Jony Ivethe legendary Apple designer, thought about merging the MacBook line into a single product. More than four years after his departure from Cupertino to found LoveFrom, details of one of the pillars of the technology giant have been leaked.
In the most recent edition of the podcast The Vergecast, technology journalist Walt Mossberg told an anecdote that occurred during the transition stage at Apple. According to Mossberg, Jony Ive considered that it was not necessary for a MacBook Pro and MacBook Air to exist, so he proposed merging them. Ive’s idea was to offer a powerful and slim product.
“He decided he could make the Pro and make it as light and thin as the MacBook Air. And it would be a higher priced machine, so it would be better for your bottom line and people would buy it, even if they didn’t need the extra power it provides,” Mossberg mentioned. Although the proposal was interesting, did not obtain approval from two of the most important teams of the company.
A powerful MacBook Air at the price of a MacBook Pro was crazy. After all, the MacBook Air was the best-selling laptop and the computing industry shamelessly copied it with Ultrabooks. According to the journalist, this led to a war between the design and engineering departments.
In the end, reason prevailed and Apple launched an updated version of the MacBook Air, burying the idea of a single device.
Jony Ive could not fulfill his dream of a single MacBook
It was no secret that Jony Ive was obsessed with minimalism and thin devices. This led the company to debacles such as the butterfly keyboard and the disappearance of connectivity options. The designer left out the feature and removed the MagSafe port, HDMI, and SD card reader on the MacBook Pros, drawing criticism from professionals.
The problem for Jony Ive is that There was no figure like Steve Jobs, who approved or vetoed his ideas. After the death of Apple co-founder Tim Cook gave him greater freedom to experiment in hardware and software. The head of design thought it would be a good idea to merge two of the company’s most successful products into a laptop as thin as it is expensive.
Engineers and product managers pushed and They prevented the death of the MacBook Air. Interestingly, Apple brought back all the features that Ive removed under his last tenure. The 2021 MacBook Pro brought back the HDMI and MagSafe ports, the SDXC reader and the physical function keys, leaving the Touch Bar behind.
Jony Ive left Apple in 2019, after almost 30 years with the company. In a reflection On the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death, the designer spoke for the first time about his relationship with his former boss and friend. “We worked together for almost 15 years. We had lunch together most days and spent afternoons in the sanctuary of the design studio. They were some of the happiest, most creative and joyful moments of my life,” he mentioned.
A few weeks ago it was reported that Tang Tan, vice president of iPhone product design, resigned from Apple to join Jony Ive and Sam Altman in a new artificial intelligence project. Ive and Altman aim to create highly designed, AI-powered devices.