Cai Lian News Agency, February 3 (Editor Zhao Hao) On Tuesday (February 2), local time, the well-known Apple whistleblower Mark Gurman (Mark Gurman) wrote that Apple has decided not to appoint new executives to replace the outgoing industrial design director Evans Hankey.
According to people familiar with the matter, Hankey, the current vice president of industrial design, will leave in a few months, after which the company will not arrange for someone to replace the position. The move marks a major strategic shift for the company, which has long been known for its product appearance.
Evans Hankey
After Hankey leaves the company, the company's chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, will become the direct supervisor to the design core team. According to Gurman, the core team currently consists of about 20 industrial designers.
Over the decades-long history of Apple, the position of (industrial) design director has produced top designers like Robert Brunner and Jony Ive. In 2019, Ive left the company, rumored to be due to "dissatisfaction with Apple's internal design giving way to marketing."
Jony Ive with Tim Cook
After Hankey took over the Ive, Apple introduced iPhone 12 to iPhone 14 models, and M1 MacBook and other products.
Some media believe that after Hankey's succession, hardware design has become pragmatic, and even some voices question that Apple is abandoning the soul of design step by step, and took out recent generations of iPhone, MacBook Pro and other products as examples.
However, unlike his predecessor, Hankey officially announced that he was leaving last October, and has been on the job for only three years. Due to the long-term loss of design team personnel, Apple seems to have no obvious successor in the position.
Gurman noted that while Hankey has only held the position for three years, she has been with Apple for nearly 30 years. In general, Apple does not hire outsiders to fill these senior positions.
But Gurman believes that if the right person emerges, the role of "director of industrial design" may return in the future.
(Cai Lian News Agency Zhao Hao)