Jonathan Ive, the famous British designer who has been working at Apple for almost thirty years has announced that he is leaving the firm, the company that designed an executive position just for him has announced that he will be leaving the company to fly solo, assembling his own design team. This is how guru Steve Jobos's last beam of presence in the company is blurred, since Jony Ive was at least one of his favorite people, and partly to blame for his success.
However, for almost thirty years it is clear that we have also had some shadows. We take a tour of Jony Ive's entire career at Apple and show you his great successes and also his dismal failures, because Ive was capable of the best, and the worst.
Jony Ive's arrival dates back even before Steve Jobs returned to the company after the acquisition of NeXT. Nevertheless, everyone knows that good old Steve made a witch hunt, and he just wanted to surround himself with the best, and that we can understand. Someone who always enjoyed his trust and who was seen as a linchpin in Apple's near-unstoppable progression in recent years was Jony Ive. Among other things, I've been to blame for the first great product Steve Jobs announced with the Apple explosion, the iMac.
The translucent iMac, the beginning of a new era of design
It was the year 1998, Apple was in serious trouble because the market for personal computers was deflating and even more so those of the Cupertino company due to its limited features and its high price. Steve Jobs knew they needed more than just a computer, they needed something that people wanted to have in their home far beyond functionalities, he needed magazine covers, and he entrusted this difficult task to Jony Ive.
Ive had the idea of creating an AiO (All in One) product, an all-in-one personal computer with connectivity to match and with nothing to hide, what better way to do it than translucent? Computers to date had sharp angles, basic colors such as white or black and were excessively serious, this ended with the iMac, the computer that made manufacturers begin to worry about the design of their PCs. These curved, plastic and semi-translucent designs would last from 1998 to 2001, leaving us really ugly products like iBook, a laptop that looked like a toy, or the iPower, a desktop computer that eliminated the seriousness of any office at a stroke. However, we also saw new masterpieces such as the Power Mac 4G Cube, a cube-shaped desktop computer with a pampered design that even today seems avant-garde. Things started to change with the arrival of the iPod in 2001, metal begins to take center stage and the curves are less accentuated.
Power Mac G5 and the beginning of "Aluminimalism"
The Powerbook G4 was a laptop created in aluminum and titanium that said goodbye to plastic, came hand in hand with much straighter angles but curved at the corners (a Steve Jobs mania who hated 90º angles) and marked a before and a later in the era of technology-level design. A clear example was the iMac G5, a completely metallic tower that left behind the childish touch and acquired minimalism, sobriety and aggressiveness in its fair measures. So far the era of plastic at Apple, in fact, Apple users are so used to metal and glass, that many despise products made of plastic, if there is a compelling reason that supports it.
Since then, metal products have become the hallmark of the Cupertino firm, Since 2003 we have seen products such as the iPod Nano, the iPod Shuffle, a new range of iMacs that increasingly resembled what they are today and even the first Apple TV back in 2007 that looked a lot like the Mac Mini. What always lasted was the detail of the bitten apple. At this time, Apple's software products were focused on skeumorphism- A design technique in which a derived object retains ornaments or structures that were necessary in the original objects. In essence, icons that try to create the reality of what they represent as accurately as possible. During this date few Apple products received complaints at the design level, the original iPhone had been presented with a mixture of aluminum and plastic and Apple was going from strength to strength.
The success of the MacBook Air, goodbye to skeumorphism and resounding failures
The modern era has arrived In 2008 Apple introduced the MacBook Air, a 13-inch laptop that seemed like a dream come true, it was so thin and so light that even five years later it was still an unbeatable leader in its sector, entirely made of aluminum with lines that made it literally beautiful. In 2010 things progressed with the arrival of the iPad, which basically looked like a giant iPhone, and one of the jewels in Jony Ive's crown, the iPhone 4. This product combined brushed steel with glass, arguably one of the most beautiful phones ever, once again incredibly ahead of its time in terms of design.
However, during this time we have also had occasion for scares, Apple decided to launch the iPhone 5C, an absolute failure in sales mostly due to its striking colors and why not say it, it was made of plastic. The designs were kept between the iPhone 6 that returned to aluminum completely and continued to make the Home button its hallmark and even the iPhone 8, which despite having glass on the back was still a bit anchored in time. Everything went "crack" with the arrival of the iPhone X, a phone that returned to Apple's level of excellence, but it had also been greatly criticized due to that "notch" at the top However, it also set a trend and continues to do so to date. The rest of the products have not undergone radical changes, and even the Apple Watch is what you would expect from a product from the Cupertino company, each time they left us with our mouths open. However, we find large design hits and minimalist tech, like AirPods. These Apple headphones have also created a trend, they are enormously comfortable, pleasing to the eye and useful. But something also died at this time and it was not just plastic, Apple was saying goodbye to skeumorphism and minimalism was taking the initiative with iOS 7.
And until now, when Jony Ive has decided to leave the Cupertino company to browse alone, even though he will continue with Apple through a traditional business relationship, will his departure affect Apple designs? It remains to be seen.