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The Story of Sir Jony Ive's Apple Exit

Charlotte Henry ·

Sir Jony Ive’s departure from Apple had been rumored long before he confirmed it Thursday. Bloomberg News detailed his walk towards the exit.

Ive still only came to the office a couple of days a week, with many meetings shifting to San Francisco, according the people familiar with the matter. That helped him avoid the long commute from his home in the Pacific Heights district of the city to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Ive sometimes met with his team at the homes of his employees, at hotels, or other venues. The design executive even set up an office and studio in San Francisco to do much of his work. Ive also traveled frequently to London, near where he was raised. He occasionally missed out on Apple product launch events, an unthinkable absence several years ago.

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The Real Issue is Sir Jony Ive is Not Being Replaced

Charlotte Henry ·

Sir Jony Ive is leaving Apple. You might have heard about it. John Gruber gives his take over on Daring Fireball and highlights the key issue about the departure – design is now reporting to operations. (I know Gruber doesn’t like formal titles, which is fair enough, but I’m a Brit so I have to use them!)

It makes me queasy to see that Apple’s chief designers are now reporting to operations. This makes no more sense to me than having them report to the LLVM compiler team in the Xcode group. Again, nothing against Jeff Williams, nothing against the LLVM team, but someone needs to be in charge of design for Apple to be Apple and I can’t see how that comes from operations. I don’t think that “chief design officer” should have been a one-off title created just for Jony Ive. Not just for Apple, but especially at Apple, it should be a permanent C-level title. I don’t think Ive ever should have been put in control of software design, but at least he is a designer.

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Apple Takes Another Step Towards ARM-based Macs

John Martellaro ·

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Ian King report:

Apple Inc. hired one of ARM Holdings Inc.’s top chip engineers as the iPhone maker looks to expand its own chip development to more powerful devices, including the Mac, and new categories like a headset.

The company hired Mike Filippo in May for a chip architect position, according to his LinkedIn profile.

For Apple to divest the Mac of Intel CPUs while maintaining X86 compatibility will require some serious engineering skill. This looks like one step in the process.

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Twitter Starts Flagging Tweets From World Leaders That Break its Rules

Andrew Orr ·

In a blog post today, Twitter said it would start labeling tweets from Donald Trump government officials that break its rules against bullying and abusive behavior.

A critical function of our service is providing a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable.With this in mind, there are certain cases where it may be in the public’s interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules.

On the rare occasions when this happens, we’ll place a notice – a screen you have to click or tap through before you see the Tweet – to provide additional context and clarity. We’ll also take steps to make sure the Tweet is not algorithmically elevated on our service.

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Pokémon Masters Coming to iOS Later This Summer

Andrew Orr ·

A new game called Pokémon Masters is heading to iOS this summer. On the island of Pasio, players will form teams of Trainers and their partner Pokémon and engage in 3-on-3 real-time battles.

Players can team up with duos such as Korrina & Lucario, Brendan & Treecko, Clair & Kingdra, and many more. With all sorts of Trainers on Pasio, there are sure to be some exciting and unexpected encounters in this new story. At launch, there will be 65 sync pairs to recruit in Pokémon Masters, with additional sync pairs to come following the game’s release.