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Jonathan Ive: More Valuable to Apple than Steve Jobs?

He's got a bit of a point re: Ives as CEO in this regard- whenever Jobs injects himself into the design process, the result is usually a commercial dud.

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.