This is absurd. No way their chief of design who led dozens of successful product launches is fired for a niche complaint about a niche product. It’s not like there was some malfeasance here.
Ive has certainly lost touch with what makes good design, probably he is just burnt out, but I find it very difficult to believe he was forced out.
He never wanted to live in California in the first place. I think Apple was able to squeeze a lot of extra years out of him, but he’s had his “fuck you money” for a long time, and the work is no longer engaging enough to keep him here.
He was never particularly interested in software and that’s where Apple Design needs to focus now. The AR glasses are an interesting design problem but it’s so software heavy I doubt Ive can really stay engaged with it.
The car is probably an interesting project, but I’m sure he’s been through the complete design of several cars in the last decade, and it’s not design holding that back, it’s engineering. Self driving is required to unlock the roadmap I’m sure they’ve already mapped out.
He could probably get excited about the design-for-manufacturing problem there, but it’s an ENORMOUS problem compared to iPhone. I don’t think he has the tolerance for chaos Elon has, and which you need to build a factory of that complexity.