It remains to be seen whether Sam Altman / OpenAI in general will be a good editor
I also suspect it might go that way: post-Ive designs have been credited as being better, particularly around apple's laptops that were perceived as too heavily favouring form over function.
More realistically Apple's design is good because they take the iterative approach seriously.
I feel similar about Zuckerberg. That guy should just let the government break up his empire, let some other people run the pieces, and retire. Otherwise he just faces humiliation and being in over his head.
But I guess ego keeps these people going.
Some people should probably be stopped before they get too hungry. Same with some bald guy in Eurasia right now.
And all of the billionaires donate money, I don't think that sets him apart from the others all that much.
Now that he's gonna go soon (and having just a dozen more human gatherings and dinners left).. we can see that he fully doesn't give half an ounce of fuck after having received in full what he was after.
After much show, Buffet's "charity" money got simply inherited by his kids just as it was planned all along! (taxfree too, you plebs!)
The billionaires that care about the world are like Larry Page, tho still so evil.
Not really such an "early" retirement.
But he's doing charity now, while still having more than 100 billions for himself, so somehow he's a saint.
They are the literal sensei of Zuck the greenhorn and friends. So exceptional that the world thinks they're the exception.
Which is not necessarily a good thing, being more interested in reshaping the world even after it becomes clear their vision for the new world isn't making it better just leaves someone with lots of power and bad ideas, not a good combo.
I'd much rather have them chilling on the beach after being done with the limits of their competence.
Orphans and imports don't escape. Even those that are not born here (eg Musk), are eventually taught by society to do the same.
Zuckerberg and friends don't just want to chill on the beach: They want to 0wn it. A common property, then redefine it as "obviously not common", at the expense of others, so that no one else can chill on the beach, unless you provide compensation, for obviously infringing upon their rightful rights duh.
I recently read Careless People and I think it's hard to avoid the conclusion that he has been far out of his element for a long time.
If he has an ego, he probably really wants to have something is a Magnus Opus he can claim. It'll be interesting because good design is always a dance with other stakeholders. You see this with architects and other "designers" who sometimes go to far into art and forget that buildings do need to be used.
The worst part about the butterfly keyboard was that keys would stop working and fixing it would cost the same as a new laptop. I guess that's what you sacrifice when you design the laptop as thin as Ive envisioned.
I mean, if it were my company I’d also reserve the right to run it straight into the ground.
He’s a billionaire approaching 60. You don’t need to worry about him, his brand, or his reputation. If he cared about it that much, he could’ve stayed at Apple. He chose to move back closer to his family. He didn’t launch a new design firm because he needed it, but because he wanted to.
> He’s a billionaire approaching 60. You don’t need to worry about him, his brand, or his reputation.
"Interesting" take, was that projection?
What has LoveFrom produced in 6 years since Ive quit Apple?
https://www.moncler.com/en-us/sir-jony-ive-collaboration
Compostable red noses:
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/30-january-3-february-20...
King Charles' new seal:
https://www.wallpaper.com/design/terra-carta-seal-design-lov...
Ferrari’s first electric car (not yet released):
https://www.independent.co.uk/cars/electric-vehicles/ferrari...
Something vague with Airbnb:
These are two very different things. You can design a wonderful product but if there isn't a need for it in the market or your business people fail to sell it it can be a failure. Judging design based on sales makes no sense.
He's a designer, the success will be whether or not he invents a good design, an innovation to how AI is consumed.
There are plenty of well designed products in his history that weren't big sellers.
did Ive just land $6B+ for incarnating "Dr. Theopolis"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson_(businessman)
I am wondering to what extent 'key man' insurance is needed. That's a big purchase to be riding on one man essentially (yes they are getting engineers and others but Jony seems to be the big ticket item for the purchase).
He never had any success post-Apple like you say, but it wasn't because there wasn't any "insurance man". For me, I see it as a guy who found something worked smashingly, so he just assumed it would work everywhere else.
The stuff he pulled at JC Penny is a master class in what NOT to do in business:
After his success at Apple and Target, Johnson was hired as chief executive officer by JCPenney in November 2011, succeeding Mike Ullman, who had been CEO for the preceding seven years. Ullman then was chairman of the board of directors, but was relieved of his duties in January 2013. Bill Ackman, a JCPenney board member and head of hedge fund Pershing Square supported bringing in Johnson to shake up the store's stodgy image and attract new customers. Johnson was given $52.7 million when he joined JCPenney, and he made a $50 million personal investment in the company. After being hired, Johnson tapped Michael Kramer, an Apple Store veteran, as chief operating officer while firing many existing JCPenney executives.[11][12][13]
When Johnson announced his transformation vision in late January 2012, JCPenney's stock rose 24 percent to $43.[14] Johnson's actual execution, however, was described as "one of the most aggressively unsuccessful tenures in retail history". While his rebranding effort was ambitious, he was said to have "had no idea about allocating and conserving resources and core customers. He made promises neither his stores nor his cash flows would allow him to keep". Similar to what he had done at Apple, Johnson did not consider a staged roll-out, instead he "immediately rejected everything existing customers believed about the chain and stuffed it in their faces" with the first major TV ad campaign under his watch. Johnson defended his strategy, saying that "testing would have been impossible because the company needed quick results and that if he hadn’t taken a strong stance against discounting, he would not have been able to get new, stylish brands on board."[12][14]
Many of the initiatives that were successful at the Apple Stores, for instance the "thought that people would show up in stores because they were fun places to hang out, and that they would buy things listed at full-but-fair price" did not work for the JCPenney brand and ended up alienating its customers who were used to heavy discounting. By eliminating the thrill of pursuing markdowns, the "fair and square every day" pricing strategy disenfranchised JCPenney's traditional customer base.[15] Johnson himself was said "to have a disdain for JCPenney’s traditional customer base." When shoppers were not reacting positively to the disappearance of coupons and sales, Johnson did not blame the new policies. Instead, he offered the assessment that customers needed to be "educated" as to how the new pricing strategy worked. He also likened the coupons beloved by so many core shoppers as drugs that customers needed to be weaned off."[11][12][13] While head of JCPenney, Johnson continued to live in California and commuted to work in Plano, Texas by private jet several days a week.[16]
Throughout 2012, sales continued to sag dramatically. In the fourth quarter of the 2012 fiscal year, same-store sales dropped 32%, which led some to call it "the worst quarter in retail history."[17] On April 8, 2013, he was fired as the CEO of JCPenney and replaced by his predecessor, Mike Ullman.[18][19]
For comparison, during that same time period, the retail successes were the designer collaborations, like Versace x H&M or Target x Rodarte, etc…
All Johnson had to do was bring in some designer collaborations…
Ron Johnson's job where he had the most success was where he was selling fundamentally desirable and great products. I think you would have to be pretty shitty at retail to not do a good job selling iPods and iPhones. His subsequent 2 endeavors, JC Penney and Enjoy, were complete flops. It turns out selling middle-market goods is just really f'ing hard.
Ive, on the other hand, I think is pretty universally recognized as a design genius who was directly responsible for the designs of some of the most important consumer products of the past few decades. Yes, it does seem like Jobs was a critical editor that tempered the worst of Ive's "form over function" tendencies like the butterfly keyboard and removing magsafe, but I think it's fair to say there wouldn't have been an iPhone as it was originally released without Ive.
I feel like Apple still would have had a pretty similar in-store experience even if someone else besides Johnson originally launched it.
From my memory
David Kelley and IDEO designed the original Macintosh Hermutt Esslinger and Frog Design did I think the SE's and Macintosh II and II CI. Robert Bruner and Lunar Design did the Quadra's Robert Bruner also Hired Ives.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1hwxc17/docum...
It isn't hard to imagine someone spending 16 hours of working and then going home and playing a game and putting in money to make themselves more powerful in the game.
His real full time job is watching alt-right videos and memes on YouTube and 4chan.
A great leader is someone who cares about you and helps you surface the best version of yourself. They understand there is a person behind the work and don’t neglect the human side. They mention the team behind projects when talking about successes and don’t blame others for failures.
A cult leader is someone with a hypnotic personality who puts themselves first before anyone else. They couldn’t give less of a shit about you or your sacrifices, and will fire you even if you sleep in the office to get more work done. They are selfish and narcissistic, believe they know everything, and speak about successes as if they personally did all the work.
That definition is too broad to be useful. Is the “objective” to make money at all costs, and the leader is willing to suck employees and themselves dry, even over protests? Or is the objective to build a free hospital in a poor country and everyone is so committed to the cause they are willing to make personal sacrifices?
> I think that more closely aligns with people that have been very successful.
Also aligns with scammers and other grifters who are now in jail. “Successful” is also too broad a term to be useful. One person may think that “being very successful” means being rich, while to another interpersonal relationships and a happy life are what matter.
Not as defined, and I did define them.
What matters is the explained distinction between the two types of leader, arguing exact semantics of individual words in the shorthand term isn’t productive.
Since the original poster I replied to used the word “amazing” (plus the context of the conversation), I used “great” to mean “Very good; excellent; wonderful; fantastic”, not “effective”.
None of the leaders in this conversation are good people. Elon's controversies are way past the point of "some people decry" (why even use a phrasing this convoluted unless you just want to signal that you don't agree with it?) and firmly in "lots of great people wouldn't touch it with a pole". Part of leadership is creating a safe work environment and shielding your companies/brands from unnecessary drama, and Elon has done an absolutely abysmal job at it lately.
But Ive post-jobs just doesn’t have the same track record. He’s had a few years, maybe he’s learned and matured. I hope so.
He's had 6 years to create something—anything!—so far
But vision? I'm not so sure, he had great company and help along the way, and now that he has been left alone (arguably due to his own actions) he's selling the image of competence in areas that he hasn't demonstrated skills whatsoever. We'll see.
Nobody says what kind of hardware. A wearable is the likely bet. Maybe a home robot, but that's a few years out.
..
OpenAI said it already owns a 23% stake in io from a prior collaborative agreement signed late last year. It says it will now pay $5 billion in equity for the acquisition.
..
OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and LoveFrom will remain independent but “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io.”
https://apnews.com/article/jony-ive-openai-chatgpt-52c72786e...
We are after all literally talking about the guy who called openai "open"ai? Even your kid knows that none of the words used need make any sense.