Last Friday it became known that Apple’s chief designer Jonathan Ayve plans to leave the company, where he worked for almost 30 years. As the journalists of The Wall Street Journal could find out, Ave has been thinking about leaving for a long time. One of the reasons for this was some disagreement with Apple management.
Journalists note that there are no serious discrepancies between Iv and the company’s top managers. It’s just that the designer didn’t really like the decisions that were made by the management. As an example, the authors of the WSJ cite the situation with the Apple Watch.
In 2015, when Apple released its first smartwatch, Ayve insisted that the device be positioned as a fashion accessory. That’s why the company produced the gold Apple Watch. However, the novelty was positioned more as a kind of addition to the iPhone. As a result, many did not want to pay for expensive versions of the Apple Watch and the company was able to sell only a quarter of the stock of gold watches.
The failure of the Apple Watch Edition had a major impact on Joni Ive. It has become much less likely to appear in the workplace, which in turn has negatively affected the atmosphere in the team and some work processes. As a result, some designers decided to leave the company.
Also, Ava was not satisfied with Tim Cook’s attitude to the process of creating new devices. According to the available data, the current head of Apple was not too interested in the process of creating new products and often saw them after the presentation.
In 2017, Cook asked Ava to be more involved in product development. But Jonathan was not able to work long in normal mode, periodically leaving for the UK for personal reasons. Apparently, this format did not suit the parties, and Ava decided to leave Apple.
However, leaving Apple does not mean that Ava will stop cooperating with Apple. According to the available data, Apple will be the first and so far the main customer of the design firm LoveFrom, which is opened by Jonathan Ayve.
