A tent. After two years of development, thousands of engineering hours, and countless days agonising over the suppleness of leather and the strength of gold for Apple’s bold new product, the company’s design chief, Jony Ive, found himself in the midst of a high-stakes debate over the most primitive concern: a tent. “It was like a game of chicken,” Ive says.
It was 2014, and the future of Apple appeared to rest more than ever on the shoulders of Mr. Ive. He had already redesigned the world with his love of clear, basic lines, as seen by such widely used devices as the iMac, iPod, and iPhone. After nearly four decades of collaboration, the two men were seated at a conference table with Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, the two men embodying nearly four decades of collaboration, with one designing and the other building the devices that transformed a failing business into the world’s largest company. They were both looking for another smash, but Mr. Ive was pushing for a product reveal that was more brazen than any other in the history of the theatre firm.
The Apple Watch was scheduled to be unveiled in a community college auditorium in the vicinity of the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Mr. Ive advocated removing two dozen trees and installing a costly white tent in order to provide a cosmopolitan lustre to a suburban environment of strip malls, according to the report.
It was a microcosm of the difficulties that were starting to plague Apple’s chief designer. He thought that the key to the watch’s success would be to persuade the rest of the world that it was a trendy item. He considered a praise from Vogue to be more valuable than the opinion of any technology critic. For the event to be as spectacular as a high-end fashion show, the tent was absolutely essential.
Apple, on the other hand, was intensifying its examination of every dollar it spent under Mr. Cook’s leadership, and it was questioning many of the concepts Mr. Ive had advocated. Not only did the marketers dispute the cost, but they also advocated for a more conventional product launch that focused less on how the watch looked and more on what it could do, such as monitoring a workout or sending a text message by touching the wrist.
Mr. Cook rocked back and forth in his chair while the group debated Mr. Iproposal. ve’s It had been almost three years after Steve Jobs died at the age of 56, and as CEO, Mr. Cook had turned to Mr. Ive — the man Mr. Jobs referred to as his “spiritual partner” — to drive product development. Mr. Ive, though, had expressed reservations about Mr. Cook’s decision. Mr. Cook was concerned that investors would sell their shares if Mr. Ive departed the firm because of the designer’s importance to the company. Former Apple executives predicted that Ideparture ve’s would result in a loss of more than $50 billion in market value, or as much as 10% of the company’s total worth. Mr. Cook came to a complete halt rocking.
Mr. Cook’s approval seemed to many in attendance to be a victory for Mr. Ive. However, the designer would subsequently reinterpret it as a Pyrrhic triumph. Later, he would tell his colleagues that his feelings of being unsupported at Apple began to manifest themselves during the argument over the event, as well as during the bigger conflict over the watch’s marketing strategy.
Apple now has a market capitalization of $2.57 trillion and a portfolio of legacy goods that have helped it maintain its position as the biggest publicly traded business in the United States. When Steve Ive was absent, Mr. Cook has accelerated the company’s agenda, making it more well-known for selling television series and a credit card rather than for releasing the kinds of breakthrough new technologies that formerly distinguished it.
Cook began with less tangible Apple products during the company’s most recent product event: a brief update on the company’s broadcasting agreement with Major League Baseball, followed by a celebration of plaudits for the Apple TV+ movie “CODA.” In addition, the corporation advertised a new desktop computer, emphasising the power of the unique processor contained inside the machine above the machine’s compact, aluminium form.
The designers claim that, in Mr. Iabsence, ve’s they have collaborated more with colleagues in engineering and operations, and that they are under more cost constraints than they were before. Meanwhile, the goods have remained virtually unchanged since Mr. Ideparture. ve’s The gods have been reduced to mankind.
