A Brief History of Apple Design From one person s design to the most correct one

Visual China.

Text |Silicon-based laboratory, author |Hickory.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple's design team is experiencing a wave of executive departures. After Tang Tan, who had previously worked on important projects such as Apple Watch and AirPods, left his job, Peter Russell-Clarke, an industrial designer who had worked at Apple for nearly 20 years, also chose to join a California-based start-up VAST.

According to the statistics of the Silicon-based Research Laboratory, in recent years, more than 10 core figures in Apple's design team have announced their resignation. The reason why every time someone leaves has triggered a discussion in the technology circle, is mainly because the size of Apple's core design team has remained at about 20 people in the past 20 years, and it is very mysterious.

As a result, more than half of the staff has been lost, which is not good news for Apple, which has always been a design-oriented company.

The pursuit of simplicity was a key part of Apple's product philosophy, both in the Steve Jobs and Cook eras, but Apple's vaunted design appeal seems to be on the wane since last year's complete breakup with the soul of Jony Ive (also known as Jonathan Ive). In recent years, Apple's product design has gradually shifted from the so-called Apple aesthetics to pragmatism, with more emphasis on industrialization and cost priority.

Behind this is another cliché about the Apple of the Cook era: should the original design be used as a creative gimmick, or should it sell more hardware for stability?In fact, there's a dark line behind the change in Apple's designer team — no one wants to find a balance between the two more than Cook.

In fact, this isn't the first wave of resignations from Apple's designers.

Silicon-based laboratory carding discovery,In fact, there have been two waves of resignations from the designer team in Apple's history, and this concentrated resignation fever can still be regarded as a historical legacy to some extent.

The first wave of departures from Apple's design team was the return of Steve Jobs. One of the first things Jobs did when he returned to Apple in 1997 was to streamline his team and product line. The first of these slashes was slashed at the industrial design team at the time.

In the years that Steve Jobs left, it was Robert Brunner who served as director of industrial design at the time. Although Robert Brunner waved goodbye after Jobs' return, he founded his own design studio, Ammunition, under the title of former Apple's director of industrial design. For most people, his name is not as loud as his successor. But Chinese fans may be familiar with the name, as Luo Yonghao's Hammer Technology once invited him as a designer.

It's hard to say what Robert Brunner contributed to Apple's design in the world, as the first-generation Newton handheld computer he led was rated as one of the most failed products in Apple's history. However, Robert Brunner did at least two things right: one was to separate Apple's design team and form his own dream team of design geniuses, who would later contribute to Apple's design. The second is to poach Jony Ive, the soul character designed by Apple, and form a perfect entrepreneurial match with Jobs.

In a public speech, Robert Brunner even joked to himself: "If I die, my tombstone will say that the man who dug up Jonathan." ”

Of course, there were many people who left at the same time as Robert Brunner. For example, Tim Parsy, after leaving Apple, this job-hopping maniac has been to more than a dozen companies, from the American office supply brand ACCO, Motorola, Mattel, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc., and is now a self-employed entrepreneur, providing consulting services to other businesses.

And with the return of Steve Jobs, Apple's design has officially entered the Jony Ive era. Needless to say, he wrote an autobiography summarizing his Apple era. In a nutshell, as a designer who lived through both the Jobs and Cook eras, no one understands the difference between the two better than IVE.

In 2002, Jobs and IVE, they were called the perfect match

In the Jobs era, due to Jobs's obsession with design, designers were given a higher status than engineers, and Jobs himself described finding IVE as finding a soul mate, and the two hit it off, which also led Apple to form its unique aesthetic and design style.

But then came the death of Steve Jobs and the entry of Apple into the Cook era. In 2015, Cook promoted IVE to Apple's chief designer. Because Cook himself is from the first chain, he is more like a professional manager, and without Jobs's ive as a design director, the right to speak on product design has reached its peak during this period, and the two have joined forces to launch the first product line during Cook's tenure - Apple Watch.

However, the position of the chief designer is very cold. Compared with Jobs's previous focus on design, Cook himself is more focused on Apple's ** chain, profits and costs, IVE announced his departure after attending the last Apple conference in 2019, and founded his own personal studio LoveFrom, and the two sides were very decent when they broke up. Apple signed a contract with IVE to continue contributing designs to Apple products, but in 2022, this contract was terminated.

The departure of IVE was a key juncture, and then veterans who had a good relationship with IVE or who had worked on Apple's design team for more than ten years also left.

Rico Zorkendorfer, who joined Apple in 2003 and left in April 2019. Julian Hoenig, who joined Apple in 2010 and was responsible for the exterior design of the automotive company, left in 2019 and is currently working as a consultant for the Web3** club. Miklu Silvanto, who joined Apple in 2011 and left in 2019, has worked for major companies such as Airbnb and now works as a consultant for brands such as Vaarnii and Sulapac. Eugene Whang, who joined Apple in 1999 and was also a key figure in the design process of the AirPods Max, left Apple in 2021. Evans Hankey, who joined Apple in 2007 and is a confidant and friend of IVE, served as head of industrial design after IVE's departure, but announced his departure in 2022 and is currently in a transitional state of retention. Peter Russell-Clarke, who joined Apple in 2006 and was responsible for the hardware design of Apple's products and helped shape the look of its headquarters and retail stores, recently announced that he was leaving his position to become an industrial design consultant for Vast, a space technology company. Marc Newson, who joined Apple in 2014, is a good friend of Jony Ive, known as a genius product designer, and he also joined LoveFrom, which Ive founded, in 2019. In short, despite going their separate ways, some starting their own studios and others working as consultants for brands, the aura of a former Apple designer is still very useful.

And these days, there are not many veterans left behind by Apple designers in the IVE era. One is Richard Howarth, Apple's current vice president of industrial design, as well as Duncan Kerr, who joined Apple in 1999, Bart Andre, and Ben Shaaffer, who joined in 2013. It's no wonder that people are lamenting the departure of Peter Russell-Clarke, as Apple has lost the last remaining designer of the IVE era.

The chain reaction brought by Apple's designer team** has also made more people start to think about a question: is Apple gradually abandoning its own design aesthetics?

In fact, both Cook and Apple are well aware of the importance of industrial design to Apple's product philosophy. It's just that at the moment, for a trillion-dollar tech giant, it's not that Apple abandons design, it's that Apple doesn't need a one-man design.

Looking back at the IVE era, the reason why Apple was able to get out of the circle with its design,To a certain extent, it is driven by the right time, the right place, and the right people.

IVE (center), along with Christopher Stringer (left) and Richard Howarth (right), is known as the troika of Apple's industrial design team

Tianshi: In the field of technology at that time, unlike the bells and whistles of other companies' innovations, Apple dared to do subtraction, so it always brought a sense of freshness. Location: Structurally, Apple has given priority to the design team to remain independent, and a design-driven culture has been developed internally. At the same time, the small size of the design team also facilitates unified decision-making. Back then, Jobs made every piece of furniture for IVE and the designers, including tables, chairs, and even drinking glasses. Ren: Most of Apple's internal designers are focused on creating great products, not making money. In IVE's autobiography, he once shared that the task of Apple's industrial designers was not to think about how to sell hardware better, but to conceive a completely non-existent product and design the entire production process to turn imagination into reality. If you map these three perspectives to the Cook era, you might be able to understand why Apple's design team is falling apart.

First of all, from the perspective of time, different from the image of Apple's disruptive innovator in the Jobs era, Apple in the Cook era no longer needs to tell others its leading position, Apple is no longer an innovator, but has become a symbol of the mainstream, its design language has also become the mainstream, and the freshness of users has disappeared. After the success of IVE and Cook in creating the Apple Watch, there have already been critics who reminded Apple:"Apple has carefully created the DNA of a brand, but this has also become a kind of shackle. They have to be led by the nose by a set pattern, unable to change or break free."

Secondly, from the perspective of location, it is a change in the organizational structure of Apple's design team. In Cook's time, design teams gradually needed to work with a larger Apple machine, and their independence and priorities were greatly diminished. The 2015 IVE was put on the altar, and Apple's design team was redivided. Specifically, the industrial design team is divided into two departments, hardware engineering and dealing with the user interface (i.e., responsible for the look and feel of the software).

For a company as large as Apple, and emphasizing the integration of software and hardware, such an organizational design is understandable, but decentralization means complexity, and with the gradual diversification of Apple's product line, each team has to carry all the KPIs of important products, such as the vice president of hardware engineering needs to help oversee components such as iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, etc., and the vice president of software engineering needs to manage operating systems such as iOS, macOS, and watchOS. This leads to delays in product development, overly fragmented resource allocation, and increased engineering complexity.

Finally, in terms of people, more people may be concerned about ideological disagreement. But judging from the grudges and feuds between Cook and this group of Apple designers, the two sides have actually gone through a honeymoon period.

In the case of their famous Apple Watch, Cook and the designers once wanted to make the product a big deal — they wanted Apple to go the fashion luxury route. Before the release of this product in 2014, IVE and the team proposed that they wanted 25 million US dollars (equivalent to about 1 yuan).600 million), which was used to shovel 24 trees at the press conference site, and then set up a luxurious-looking white tent to make users understand the meaning of this product, in the face of the staggering cost, Apple hesitated internally, and finally Cook decided that we should do it .

This route is complemented by design and retail. At the same time, Apple also announced the hiring of Marc Newson, a well-known genius designer who is a close friend of IVE. Angela Ahrendts, the fashion industry leader who has been the CEO of luxury brand Burberry for eight years, also joined Apple in the spring of that year to take charge of the retail business.

Together, they created a new fantastic revolution for the Cook-era Apple: high pricing, a boutique-like offline retail experience, and sleek design. However, in the years of reform, no significant results have been achieved, and even Apple was once complained about because of pricing problems, and the fiercer market competition and sales pressure have made Cook more determined to prefer practical design and experience.

In 2019, both IVE and Angela Ahrendts left Apple, in a way that marked the failure of this period of innovation.

In fact, long before IVE, designers under sales pressure were no longer comfortable with the atmosphere inside Apple.

Daniel Coster, who was involved in the development of Apple's original color iMac and various generations of iPhones and iPads, was rejected by the operation team because a design proposed in a new upgrade to the appearance of the iPad cost billions of dollars. He left Apple in 2016 and went to GoPro.

Christopher Stringer, who joined Apple in 1995, led the Apple Pencil and HomePod projects, but because HomePod did not become his ideal workhorse, and Apple was not so determined to smart home, he turned around and founded his own audio brand, Syng Cell Alpha.

Christopher Stringer (right), who says SYNG was founded because: Sound is a vital element of our lives, but it's often overlooked.

It is not difficult to see that the generation of Apple designers with IVE as the core, they have grown into a design-first Apple era, they do not have to bear the pressure of growth, all they have to do is to create unprecedented designs. Leaving Apple is not a bad thing for them.

And for Apple in Cook's time, it was also the pros and cons of the same coin. The obverse of the coin is that Apple in the Cook era has always advocated a strategy of both soft and the one hand, they are exploring the "soft and hard ambiguity" in design, and on the other hand, they are increasing the weight on software services in the overall cold environment of consumer electronics.

According to Apple's financial report, its software services have been showing a steady growth trend, and it is a cash cow with higher gross margins and stronger risk resistance, which to some extent has led to Apple's conservative strategy in design.

Cook didn't want a one-man design, but a more correct design, and that never changed.

In 2014, Cook said at the Tsinghua Management Global Forum: "A person's energy is limited, and people often imagine themselves as superhuman, but what everyone can do is indeed limited, and if you do too many things at the same time, it is difficult to ensure that everything is done well." This is true for a person, and it is true for a company. Therefore, Apple has always been committed to controlling the product range to a certain range.

As mentioned above, Apple, which pursues the right design, has the obverse of the coin that it is still one of the most profitable tech giants today, and it is the "sweet tooth" in the eyes of Wall Street.

But the flip side of the coin is that the pursuit of the right means refusing to make mistakes, which is somewhat of a stifling to the emphasis on wild creativity.

After losing many of its soul designers, is Apple's creative ammunition arsenal still sufficient?This is probably one of the questions that more people want to ask.

Apple's industrial design has been criticized over the years and has been unstable. For example, there is the Dynamic Island, which was praised by Luo Yonghao for returning to simplicity, and there are also MacBook Pro and Apple Watch Ultra, which were previously considered by users to be rough in design style....Apple's human-computer interaction and design have been challenged and questioned.

How to reverse this impression?Cook and Apple seem to have handed over their cards to the upcoming Vision Pro, defined as Spatial Computing. According to Mark Gurman's revelations, Apple will officially launch this number one star product from the end of January to February next year.

Combined with the current market revelations about Vision Pro and the analysis of brokerage analysts, the changes brought by Vision Pro are at least twofoldThe first is a breakthrough in performance and experience. Second, with Apple's hardware precipitation, ** chain and brand marketing capabilities, it is expected to achieve penetration of more consumers.

Taking performance experience as an example, before the advent of Vision Pro, VR hardware parameters showed a trend of optimization and iteration, but there was still a big gap between them and a truly good user experience. Taking screen resolution as an example, the resolution of mainstream VR equipment has stayed below 4K for a long time, and the resolution of very few manufacturers can reach the 8K level, which brings a lack of visual immersion. The Vision Pro can provide monocular 4K-level resolution, and at the same time, on the optical route, Apple's 3P Pancake design can achieve higher clarity and smaller chromatic aberration.

In addition, in terms of eye movement, facial tracking, gesture recognition and other interactive ecology, thanks to the "Buy, Buy, Buy" since 2010, Vision Pro may bring a better human-computer interaction experience.

It can be seen that Cook himself is full of confidence in Vision Pro. Previously, many ** broke the news that Apple has informed the ** chain side to actively stock up, with the first batch of stock reaching 400,000 units, and the stock will reach one million units in 2024.

In a recent note to developers, Cook and Apple said, "We can't wait to see what happens next year." "Apple is betting further into the future, and design is part of a huge machine that Cook wants to do the right thing, even if it's not right in the eyes of a few.

In 2019, when IVE left Apple, he gathered the rest of the design team to watch a movie called "Yesterday: Yesterday's Miracle."

The British comedy film "Yesterday: Yesterday's Miracle", released in 2019, tells the story of a world without the Beatles

The film is called exclusive to Beatles fans and tells the story of how the male protagonist Jack re-establishes the Beatles in a world without the Beatles. The core themes of the film are still art and business, love and fame and fortune, and to some extent, this is also the problem that Apple is facing today.

References:

1. Anxin**: Spatial computing is a subversion of the times and is inevitable - based on Apple Vision Pro, qualitative analysis and quantitative comparison around spatial computing" 2. Qubits: "Serving Jobs and not Convincing Cook, Apple's legendary design team disbands the insider**" 3. Neil Cybart: "Jony Ive, Jeff Williams, and a larger Apple" 4. Love Faner: "Apple's design team loses Jony." After IVE, from design first to pragmatism" 5, Qian Yingyi: "Dialogue with Cook: Jobs' Legacy and Apple's Old and New Ideas" Part of the content is quoted from "Jobs", "Jonathan" and "Cook".