In Ian Parker’s excellent New Yorker profile of Apple’s Jony Ive, the Apple design maestro is mentioned to be disparaging of an unnamed competitor who allows customers to make their devices into “whatever you want.”
Apparently, Motorola thinks the comment was about them, and Motorola CEO Rick Osterloh is now firing back, calling Apple’s pricing “outrageous” and taking issue with Ive’s comments.
Just as a flashback, in the New Yorker profile, Parker writes:
In one of our conversations, Ive was scathing about a rival’s product, after asking me not to name it: “Their value proposition was ‘Make it whatever you want. You can choose whatever color you want.’ And I believe that’s abdicating your responsibility as a designer.”
That’s pretty vague… so vague it never even occurred to me that he might be talking about Motorola. But Osterloh thinks Ive’s clearly talking about them. In an interview with the BBC, Osterloh said:
Our belief is that the end user should be directly involved in the process of designing products… We’re making the entire product line accessible. And frankly, we’re taking a directly opposite approach to them [Apple].
Osterloh then went on to call the price of the iPhone 6 outrageous, comparing a 16GB iPhone 6 at $649 for a 16GB Moto X at $399. Apples to oranges in my book, no pun intended, but there you go.
Osterloh may be right, and that Ive was speaking disparagingly of Motorola. He’s also right that Ive’s comments about “abdicating your responsibility as a designer” by allowing people to choose personalization options is a little rich coming from Ive. Not only is Ive about to launch the Apple Watch, a fashion device with a high number of personalization options, but the iPhone, iPod, and iPhone lines have shipped with all sorts of customization options: heck, you can buy an iPhone in gold, or you can buy one in bright green plastic. If Motorola’s abdicated its responsibilities as a designer for allowing users to customize, so has Apple.
That all said. In defense of Ive, he had the good grace to not name Motorola, or any of the other companies he criticised in the New Yorker piece by name. Maybe Osterloh should have let the criticism slide.
Source: BBC
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
10 responses to “Motorola’s CEO fires back at Jony Ive and Apple”
It’s called LOSER TALK, which all of Apple’s competitors excel in.
Picking a color is a miniscule part of the design process. Motorola is selling delusions of grandeur with those phones. Also, as always is and will ever be, you get what you pay for.
Had a Moto X for 2 years. Still probably the best phone I’ve had in a long time. Never an issue.
What’s your point?
Honestly Ive is wrong here in his criticism: firstly, the Moto line of phones is one of the better designed phones on the market (dat dimple), and two letting people customize their phones is something to be applauded not criticized. Hats off to Motorola for making a phone people will actually feel is theirs rather than a phone Apple is letting them lease for 2 years…
If I ever jumped ship from Apple, it’d be to a Motorola phone.
lol that coming from Apple is pretty jokes, considering they had launched a “cheap” version of an iPhone with loads of colors (iPhone 5C).
Whoosh – the sound of Ive’s argument going over your head.
lol he’s complaining about giving people a choice :/ when iPhone 5C gave color options to people (a few, but that’s still a choice)
Hey Jony, most people cover up their phones with a case, preferably one that has some grip. What does that say about your design and what people want?