Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

While physical design has been of paramount importance in Apple's rise to the top, it has been more and more detrimental as Jony and his group wandered into worshipping at the altar of luxury and Platonic idealism.

When combined not ignoring other than luxury market segments and usability that was fine. But when Jony's star was completely ascendant everything else was sacrificed at that altar (see butterfly keyboard, single port MacBook, escape key-less touch bars, no 32 GB MacBook Pros since that would require non-power-sipping RAM.)

I could have lived with this if the design of the software hadn't also suffered in conjunction with the hardware. Jony was given responsibility for UX and it also started prioritizing abstract design principles over actual usability with extremely low contrast UI elements and other poor choices.

As we saw those points being walked back and Apple being responsive to the complaints, I've been wondering if Craig Federighi's star was rising and if Jony's was dimming, since I doubt he was a willing participant in the diminution of his artistic choices. Seeing the extreme effort he was putting into charity[0] and the spaceship campus, instead of his actual responsibilities, it all combined to me that he needed to either get re-focused by the CEO or get a new job.

[0] https://www.dezeen.com/2018/11/16/jony-ive-diamond-ring-marc... https://petapixel.com/2013/11/24/one-kind-jony-ive-red-leica... https://www.businessinsider.com/jony-ive-bono-sothebys-chari... https://www.fastcompany.com/3019896/designed-by-friendship-j...