Farewell, Sir Jony: Does Jony Ive's Exit Mark The End Of An Era At Apple?

The decision puts a final full stop to the relationship between Apple and Ive, a relationship that had once seemed indestructible.

In the end, it was as simple as not renewing a contract. Apple and perhaps its legendary designer, Sir Jonathan Ive (simply "Jony Ive" to many Apple followers) decided to finally stop working together a few days ago, ending a consulting contract between the two parties. The decision puts a final full stop to the relationship between Apple and Ive, a relationship that had once seemed indestructible. Ive had formally exited the company in 2019 (after joining it in 1992), and had formed his own outfit called LoveFrom, but Apple CEO Tim Cook had then said that Ive would continue to work with Apple for a long time, and indeed Apple was LoveFrom's primary client. That is not the case any more. 

To many, Ive's final exit from Apple represents the end of an era for the company. And one can understand where they are coming from. It is kind of difficult to overstate the role Ive played in the company's revival from the brink of seemingly imminent death in the mid-nineties to its becoming the first trillion Dollar company in the world more than two decades later. Name an Apple product between 1996 and 2019, and you would be sure to find not just a bit, but a lot of Jony Ive in it. The first iMac, the first iBook, the iPod, the iPhone, the Apple Watch, the MacBook Air, the AirPods…Ive was involved deeply in all of them. In fact, even Apple's amazingly beautiful headquarters, Apple Park (also nicknamed "The Spaceship"), was designed by the man who learned Industrial Design at the Newcastle Polytechnic.  

There was, however, far more to Jony Ive than just great design. The man was supposed to be the closest friend of Steve Jobs. So close that many even felt that he would succeed him as the head of the company. Although that did not happen, with Tim Cook ably filling Jobs' CEO sneakers, Ive enjoyed an almost iconic status at the brand.  To many, he represented the legacy of Jobs' second coming and the Apple Renaissance of the 1990s. Although very quiet and low profile by nature, he was nevertheless a presence in many Apple product launches, often being seen speaking on the screen in an absolutely white room, describing a product's features in gently measured tones.

Well, those tones in that white room will not be heard any more in Apple launches. Which makes you wonder what the end of this relationship could mean for the Cupertino behemoth? As per many analysts and insiders, Ive's exit will not have a major impact on the company's fortunes. In fact, in the years following the demise of Jobs, there was a feeling in many quarters that Ive  was perhaps not quite in sync with Apple's newer management. To be fair, for all their camaraderie, Ive even had differences with Jobs, so we do not know just how much importance these rumours should be given. However, there is no doubt that Apple under Tim Cook was a very different fruit from the one under Steve Jobs. There were more products than ever before, and the company's business expanded exponentially as Cook moved the brand to new markets and new product segments. 

There was also a marked change in Apple's design ethos under Cook, with product design seemingly becoming a little more predictable and less radical. There are many who believe that the new Apple CEO was not the biggest fan of Ive's fascination with making phones and notebooks slimmer, especially at the cost of battery life. The fact that some of Ive's designs did not do very well (the butterfly keyboard, the skeuomorphism in iOS 7, the overpriced MacBook, for instance) also seemed to erode some of the aura he had around him. Cook was also seen by some as being more of an administrative person than a product one (unlike Jobs), which is believed to have created differences between them. 

Whether these rumours of a rift are true or not,  Ive represented the "old Apple" to many Apple followers - a brand that was seen as being more about innovative products and cutting edge design than about sales volumes. While neither Cook nor Ive have ever gone public about their alleged differences,  the "conflict" between them has sparked a fair deal of literature, the latest being the best selling "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion Dollar Company and Lost its Soul" by Tripp Mickle, with Ive often representing the 'soul' of the brand. 

Which is why while his full and final departure from Apple is unlikely to have a major impact in terms of the brand's performance in the market, it might affect it in terms of perception. We do not know his exact contribution in Apple's product portfolio and given how secretive the company is, we are unlikely to ever know it, but he was an integral part of the Apple mythos after Jobs' return to the brand. Whenever Apple is seen to stumble in design terms, there will be people who will shake their heads and say "Well, it would happen. Jony is no longer there." There had been a similar outcry after Jobs' death with his fans going "this would not have happened if Steve was there" every time something seemed to go wrong. Apple got past it. And there is every reason to believe that it will get past this departure too. 

So, is Ive's exit the end of an era at Apple? An era in which design was "really" innovative? We doubt that. As the straight sides of the past two generations of the iPad and iPhone, and the new range of amazingly slim iMacs showed the world, Apple has not given up on the design values that Ive brought to it. And why should it? It is a design philosophy that has served it well. Some fanatics might claim that Apple is no longer what it once was and that its designs are no longer as path-breaking as they once seemed to be, but the facts on the ground are that its core design principles - simplicity, minimalism and understated elegance - are still very much in place. Ive had particularly stressed the importance of simplicity, famously saying: 

“There is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity. 
In clarity. 
In efficiency. 
True simplicity is derived from so much more than the absence of clutter and ornamentation. 
It’s about bringing order to complexity.” 

Even today, an Apple product - be it an iMac, a MacBook Air, an iPhone or an Apple Watch - does not scream for attention or turn heads. It simply sits in a zone of its own, elegantly simple. A zone the competition loves to criticize and yet copies. 

Fare thee well, Sir Jony. Apple products will still have a lot of you even in the years to come. No matter what the gossipmongers say.  

The white room may be empty. But its glow will last for a while.