The future of Jony Ive and Apple

Steve Jobs once said no one had more operational power at Apple, aside from himself, than Jony Ive.

Jony Ive, the man who helped reignite Apple with the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad had more operational power than the finance group, the engineering group, the services group, even the operations group. Apple, the company that put design first, put design first.

For years Jony Ive ran industrial design (ID) at Apple. When Tim Cook became CEO, he added human interface (HI) to Ive's responsibilities. The goal was to remove silos and increase collaboration. Ive, who'd long had Richard Howarth as a lieutenant for industrial design, brought Alan Dye over from marketing to run lead on human interface.

While the industrial design language continued its steady evolution, the interface went through a revolution. The immediate results were the iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, and iOS 7 — software and hardware that were "better together".

It was the Apple Watch that showed what a unified Apple design organization was really capable with under Ive.

OS X Yosemite followed, and the new MacBook, but it was the Apple Watch, a product driven by Ive and longtime friend Marc Newson, that showed what a unified Apple design organization was really capable with under Ive.

A couple of interesting events framed the Apple Watch launch: Marc Newson was officially brought on board by Apple, and Ive did extensive media appearances, foremost among them a profile in the New Yorker under the banner "The Future of Apple. The first gave Ive a collaborator again, the second gave him position.

Or rather, started to get us ready for Ive's new position as chief design officer.

Few consumer product companies have a senior vice president of design. Fewer still have a chief design officer. At Apple, only Cook himself and chief financial officer Luca Maestri have C-level titles. Ive becomes the third, with Howarth taking on the day-to-day responsibilities of vice president of industrial design and Dye, vice president of user interface design.

That's to free Ive up to travel, perhaps code for spending more time in his native England, and for other projects like working on Apple's Campus 2 and Apple Retail.

That this change was announced on Memorial Day in the U.S., when the markets were closed, reflects the gravity of the change and Apple's desire to give Wall Street time to think before it reacts.

Like the last change with Ive at Apple, this one will play out over months and years, not days and weeks.

That's good. Markets, like people, can be averse to change. And like the last change with Ive at Apple, this one will play out over months and years, not days and weeks.

Ive seems to avoided the traps that typically plague highly successful creative types. He doesn't seem to feel like there are no worlds left to conquer, and so isn't walking away from his creation. He also doesn't seem to feel like his ideas are unassailable, and likewise isn't producing sequels (or prequels) that are pale shadows of their originals.

Part of that is how industrial design at Apple has been structured and run, and how human interface has come to be run. Ive is used to working with a team in ID and needs to work with one in HI. Part is that what Apple is working on, including the new campus and new stores, and the Watch and Titan, are projects Ive seems to care about deeply.

If anything, this new position and its new potential seem like a way to both keep Jony Ive where he is — at the head of a the most successful design company in history — and position Apple for where it needs to be — with a foundation below and beyond Ive.

It took eight months to see iOS 7 and almost two years to see the Apple Watch under senior vice president of design, Jony Ive. I can't help but wonder how long it will take to see what happens under chief design officer, Jony Ive. And what it will really mean for the future of Apple.