When Jony Ive announced in July 2019 that he was leaving Apple, speculation ran rampant as to why. Some thought it was due to a shift towards services, others mused that Ive was bored as Apple’s products became more iterative after Steve Jobs died. But the real reason has nothing to do with a product at all, it was a product announcement.
Corresponding New York Times reporter Tripp Mickle’s new book“After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul,” Jony Ive’s career at Apple began with the launch of the Apple Watch in September 2014. Before the eventI urged CEO Tim Cook to remove two dozen trees from the De Anza College campus adjacent to the Flint Center for the Performing Arts to erect an extravagant white tent for the hands-on area.
After much discussion, I got his wish, but people close to him say he saw it as a Pyrrhic victory and experienced the issue as one of “one of the first moments he felt unsupported by Apple.” In the months and years that followed, Mickle writes, I openly complained about “corporate bloat, resented Mr. Cook’s egalitarian structure, bemoaned the rise of operational executives, and a shift in corporate focus from equipment manufacturing to development.” fought by services”.
The book covers Ive’s close relationship with Steve Jobs and his 20-year history at Apple. It also reveals his “wild grief” after Jobs’ death, clashes with Apple’s finance team and a more than $100 million exit package. The book arrives Tuesday, May 3 and is available to pre-order Apple books or wherever books are sold.
