One would wish the 'unintended consequences' of his work he should be tackling now would include the irrepairability, planned obsolescence and negative environmental impact the Apple products he designed have had just because of the sake of "aesthetics" or "I want to be the next Dieter Rams", but whatever.

Excluding their cables Apple products held up incredibly well for me. Maybe I’m just lucky but they outlasted every single Android phone and non Apple laptop. It would be interesting to see actual statistics about the average lifespan of each category.

The milled aluminum laptop chassis deserves most of the credit for the build quality of Macbooks. With it, Macbooks easily last 10 years. I've never seen a similar quality chassis in any Windows or Chromebook laptop. Consequently, they last ~3 years.

Amount of laptops I had to throw away because the chassis broke in 20 years: 0

Amount of devices (laptops, phones, watched) where I had to switch out a battery that died: 5-10

Same. Apple products have very long physical lifespans, generally receive software support far longer than competitors’, and typically have good resale value after several years of use.

The kind of work you speak of isn't going to get highlighted at opulent photo op events like "an interview with Stripe". Necessity is the mother of invention, so conservation and repairability advances are being made where they are most needed: poor countries, where people can't afford to just throw thing away because the vendor forcibly EOL'd it. [0]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/tech/639126/india-frankenstein-lapt...

Which decisions?

Ive’s thinness obsession played a huge part in Apple developing the designs that permitted the M series becoming the computers with the best thermal profiles with great compute.

Is it bad that I’m pleased he’s struggling to stay relevant solo? This guy is responsible for the greater majority of dumb decisions Apple made and their products got instantly better the moment his influence was gone.

I have a feeling iPod's popularity had more tondo with buying up exclusive access to mini harddrives than the industrial design. Same harddrive maker deals extended to the smaller drives on the iPod mini. iPhone typically gets exclusive access to TSMC's latest nodes a year ahead of competitors. Same with airpods, getting the power draw to that level about a year before most others using their exclusive access to a TSMC node.

Having a big enough brand that buying out exclusive access to new tech isn't a huge risk is key, though they probably got the iPod HD exclusivity very cheap and weren't so big then. Then having the exclusive access builds on the quality and mystique of the brand and makes it less risky to buy in again on the next wave of exclusivity.

> though they probably got the iPod HD exclusivity very cheap and weren't so big then.

Toshiba were struggling to find a market for the 1.8" disk they'd invented. It was mentioned in passing after a routine meeting with Apple engineers and, to the latters' credit, they immediately saw the potential and called Steve Jobs to get the cash to sign an exclusivity deal. It cost them $10 million, absolute peanuts.

The Creative Nomad had a vast capacity but used standard 2.5" disks to minimise costs, making it bulky. If Creative had had the opportunity and foresight to grab the 1.8" supply chain, history might have been very different. If...

The buggy and unintuitive software has gotten worse, though.

The cynic in me read the headline and thought "he's making the next Rabbit r1 or Humane AI Pin".

I'm inclined to agree. He has moved from the Reality Distortion Field of Jobs to that of Altman.

That's where the money is, and by extension, that's the product category where "Design" wankery is likely to still have enough cachet to not induce eye-rolls.

So he's working on something but it's a mystery. Slow news day.

Whatever it is, he's working on shaving 0.3mm from it.

You have permission to get excited in advance.

Slimy...

Still bitter that it the ivePhone branding didn’t stick