How Technocrats Triumphed at Apple
Summary
After two years of development, thousands of engineering hours and countless days agonizing over the suppleness of leather and strength of gold for Apple’s bold new product, the company’s design chief, Jony Ive, was thrust into a high-stakes debate over the most primitive concern: a tent. In the wake of Mr. Jobs’s death, colleagues said, Mr. Ive fumed about corporate bloat, chafed at Mr. Cook’s egalitarian structure, lamented the rise of operational leaders and struggled with a shift in the company’s focus from making devices to developing services. His exit would change forever the balance of power at the top of a company long defined by its product ingenuity, leaving it without one of its most creative thinkers and the driving force behind its last new device category. In Mr. Ive’s absence, Mr. Cook has accelerated a shift in strategy that has made the company better known for offering TV shows and a credit card than introducing the kind of revolutionary new devices that once defined it. People watching across the studio would later joke that they caught Mr. Cook’s eyes straying from the charity camera to the nearby design tables topped with iPhones, iPads and Macs that the company sold for tremendous profit.
Classifications
AskAI Classifications
LabelsLinked Companies
