Jony Ive’s Apple departure shows the tech giant is at a pivotal point in its history

Inside Business: CEO Tim Cook said claims the design guru’s move was a long time coming are ‘absurd’

Apple’s design guru Sir Jony Ive, whose departure sent shockwaves through the company (Getty)

Apple should have known the exposes delving into the departure of design guru Sir Jony Ive were coming. But the response to the latest, from the Wall Street Journal, has raised more than a few eyebrows.

The Journal wasn’t the first to allege the move was a long time coming. Bloomberg said much the same thing shortly after the announcement that sent shockwaves through the tech industry.

What stood out in the former’s report, however, was its allegation of tension between Ive and CEO Tim Cook and claims of a “lack of interest in design”.

“The story is absurd,” said Cook in an angry email to NBC reporter Dylan Byers, an unusual move on the part of the Apple CEO.

“A lot of the reporting and certainly the conclusions just don’t match the reality. At a base level, it shows a lack of understanding about how Apple works.”

He went on to accuse the report of distorting relationships, decisions and events “to the point that we just don’t recognise the company it claims to describe”.

Cook further promised the design team would “blow you away” with the projects being worked on under its chief operating officer Jeff Williams and its other leaders. Williams, the Journal archly noted, is “a mechanical engineer with an MBA”. Its report constructed a narrative of the company becoming dominated by ops people and financial types as opposed to the techies and designers who ruled the roost under Steve Jobs. The latter were referred to as “Gods” under his tenure.

In response to Cook’s email, the Journal was quick to defend its reporting.

Who to believe? Well you pays your money... but to some, the outburst was very telling.

Apple is a rare company in that it has fans as much as customers. The design work by Ive and his team, together with the attention paid to it and the input of Jobs, played a major role in that.

However, it is at a pivotal point in its history. It has become a much bigger company under Cook, but it has lost its status as America’s biggest to Microsoft, at a time when it has been shifting its focus from being a seller of the hardware beloved of Ive and Jobs to a provider of services.

Critics have suggested that it is losing its lustre, and that the exit is a symptom of that.

Cook’s strategic move comes at a time when innovations and genuine hardware hits have become less regular. Apple’s record in the area has been spotty too. Its pricey smart speaker, for example, lagged behind Amazon’s and has not sold well. Even the successes (eg AirPods) haven’t had a massive financial impact.

The iPhone’s dominance has also made it something of a one trick pony and it has been shifting less iPhone units at higher prices. Trouble is, you can only squeeze your customers so hard, especially when there are competitors out there willing and able to copy your designs and offer similar functionality at a lower price.

Cook’s attempts to diversify its earnings by selling more services look eminently sensible when set against that backdrop even if it upsets a few people internally (as it seems maybe it has).

Services can prove to be very reliable sources of revenue, especially if you can hook customers into subscriptions and then proffer add-ons.

Still, one of the criticisms made of Cook is a focus on margins over design, when design has done much to drive the margins Apple enjoys and the premium it is (still) able to charge its fans. It’s harder to do that with services (although it’s by no means impossible if they’re good enough).

Amid all this, Ive is still working for Apple. It is the first client of his new creative company LoveFrom. It will be most interesting to see how long that relationship lasts.