSU", you do understand that a workstation is not a gaming machine, right?

Re:The guy is full of himself

[azav]

I agree. His fascination on cramming everything into the smallest space has left us with Macs that are not worth upgrading. It blows.

His touches on the UI are like cancer since he applies principles from designing hardware shapes (Industrial Design) to UI design and THEY DO NOT FUCKING APPLY THERE. Minimalist UI is bullshit. Context matters. You wan to eyebell the UI and understand what each part can do without having to interact with it.

If text looks just like a button, then you can't tell the difference between an item you can interact with and a static design element that you can't click or tap on. This confuses the user. This creates crappy and confusing UI.

I remember looking in Xcode for the longest time for an option in the far right panel. It just wasn't there. Well, his dumbass design principles replaced the arrow that shows the items can expand next to the text with NOTHING. I had no idea that the item was expandable because the visual cue that it was expandable was removed. I wasted 1/2 a hour on this and I'm not the only one who has.

I could go on, but there are so many cases of this now in the UI. It sucks.

And all the motion in the UI? We are wired to divert our attention to things that move or dart. It happens before we think. Every time an item darts or jumps or bumps, it's a distraction that pulls out attention to that item and away from the task we wanted to accomplish. The UI becomes an ADD machine. It's terrible.

All this thanks to Jony Ive. I say no thanks. When not in the office, I use Snow Leopard (10.6.8) because it's simply so much more usable a UI.

Re:The guy is full of himself

[Voyager529]

I'm going to take it that you don't actually use a workstation much less a recent computer.

I'm not the author of the GP post, but I *do* use a workstation.

Let's start with OOD which I assume you mean optical drive. When was the last time you used one?

Yesterday actually, when I burnt a DVD for a friend. See kids, I know that 'streaming' is all the rage and that all the cool kids are doing it, but there's still no substitute for handing someone a physical product. Wedding and event videos fall squarely in this category. No bride will be okay with spending $1,500 for a Vimeo link. Moreover, if you're using a copyrighted song in the video, and you've got the proper licensing to do it, an upload to Youtube will still be flagged, and you'll spend plenty of time sorting that out and providing paperwork. Even if we put that aside, Youtube quality varies based on any number of things, but they *do* compress video in order to stream it. Their HD streaming looks pretty good now, but it's still got much heavier compression than a Blu-Ray disc. Just because we don't burn mix CDs anymore or use them for backup devices doesn't mean that the optical drive is dead. It's a niche, but it's not dead.

So removing it is like when computer manufacturers removed the floppy drive. Apple was one the first; others took years to do so even when it was apparent no one used them anymore.

...and Apple was rather widely panned for doing so at the time. This was in large part due to the dearth of an alternative storage medium being included - you were either getting files around with a 56K modem, a USB ZIP drive, a USB Floppy drive, or VERY expensive 16MB flash drives that, in many cases, had slower write speeds than actual floppy disks. Floppies were passe, no doubt, but Apple should have been putting CD-RW drives in the iMac long before they actually did.

Now let's talk about the HDDs. Yes they removed them. If you are using a workstation, you need speed.

You also need storage space. HD video, art assets, high resolution multitrack audio projects, and CAD drawings aren't exactly compact forms of data, y'know.

With most professionals using networked drives for collaboration

That's a rather broad brush to paint with, especially since disk I/O over the LAN starts hitting a ceiling pretty quick. This would be easier to swallow if there were a PCI Express slot to add a 10GigE/Fiber/Infiniband card, but they did away with that, too.

the need to have personal drives only comes from a small percentage of pros.

That number is so small that there's an insignificant market for storage devices that can connect to them, right? And it makes more sense for Apple to make them an online-only product rather than waste shelf space on them in the store, right? This logic is better illustrated with your optical drive notions earlier - Apple actually doesn't sell them in the store (or, in some stores, only has one or two slimline ones on the shelf, frequently with a thin layer of dust).

Since the Mac Pro is for pros and not consumers, this was an understandable choice.

Yes...Pros let everything live on iSCSI volumes or in Teh Cloud (tm) and never have a reason to store things locally. (/sarcasm)

Now let's talk about eSATA. It isn't a standard that Apple has ever supported. Their standards has always been FireWire or Thunderbolt.

This is a fair point. I wish they would have better eSATA support, but I will certainly concede that eSATA has never been their thing.

As for "underpowerd PSU", you do understand that a workstation is not a gaming machine, right?

Quadro/Firepro cards aren't exactly miserly with their power usage, especially when tied with a high end Core i7. Now, what Apple did in the redesigned Mac Pro units w

Re:The guy is full of himself

[MachineShedFred]

Wedding and event videos fall squarely in this category. No bride will be okay with spending $1,500 for a Vimeo link.

And cheap USB2 keys that hold a couple hundred times as much data as a DVD don't exist. Nope, they do, and are far more convenient and resilient to damage than optical media.

You also need storage space. HD video, art assets, high resolution multitrack audio projects, and CAD drawings aren't exactly compact forms of data, y'know.

Use the local SSD as a buffer for high speed work. Copy from network to local, work, upload back. Clear space, move to next job. If you require high speed links to large disk, use thunderbolt to add dual 10GbE for iSCSI or dual 16Gb fiber channel.

That's a rather broad brush to paint with, especially since disk I/O over the LAN starts hitting a ceiling pretty quick. This would be easier to swallow if there were a PCI Express slot to add a 10GigE/Fiber/Infiniband card, but they did away with that, too.

False. See links above. Thunderbolt IS PCI Express. It's on a cable instead of a slot. Whoop de do.

I'll agree that the GPU situation in the current Mac Pro is rather underwhelming, and a product of a design decision rather than making available options to the "Pro" customer. However, the GPUs are mounted with BGA connectors, and it would be feasible for someone to use a logic analyzer to figure out which pins on the connector are PCI express, which are DisplayPort, and which are power allowing for someone to make a 3rd party GPU upgrade card (if they could make it work with the thermals), but the market would be so small that nobody would ever turn a profit at it.

Re:The guy is full of himself

[adolf]

And cheap USB2 keys that hold a couple hundred times as much data as a DVD don't exist. Nope, they do, and are far more convenient and resilient to damage than optical media.

A DVD is universal, and not going anywhere. It has well-established standards for dealing with audio, video, and just works.

If I hand someone a cheap USB2 key, I'm out a few dollars and the result -might- be that they get to view the thing I just handed them.

If I hand someone a DVD-R, I'm out a few pennies and the result -will- be that they get to view the thing I just handed them.

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[mccalli]

There's some speculation here regarding the difference. True it's speculation so worth what you paid for it, but it is at least reasonably informed speculation. Seems it may well be about accomodating his desire to move back to the UK, or at least spend more time there.

How to promote without really promoting

[CSHARP123]

This is the classic example of how to promote without really promoting.
Take this line from the article. It should say it all

"The promotion will leave Ive with more time to travel around Apple's vast retail empire and bring his touch to the company's stores around the globe, while leading the design of Apple's new campus which has capacity for 13,000 Apple employees."

He might have been a disaster as a manager. Now they want to replace him.

Re:How to promote without really promoting

[harperska]

He might have been a disaster as a manager. Now they want to replace him.

That's a good thing. He's a creative genius, but probably sucks as a manager. And it sucks that in the corporate business world, often the only way to advance in your career is to manage people who now do for you what you used to love doing yourself but can't because now you're too busy managing. It looks like Apple recognized all of that, and so to keep their most valuable employee happy and of most use to the company they created a position to promote him to that would allow him to just be the head creative director of design and let the people-managing responsibilities fall to someone else who actually wanted that role.

Isn't the phrase "kicked upstairs"?

[swb]

A nominal promotion in terms of title, but actually reduced responsibilities in terms of work.

Re:Isn't the phrase "kicked upstairs"?

[cdrudge]

It's the Dilbert Principal at work. Companies tend to promote their least-competent employees to management in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing.

Re:Isn't the phrase "kicked upstairs"?

[swb]

I think it's more the Peter Principle -- people get promoted for success in their current position and stop getting promoted once they become ineffective.

I think the last "kick upstairs" is done for employees who are too ineffective but too loyal/valuable to have working elsewhere.

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[SJ]

Ive is in a supreme position of one of the most powerful/richest companies on the planet.

There is no cash offer big enough that could tempt him away from that.

What would get him there is the chance to do something that he couldn't do at Apple...

Now re-read my first sentence.

Jonny isn't going anywhere.

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[OzPeter]

When I was taking a look at that article, this jumped out at me. It's a quote from a Times article:

He still visits the institution in the north-east to give masterclasses, giving up part of his three weeks’ annual leave.

Really? Probably the most influential person in the the biggest company in the US, and you only give him 3 weeks annual leave? What does he have to do to get 4 weeks?

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[mwvdlee]

Indeed, for Jony Ive is the God of rounded corners.
Nobody can make corners quite as rounded as Him.
He is the Angle and the Radius of corner roundation.
Fear ye square and bevelled, for thou art condemned to the outer corners of the un-Apple.
Praise the Omniroundcornerand's name.

True innovation

[markdavis]

Sounds like a suitable time to post this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Ive became ?

[squiggleslash]

Ive become death, destroyer of Beige.

Stupidly in charge of user interfaces too

[ArcadeMan]

Ive: "Hey, I don't like outlines on buttons, they clash with my finely crafted hardware."
Me: "We need outlines on buttons otherwise we don't know what's a button and what's an icon indicator."

If you need to try to interact with the GUI before knowing that you can actually interact with it, you failed.

Jesus Christ.

[azav]

Ever since he's gotten his "design direction" on the Mac OS and iOS, their design have gone to shit.

Everything's animated whether it needs to be or not and you can't turn it off. Everything is ultra skinny and harsh blue on glaring white. Common standards of "don't make the user guess what's functional in the UI and what's not" have been thrown away and the UI of the Mac OS has become a distraction machine that gets in the way of the user. Too much darty motion is ADD fodder as it innately draws your attention to the little darty thing as opposed to keeping your attention on the task at hand that you are trying to accomplish.

I don't want animations that get in the way of me doing my task, or ones that pull for my attention. I want a goo d looking, non distracting UI that lets me do my job, not one with crap sliding all over the place and with hideous colors.

Ugh. This is crappy crappy news for the Mac. But then, we already have too much animated crap in the UI.

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[Paradise Pete]

What does he have to do to get 4 weeks?

Become Chief Design Officer.

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[ArcadeMan]

Apple has enough money to bring the UK to the USA. It's already an island*, after all.

* islands just float on the ocean, right? There's only one cable to cut?

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[OzPeter]

If he gets annual leave separate from his paid sick leave he's already ahead of the game.

Civilized countries already do that.

Nice... even smaller batteries.

[jbssm]

We must find space to get an even thinner iPhone, perhaps we can ship one without a battery next time. We already use the iPhone plugged to the wall most of the time anyway and I'm quite sure the marketing geniuses at Apple will find a way to advertise that as a "feature".

Exhibit A: Itunes

[Anonymous Coward]

Just spent a weekend with the clunky pile of crap that is itunes. Not just not user-friendly. Possibly anti-user. Software that hates you.

Want to know where and when you can scroll? Just throw the mouse around the screen and see what happens, maybe it'll popup. Great news, we've made it really fucking hard to see too.
We've added x's at the end of rows of your purchased music. Want to know what they do? Click and find out, that's the only way you'll ever know. Maybe you'll get to buy your music over again. What fun it is to guess what a button does!
Wondering where your cursor is when filling in payment/contact info? Great news, you'll never know which field you're on, who needs cursors, instead we've got shit that animates that shouldn't.
Like logging in? Holy shit are you in the right place, we'll have you entering your username and password for every goddamned thing possible and never remember that you've already entered it elsewhere in the program.
Want to remove duplicates? Awesome, we've added a view duplicates button but if you want to remove the duplicates, you get to either remove all versions of the song and start over or get that carpal tunnel wristguard on and start manually selecting every other one like its your job. Really settle in and enjoy removing the duplicates because you'll be doing it long enough to wonder whats become of your life and seriously consider wearing a turtleneck again.
Want to see what you've purchased but isn't on your pc? We'll default to Most Recent view every time. Don't like it? Too bad. Useless differentiation? Totally.
Likewise we'll default to album view every time because we really like looking at pretty album art and would rather you deal with the impact of that shitty functionality every time you open the program.
Don't have any interest in radio, and have no movies or tv shows in your library? We'll be prominently including those in your interface anyways.
We're avant garde as all fuck with removing cursors, pointless animations, disappearing scrollbars but when you're putting your playlists together, enjoy drag and drop like its 1995 all over again allllll day long.

Its just bad. Just bad. Awful. So bad. Loathsome. Hate-inspiring.

More Ugly?

[dbialac]

While he's a brilliant industrial designer, he doesn't know crap about UI design and the UI's he's produced more than show it. I've used OS X since 10.0. I used Next in the 90's. I used classic Apple. I've been in the Apple camp for decades. I frankly can't stand to look at them, so the new UIs have chased me off of the platform.

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[Plumpaquatsch]

Apple is where CEOs from other companies go to become VPs (non-senior) - and fucking like that they got the job.

Re:oh good

[berj]

You mean like the power button on my iMac?

Or the power button on my Mac Pro?

Or the power button on my Mac Mini?

Or the power button on my iPad?

Or the power button on my iPhone?

Or maybe the power button on my Macbook Pro?

Maybe you were talking about the fan in my iMac...

Or the fan in my Macbook pro..

Or my Mac Mini

Or my Mac Pro.

Now.. admittedly there's no fan in my Apple TV or my iPad or my iphone.. so if you want a phone with a cooling fan in it you're going to have to look elsewhere. I'm sure someone has a product that lines up with your wants and needs.

Re:What is the difference of these 2 positions?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Then ask for more. When I first hit 3 weeks, I asked for that at my next position. Did the same thing when I reached 4 weeks. Companies who want you will often give you that extra week, since they know going back in any part of the compensation package can be a killer.

Eased out?

[russotto]

Sounds like he's been promoted into a position where he'll have more prestige but less say in what's going on. Is he being eased out?