Jony Ive has left the building and it’s only a matter of time before the building falls down and must be paved over.
Writing for The New York Post, Jonathan Trugman says “Departure of chief designer Jony Ive is rotten for Apple.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Nick.)
“Why, it seems a clever person might take the name of the company, ‘Apple,’ and use it to great metaphoric effect by comparing it to an actual apple. I believe I am the first to discover this.”
When Jony Ive, Apple’s longtime chief design officer, exited late last month, it was as big a loss as could be for the company.
“I will now go on to describe how bad the company’s products have been for the last 10 years, during which Ive has been at Apple the whole time.”
[Ive] is widely credited with designing Jobs’ dream product, the iPhone, along with the iMac, the iPod, the iPad and a substantial part of Apple’s terrific iOS operating system.
He designed the lunch menu at Caffe Macs, the TPS forms used in accounting, and the SOX-compliance stakeholder checklist form final version 2 FINAL REVISED FINAL.doc, all while spinning a set of plates on long wooden sticks. Most everyone else at Apple just runs around campus trying to find beehives for Bob Mansfield to eat.
Over the past five years or so, Apple seems to have lost its touch. And Ive’s departure just highlights the company’s current lack of technological avant garde.
Pundits: The Apple Watch looks stupid and is a flop.
[Apple Watch goes on to be a huge hit.]
Pundits: AirPods look stupid and will flop.
[AirPods go on to be a huge hit.]
Pundits: Apple never takes any risks.
Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk all had that unstoppable drive and willingness to fail again and again in attempts to change the world with an engineering feat…
Sure, Jobs—who introduced the iPhone, a product that reimagined the smartphone and changed an entire industry—is exactly the same as Bezos, who brought us the Fire Phone. Two peas in a pod.
Cook now needs to surround himself with entrepreneurs who are willing to go to any lengths to figure out the next big thing. Plain and simple.
What could be easier?! Hire entrepreneurs. But not the Uber kind or the Theranos kind or any of the other kinds who are just creating the modern version of get rich quick schemes. No, get the good kind. That should be the first interview question: “Are you the good kind of entrepreneur? Oh, you are?! Then welcome aboard!” Couldn’t be easier. Get a lot of them, too. Surely they’re all great at working with others and won’t turn the place into a sequel in The Purge series.
Apple must take risks, not fear failure.
And pundits would never pillory Apple for taking risks.
After all, an Apple with no seeds grows no new trees.
The Macalope thinks we just found Tim Cook’s first neck tattoo.