The Apple Beat: Refocusing Jony Ive's role and how it impacts Apple

(left to right) Alan Dye, Jony Ive, and Richard Howarth (Photo: Gabriela Hasbun for The Telegraph)

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The big news was Jony Ive moving to the newly created Chief Design Officer position while his senior team members Richard Horwarth and Alan Dye take on VP positions for Industrial Design and User Interface respectively. The news broke through an exclusive by Stephen Fry for The Telegraph, of all places.

Fry, who has been an avowed Apple watcher for over 30 years, was invited to spend time with Jony Ive as well as Tim Cook to get to meet Ive's successors in the VP positions he vacates on July 1st as he moves to cover more new projects (as well as to collaborate with Norman Foster Architects on Apple Campus 2 as well as on Apple Retail Store design).

What does this promotion mean for Jony Ive and Apple?

While Apple is calling the new Chief Design Officer role a promotion for Ive, it does seem like he's relinquishing many of his day-to-day managerial duties to his two trusted lieutenants. This allows him freedom to focus on more important things.

While Ive has been leading industrial design at Apple, the role of unifying user interface was shifted to him soon as Scott Forstall left the company.

Horwarth and Dye were likely handpicked by Ive to focus on their respective areas and both have been around long enough to instinctively know what approaches to take on day-to-day decisions while conferring with Ive on a regular basis. Horwarth was instrumental in the creation of the iPhone while Dye can be credited with a lot of the software engineering for Apple Watch as well as iOS 7 and iOS 8.

Considering that Jony Ive has been with Apple since 1992 and has been witness to the company's lowest points as well as its rennaissance and eventual rise to the top, he's also been the longest standing member of the senior team to have worked on every product launch since that time.

It's easy for us to sit and wait for the next Apple product, many of which now come in predictable yearly cycles, and forget the insane amount of work required to design, iterate, build, refine, engineer and produce each iPhone, Mac and Watch into a cohesive and saleable product. For Ive, who is likely working on two or three generations of future products, the range of involvement iand personal investment is incomprehensible.

A well-deserved breather

Reading through many of the  stories that came out leading to the Watch launch, I got the sense that the process of creating the Watch was an all consuming effort for various teams at Apple and specially for Ive, who had to help steer the course of the biggest product launch since the iPad; which had the added complication of being an entirely new product category that transcended consumer technology and faced off with the fashion industry.

Ian Parker's kilometric feature on Ive and Apple, The Shape of Things to Come, kicks off its first paragraph with Ive  describing himself as “deeply, deeply tired” and “always anxious.”  The article, which talks largely about the Apple Watch and its creation, later on reveals that, "On a day when Ive was so exhausted that it seemed possible he might fall asleep while talking, he became animated when describing the “primitive” design geometry that was usual before the computer era...."

Thw Watch has successfully launched and the WWDC developer conference is right around the corner in June. It is a good a time as any for Ive and his team make some changes that will allow him time to shift focus,  get some well-deserved rest and, as he relayed to Stephen Fry, to travel more.

It has been hinted that Ive and his family want to spend more time in England, so these new appointments make that a possibility. They also addresses, the unpleasant but necessary issue of succession and can ensure that Apple's distinct design DNA is preserved in the event that Ive should ever step down or retire. 

Under Tim Cook, Apple has proven to be agile enough to make big changes and, if they don't work, easily reverse them. So people should be confident that this new role for Apple's design head has been carefully thought out and timed.