iPhone man Jonathan Ive returns to Staffordshire roots | Hacker News Reader

iPhone man Jonathan Ive returns to Staffordshire roots

news.bbc.co.uk

16 pointsbensummers13 comments

So... the story is basically that a local reporter was unable to set up an interview with an Apple exec who happened to be in the neighborhood? Shocking. Has the Pulitzer committee seen this yet?

What is the deal with HN and Apple/iPhone stories lately? I could submit a link to the word 'Apple' on dictionary.com and it would have ten upvotes within the hour.

In order to prove you incorrect, I have done so at:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1533827

4:42 PM Pacific

This "article" is hilarious -- all of the interesting information in the article is contained in the headline.

In the article it says he's going to be the next CEO...yeah right! Does that make sense to anyone?

I cannot imagine that Steve's eventual replacement will come from outside the company. It's just not in their DNA anymore to go outside for a leader.

So, who is there?

Tim Cook - COO. Ran the company while Steve was dealing with his pancreas issues. Not terribly inspiring, but a solid day-to-day sort of guy. I bet he stays in his current role for the next 20 years.

Peter Oppenheimer - CFO. Not a chance.

Phil Schiller - Head of marketing. Not a chance, again. He's just not a product guy.

Bertrand, Scott, Robert, or Mark? Maybe. Frankly, I don't think Robert is important enough. The other guys might be.

But Ive seems to most closely resemble Jobs. I've noticed that Ive has been making more appearances in keynotes than he used to, seemingly taking Schiller's place in a lot of product demos. The real test will be seeing if this sort of thing continues over the next couple years.

(names from http://www.google.com/finance?client=ig&q=AAPL)

I consider Scott Forstall a strong contender. He doesn’t have the design chops of Ive, nor the operations experience of Cook, but he has charisma and is leading the most successful division (iPhone Software Engineering and Platform Experience)[1].

[1] http://bullcross.blogspot.com/2010/06/blog-post.html

I'd vote for Cook and Ive as co-CEOs.

Why not? This article seems to be a bit too sure about that but I do think it’s a possibility.

I agree design is important...but wouldn't someone with a background in business or software make more sense?

Apple is an industrial design company. The one thing they make, that they can't outsource or rely on anyone else to provide for them, is the pieces of metal, plastic and and glass that slot in the chips and run the software. Everything else they do is an extension of that—they're only a software company at all so they can guarantee their hardware will provide a streamlined, unified experience.

Apple needs top-down control for their products in the same way movies need directors. That control is more central to making Apple money than any aspect of business. Thus, that control should be at the top of the executive pyramid; if Ive isn't a businessman, then he can rely on an advisor who is—but if he wasn't a designer, he probably wouldn't let one override his business ideas in the name of design.

Steve Jobs is, more than anything else, a designer. He studied calligraphy in college and has said an understanding that gave him was the most important lesson he got from school. He has arguably made much better business decisions than the business experts (e.g., Scully) Apple replaced him with. It's reasonable to think Ive might replace Jobs.

I stand corrected. I've always been an Ive fan, I just never really imagined him as a replacement for Jobs. I always thought Cook would.

Why that? Apple is as much about hardware as they are about software.

Business doesn’t make all that much sense to me. A MBA as Job’s replacement? Doesn’t sound right at all.

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