Jonathan Ive: More Valuable to Apple than Steve Jobs? 39 comments
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We've now had a chance to see the prototype G1 phone. Google (GOOG) is hoping to carve out its own niche in the cellphone market in much the same way Apple (AAPL) has recently done. Can we expect to see lines outside of T-Mobile stores when the phone goes on sale next month? Highly unlikely. Instead, Google's gPhone appears headed down the same path of irrelevancy as the Microsoft (MSFT) Zune. According to Walt Mossberg, "The G1 won't win any beauty contests with its Apple rival. It's stubby and chunky, nearly 30% thicker and almost 20% heavier that the iPhone."
I was prepared to delve into a detailed comparison between the gPhone and the iPhone but Mr. Mossberg's statement just put an end to any constructive debate that we might have had. When you try and tell me how cool the copy and paste feature is or how excited you are about the MMS photo function I'll just have to give you the look. The same look that I gave to Zune enthusiasts who told me how much better the large video screen was. I don't think so. It's on days like today, when someone comes out with a product like the gPhone that we remember just how dominant Apple has become. Aren't new product releases supposed to be better than the existing ones? Apple competitors are shamefully years behind and it's all because of one man, Jonathan Ive.
Senior VP of Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive, is the most important man in the tech world. He is more important to Apple than Steve Jobs. Have you seen what the Mac looked like before Ive came along? Do you remember where Steve Jobs was before Ive took over the design team? Jonathan Ive is the principal designer of the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. Not Steve Jobs. While Wall Street's busy watching Steve's weight we should be more concerned with Ive's eyesight. Jonathan Ive is the real Moses here, Jobs is just Aaron. In January the guy was rated the most influential Brit in America, ahead of Beckham. Those in the know praise his work. Read the following reviews that Ive received for his iPhone design:
- "He has an uncanny skill for imparting a device with simplicity, distinction, and inevitability. He could probably design a better triangle, and when he was done you'd realize that three sides were one side too many." --James Lileks, Minneapolis Star Tribune
- "The iPhone is something out of Tom Cruise's science-fiction film Minority Report, which is set in 2054." --Paul Durman, The UK Times
- "The iPhone is a typical piece of Ive design: an austere, abstract, platonic-looking form that somehow also manages to feel warm and organic and ergonomic." -- Lev Grossman, Time
Jonathan Ive should be the next CEO of Apple. Apple's software is good, their end to end user experience is great, but the look and feel of their products is what set's them apart. In the last few months, the world has quietly been experiencing a sea change. The market share tidal wave of Apple is coming and it's not all riding on Steve Jobs's shoulders.
DISCLOSURE: LONG AAPL.
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This article has 39 comments:
He is doing exactly what he does best, as does Steve Jobs.
He fails to show that Ives has any talent whatsoever at running a business.
"I was prepared to delve into a detailed comparison between the gPhone and the iPhone but Mr. Mossberg's statement just put an end to any constructive debate that we might have had."
Right - God forbid you actually go out, do some research, and try to be objective. It's so much easier to put on your giant foam "Apple is #1" and short into your megaphone about how great Apple is.
You say Mossberg said it was "stubby." Not sure what that means to you, but the G1's specs say it's a bit narrower and a bit longer than the iPhone, resulting in a slightly smaller form factor; 30% thicker means just over an eighth of an inch.
Don't get me wrong, I think the G1 looks ghastly. But to dismiss it out of hand based on a single comment by a reviewer just shows how little credence should be given to your opinions.
By the way, I'd GLADLY have my iPhone weigh an ounce more in exchange for 50% longer battery life.
Jobs and Ive are the best duo .. even better than sonny and cher :)
True design sets apple products apart but it's the os that makes it more functional then anything else.
Apple design team was always ahead of it's times
I can name a few products that belong in the museum of modern art
starting with the original Macintosh,the lisa, the e-mate, newton, quicktake camera, 20th anniversary Macintosh, performa , the Classic
.. and more, all of these products where special and came before Ives
a combiantion of good marketing, better OS and design and lets not forget a total lack of ideas from the other pc vendors/assemblers....
lets face it they only exist and dominated the market because windows was the dominant OS , if Apple back then would have decided to use windows instead , they could have probably been the #1 PC vendor.
But fortunately Jobs, the Woz and a few others at Apple went beyond building a profitable company they had a vision .
They laid the basis, I don't see today's Apple being that much different than the original company that brought us the Lisa, the mouse and windows
?? the iPhone has a better battery life , only in stand by the G1 is a tiny bit better
"the G1 Talk time is 406 via GSM.
Standby time is 319 hours [GSM].
The iPhone talk time is 5 hrs in 3G [GSM] or up to 10 hours in 2G.
Standby time up to 300 hours."
the design directive flows from jobs and only jobs
prior to ives say the macs of the 80's simply reflected design in the 80 allbeit done very elegantly
gphone is great for iphone for all the healthy competetive reasons, their laissex faire open source platform will be a huge negative issue for them however
the one company i really dont inderstand right now is rimm with a pe sky high compared to apple and google
go figure
My comment was actually independent of a comparison with the google thingamajig. It continued to describe Jason the Cheerleader's analytical weakness, demonstrated by his conclusion that the google phone is inferior to the iPhone from one reviewer's sentence about the device's size and weight.
However, since you brought it up, you're wrong, according to the manufacturers' claims.
Talk time: GOOG - 350/406 minutes, AAPL - 300/600. Advantage GOOG, with the weighty assumption that 3G is the preferred and available network.
Standby time: GOOG - 402/319 (curious), AAPL - up to 300. Advantage GOOG.
It appears that the GOOG is MUCH more efficient. The G1 uses a 1150mAh lithium battery; the only thing I've found on the iPhone's battery size puts it at 1400 mAh.
I got the specs from another article.. perhaps not accurate?
seekingalpha.com/artic...
no matter how good a smart phone is, they all miss something huge ...
the App store..
just like with the ipod there are other players some better some worse but the value is not in the hardware alone
@atauber, goog do not produce any physical product, it is a cloud company and I don't think Ive is good at web designing or coding.
1GB of onboard storage
No standard 3.5mm headphone jack
1GB/mo data limit over 3G
Heavier, thicker form factor
No Exchange compatibility
T-Mobile's woefully inadequate 3G coverage
Yeah, quite a deal. HTC sure didn't do Google any favors putting out this clunker for the debut of Android.
Of course, history says that Windows Mobile 7 will come along and destroy both. That's where my analogy breaks down...
Jon would be the worst CEO for Apple. Jon is a designer, not a chief executive. Jon wouldn't want to waste his time managing people and operations, apart from his design teams. Taking Jon out of design would be the worst thing Apple could do.
Apple would run better with Jon heading design and with me as CEO, and I've never run anything bigger than $50m.
Jon loves what he does. i can't imagine he would ever leave Apple. He has the best designer's job in the world. I can't imagine he woulf ever give that up, even o run the shop. That wold just be o below his skill set.
The Cube was Jobs' idea. Beautiful, but overpriced, and it sold like crap. He also was heavily involved in the first "new iMac" (the iLamp). It may have been ahead of its time, or perhaps its time will never come. In either case, it lasted for maybe a year before the current iMac design took over and sold well.
Now it may be that Jobs' genius is in product focus, employee motivation, or just his famous Reality Distortion Field. And Ive is probably not a CEO. But it is undeniably true that Apple does better when Jobs doesn't dictate design.
As for the nonsense about Ives being CEO, that's silly. Everyone knows that while Ives is chief designer, Steve is the Chief Arbiter of the design aesthetic to be followed, from the first Mac, to the last iPhone.
The next CEO has to have vision and be charismatic. That's not Cook or Shiller or any of the other competent execs. It's Bertrand Serlet.
Creative people are totally driven by the desire to create that which is beautiful. (Also that which is expressive of deep emotions - but herein are arguments that are not relevant to this discussion as I prefer to limit creative folks in the "industrial design" community.) These people are not limited to graphic designers, or even product designers, but include many (perhaps most) programmers as well.
Creative people are DRIVEN by the desire to create that which is beautiful - pleasing to the senses or pleasing in functionality. Their primary goal is quality.
The question is: How does one develop a community of creative people that encourages this dedication, yet still maintains the need for a bottom line? THIS is the genius of Steve Jobs. Obsession with beauty and quality of user experience precedes financial considerations - BUT never eliminates those consideration. Apple Corp is Mr. Jobs' work of art.
We have all been told "If you build a better mousetrap then the world will beat a path to your door." Well, Apple is the proof of that. Those who try to make light of Apple products as relying on immaterial "style" have totally missed the point. it is way deeper than that.
Like I said, many people do not understand what motivates creative people, but they CRAVE their products.
Right, Windows Mobile had a 6-7 year head start, and what did they do: copy Windows (desktop) complete with Start menu. It took Apple to be innovative in this space, and now everyone is copying them.
however without Ives (and apple design team), there are so many talented designers out there who can do a great job.
It is difficult to design a great product, but it is much more difficult to have a chance to design great product for a great company.
As for the technical stuff about managing a company (finances, etc.) Jonathan can easily hire assistants for that part of the job.
The disaster for Apple would be promoting someone from marketing, like Balmer has been for Microsoft. Apple needs someone like Jobs or Ive who have the balls to say, "Not good enough. Go back and do another revision until it's perfect!"
Jobs is a star gazer, he sees the future and has ideas of where the company should go. and to this day most of his ideas have been correct. Jobs looks over the whole company from the UI to manufacture and dis etc.
Jon Ive however is a reat VP of design but his real passion is not in the overall form but more in materials, touch and finish. hence the first Imacs and the revolutionary materials and construction. Ive has the vision and can steer product projects with Jons having th final say.
I can tell you now that Ives didn't design the ipod but the team, but what Ives AND Jobs did was ensure that that the product was as best as it could be at that moment in time. Ives may not even be the best visuliser, sketcher, modeler etc at apple but hes the one with the designer eye for the form and the material, and doesn't care as much about I etc. while jobs as the CEO has to care about everything and is more involved in integrating every part of apple so they work together seamlessly and from my thinking thats his passion, hence why apple is such a closed company and why you never hear of any other designers who work their and their input.
- thanks for bringing Ives to the discussion. i think he's been much overlooked outside the design and apple fan base.
- being a CEO is a wider - and sometimes more banal - job than chief designer. there are usually few assurances that a design person can run a company.
- i think there's much more to apple than these two guys but because of the secretive culture you dont find much info. contrast that with google that looks like a college coed on speed in the way they open up to the press, public, etc and with all their products whored out in data mode. apple : not a peep until the final version is ready.
Jobs hired Ive so he clearly spots talent well, this is key to any business man.
Ive is the best designer out there and thats why people pay over the odds for apple products.
They are both great and we should leave it there.