Apple CEO Tim Cook was once again intimidated.
However, this time, it is not consumers or laymen who are afraid of Cook, but Apple's former chief designer, Jony Ive.
Speaking of Jony Ive, I believe that the fans will not be too unfamiliar.
It is no exaggeration to say that in the history of Apple's fortune, Jony Ive is second only to Jobs.
Although we remember more, it is the iPhone 4S, MacBook Air, and iPod released by Jobs.
As everyone knows, these products are actually from Jony Ive and his team.
So it is not an exaggeration to say that Jony Ive is the man who silently stands behind Joe.
Especially after Jobs's death, the CEO was Cook, who came from a supply chain who "did not know design".
Naturally, everyone regarded Jony Ive as the only person who could inherit the mantle of Jobs's ideas.
However, Jony Ive abruptly announced his departure in 2019. And he didn't give any reason, which caused a lot of shock at the time.
It was three years later that Jony Ive's reasons for leaving were officially exposed by the media.
The original text is very long, interested friends can take a serious look.
Here's a grin, just to summarize it simply:
Anyway, Cook was named at the beginning. He also jio to Apple under Cook's leadership, which placed more emphasis on functionality and neglected design. This annoyed Jony Ive.
For example, Apple Watch this product ~
Jony Ive thinks very simply, just to be cool! Very handsome! The thief pulls a good-looking watch.
But what marketers want is to be omnipotent.
But we can't say who is right and who is wrong, at least, the Apple Watch, which currently focuses on health testing, is also very good.
If this is just conceptual friction, then the greater impact is the problem of funding.
At the time, in order to release the first Apple Watch, Jony Ive wanted to "empty" the surroundings of the auditorium and set up a tent to get a better sense of vision.
Since you want to empty it, you have to ask for money
Good guys, Jony Ive opens his mouth for $25 million... Frightened my colleagues. In the end, though, Cook compromised.
(Tent worth 2500W US knife... ）
Although the brother is not an insider, but instead we spend 160 million yuan to cut down two rows of trees and set up a tent...
Only... It's still hard to understand. (Although Apple is not bad for money)
Of course, the most important thing is that Jony Ive's design priorities are gone. He felt that it was not interesting to do it, so he left his job and ran away.
With that said, the main reason for Jony Ive's departure is not just Cook, but the whole general direction of Apple.
But Apple's shift from design priority to function priority is by no means an overnight thing.
What caused Apple's change?
Mainly, it is still too much to roll over, resulting in.
In fact, in the first few years of Cook's tenure, Jony Ive still had a lot of design priorities
For example, the Trash Can MacPro released in 2013 is a typical Apple design that can no longer be typical.
Apple condenses the volume of a workstation into the size of a small desktop trash can, which can be said to be an attempt by no one before.
Trash can Mac Pro, placed on the desktop small and exquisite, who looks at everyone feels cute.
There's also the 12-inch MacBook released in 2015.
The notebook computer with all-aluminum alloy design has an average thickness of less than 1cm and a weight of only 0.92kg.
To be honest, even after 7 years, the machine brother still feels that it is still one of the best-looking laptops in the world.
Why not say it's the most "perfect"?
That's because, brother, I'm "unlucky" to have been a user of this MacBook.
All the way over, a handful of sadness and a handful of tears, the machine brother finally understood a truth - good-looking, there is an X use!
You know, the MacBook 12 inches, due to the too aggressive thin and light design, even the position of the fan is not reserved.
What if there is no fan? Only on the ultra-low voltage Intel M3 processor. But the temperature is still very high, as long as the machine is turned on, the entire keyboard is hot and scalding.
So, the following picture is very graphic, who makes it hot?
If it's on the lap, it only takes three minutes to smell the wonderful roast meat.... (No
Moreover, the butterfly keyboard, also designed for thin and light, has a natural defect and will soon be scrapped. So, let the after-sales unconditional and unjustified replacement for 4 years ...
It is estimated that over the years, Apple's maintenance department has cried.
The Mac Pro trash can also encountered ancestral heat dissipation problems.
The space is so small, the heat dissipation effect is not too good. And the workstation is used to build hard, to work at high pressure.
So many people joke about the trash can Mac Pro, hot enough to make a fire to cook.
Looking back at the Apple series of products in the past decade or so, we can see that there are not too many anti-human use methods that are compromised for the sake of design.
Magic control mouse everyone knows it, classic is very classic, aesthetics is indeed very aesthetic, but... Inverted charging, the machine brother would like to call it one of the most silly X designs of electronic products.
There is also a generation of Apple Pencil with tail plug charging.
What if the pen is out of power? Plugged into the tail plug of the iPad, the picture is so beautiful that I dare not look at it.
As long as it looks good, who cares how you use it in the future?
Obviously, these are all compromises for the sake of aesthetics, but it can also be said that Jony Ive's "pendulum" history.
From 2013 to 2017, in these four years, Apple's extreme design concept can be said to have reached its peak, that is, when Jony Ive's style was the strongest.
But the reputation of the product is a straight decline.
You can recall that at that time, was the whole network full of scolding Liu Haiping, as well as single-pipe pressure i9?
Obviously, this is not going to work. As a listed company, what is the reputation of sales in a mess?
So Apple began to interfere in the design department, and also set up a Pro Workflow team, headed by John Ternus, Apple's vice president of hardware engineering.
The team members come from all walks of life, they are professional users of the industry, and they are more able to know what the users want.
In the next few years, Apple was almost always doing all kinds of "aftercare" work.
First of all, it is to apologize to the previous Trash Mac Pro users, saying that the Mac Pro workstation will be redone.
Ironically, Jony Ive's last big project was the Mac Pro's rework, the later grafter.
You say that the heat dissipation is not good, then all the special opening holes, the fan is full of direct Wuhu take-off.
You said that the expansion is limited, the new Mac Pro directly let go of the hardware expansion, as long as the wallet is enough, the memory to 1.5TB no one stopped you.
It's not hard to imagine how uncomfortable Jony Ive felt when he was doing the new Mac Pro. From the exquisite cute trash can, back to the huge and even a little strange grafter.
But I have to admit that the latter is the most secure and the most in line with the needs of consumers.
In addition, the second-generation pencil of 18 years canceled the tail plug charging of everyone and changed it to a side magnetic charge.
The new MacBook Pro in 2021 is directly not even the main light and thin, and it is directly turned into a silly big and thick.
Sacrificing thin and light in exchange for cooling space, abandoning the Touch Bar that has been blown for many years, returning to the full-size keyboard...
Except, of course, bangs.
Although it is very ugly, it is really fragrant.
Machine brother is not nonsense Ha, you see the sales of macs, it is really up...
To know whether the product is good or not, just look at the sales volume. Of course, what the machine brother wants to express is not that the design is not important.
Design is important, but who doesn't love something that looks good?
But it doesn't look good, it cost tens of thousands, the result is not good, the frequency is reduced at every turn, it is hot at every turn, and whoever changes it will be annoyed.
After all, humanity is not yet capable of rewriting the rules of physics. Thin and light, and heat dissipation, at present, are still not able to combine the two.
So, was there something wrong with Jony Ive's design before?
Not exactly.
In 2020, Apple launched a fanless notebook again - MacBook Air, only this time, Apple used its own chip, M1.
Due to the natural advantages of the ARM architecture, Air without fans is not prone to overheating. Even in winter, there is a bit of a cold hand.
And the performance has improved by leaps and bounds, and many things that used to be able to do with pros can now be easily done by the Air.
It can only be said that whether it is the trash can Mac Pro or the 12-inch MacBook, it is born in the wrong era.
But when they are launched ten years or eight years later, I believe, it is another result.
Therefore, even Apple, the world's first company with so many top talents in the industry, is also uncertain about the future.
What the future holds, no one can know.