Jony Ive’s 30-year partnership with Apple is over.
Ive and Apple have reportedly severed ties completely, ending a relationship that spanned more than three decades and resulted in some of Apple’s biggest products, including the iPhone, iMac, Apple Watch, spaceship campus, numerous retail stores and much more.
Jony Ive and Apple: Teammates no more
Former Apple design chief Ive left the company in 2019 to form his own firm, LoveFrom. (Its name was inspired by Steve Jobs.)
“While I will not be an [Apple] employee, I will still be very involved — I hope for many, many years to come,” Ive said at the time.
Cupertino slipped him a pair of golden handcuffs, paying him a rumored $100 million for a multiyear consultant contract — mostly to prevent him for working for competitors.
Apple was reportedly LoveFrom’s major client, with Ive consulting on the 24-inch iMac and the ongoing secret Apple car project, among other things.
But Ive and Apple recently decided not to renew the contract, according to The New York Times.
Why the breakup between Apple and LoveFrom?
Apple executives reportedly balked at Ive’s consultancy fees, and some became upset at the number of designers that left Apple to join LoveFrom. Ive reportedly hired at least four former Apple industrial designers to join him.
For his part, Ive reportedly wanted to be free to choose his own clients without getting permission from Apple. To date, Ive’s biggest client at LoveFrom has been Airbnb.
After Ive’s departure from Apple, the storied Industrial Design studio has been taken over by Evans Hankey, a longtime member of the design team. Alan Dye now leads software design. Apple COO Jeff Williams oversees both design teams.
End of an extremely productive partnership
The severance of the contract with Ive represents the end of one of the most productive design partnerships in modern history. His work with the company resulted in a string of hit products that saved Apple in the late 1990s and then made it one of the biggest companies in the world.
But Ive’s proudest achievement is the design team itself, he said.
“After nearly 30 years and countless projects, I am most proud of the lasting work we have done to create a design team, process and culture at Apple that is without peer. Today it is stronger, more vibrant and more talented than at any point in Apple’s history,” Ive told The Financial Times when he left in 2019.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
