Connected #250: Tonight Will Be in the Future ⇢

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This week, on the 250th(!) episode of Connected:

Federico reminds everyone that it’s okay to not have strong feelings about Jony Ive leaving Apple, while Stephen feels tempted by iOS 13. Meanwhile, Eddy Cue talks about rumors of Tim Cook meddling with Apple TV+ scripts and Project Catalyst continues to make news.

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The Whole Widget ⇢

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After listening to the most recent episode of The Talk Show, I decided to go hunt down video of Steve Jobs dropping the “i” from his title, and becoming Apple’s full-time CEO. That took place at Macworld Expo in January 2000.

This keynote is wild,1 as it includes the first public demonstration of Aqua, but something right before the CEO announcement caught my attention. In this clip, Jobs talks about how Apple viewed itself, and why some who called for it to be broken up into a separate software and hardware company were wrong:

This conversation is really interesting in the light of our current era. Apple’s model of making the whole widget has obviously paid off in a massive way in the 19 years since this keynote. Even companies like Microsoft and Google are toying with the model more and more through products like the Surface line of computers and Pixel-branded phones. And while there are calls for big tech companies to be broken up, Apple’s under scrutiny for the App Store, not its hardware business.

  1. I mean, just look at some of the press releases from that month. ↩

A Closer Look at Catalyst ⇢

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Over at Ars Technica, Samuel Axon has published an in-depth look at Catalyst, including interviews with several people inside Apple:

Apple seeks to funnel some of its success with the iOS App Store over to macOS using Catalyst. We’ll go over how developers use what Apple has built step-by-step, as well as what challenges they faced. And we’ll share Apple’s answers to our questions about how the company plans to maintain a high standard of quality for Mac apps as an influx of mobile-derived apps hits the platform, what Apple’s long-term plans for cross-platform apps across the entire ecosystem look like, and more.

We talked about this on Connected last week, but I think those who are writing Catalyst off as either something the Mac doesn’t need, or something that’s a dead-end with SwiftUI on the horizon are wrong, just on different time tables. Catalyst means the Mac ecosystem will get an infusion of new apps in the coming few years, while SwiftUI continues to mature. Will Catalyst apps be running on the Mac in ten years? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean it’s something we should write off today.

John Voorhees hit the nail on the head in his post over on MacStories:

This isn’t the sort of story you see often, but because the narrative around Catalyst has taken on a distinctly negative tone since WWDC, it’s not surprising either. As I explained in my piece on Catalyst last week, I can’t help but think that if Apple had done a better job explaining how Catalyst fits into its strategy at WWDC and backed it up with compelling Catalyst apps of its own, this sort of after-the-fact explanation from the company wouldn’t have been necessary.

Mac Power Users #489: Gear as a Motivator, with Tyler Stalman ⇢

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I’ve followed Tyler Stalman for a while now, and I was super excited to get him on Mac Power Users this week:

Tyler Stalman is a photographer, videographer, YouTuber and small business owner alongside his wife Ania Boniecka. Oh, and he loves gear… maybe too much, as he confesses to Stephen and David.

This conversation was a lot of fun. Tyler and Ania are extremely busy, and their travel schedule makes me tired just thinking about it, and out of that, he’s made some really interesting decisions about their gear and how they get work done:

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Restored Apollo Mission Control ⇢

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Lee Hutchinson, writing at Ars Technica about a huge project in Houston:

For the past two years, historians and engineers from the Kansas Cosmosphere’s Spaceworks team have been lovingly restoring and detailing the 1,200-pound (544kg) historic sage green Ford-Philco consoles that populated the control room—repairing damage from decades of casual neglect and also adding in the correct control panels so that each console now correctly mirrors how it would have been configured for an Apollo flight.

These photos are amazing. I really want to get to Texas and see this.

The Power Mac G3: An Apple Marketing Archetype ⇢

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Harry McCracken:

At Macworld Expo 1999, Apple’s big news was the Power Macintosh G3, a high-end tower desktop. After introducing it, Steve Jobs played a promotional video, prefaced with a Henry Kissinger quote and featuring Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s The Look of Love on the soundtrack. (If you know who’s singing, please tell me; I’m not sure, and it stumped Shazam.) The video touts lustworthy features such as a 400-MHz processor, up to 1GB of RAM, and USB (“the future of I/O!”).

And several times during the video, we get a glimpse of a younger, hairier, less polished version of the man who eventually became Apple’s chief design officer, Sir Jonathan Ive. I’m not sure if this is the first keynote video he appeared in, but it’s certainly a prototype for many to come.

This is a fun way to spend a few minutes:

Jony Ive Leaving Apple For His Own Firm, Will Retain Apple as Client ⇢

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Apple:

Apple today announced that Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, will depart the company as an employee later this year to form an independent design company which will count Apple among its primary clients. While he pursues personal projects, Ive in his new company will continue to work closely and on a range of projects with Apple.

Of course, this was foretold on Connected earlier this year:

I gotta say, I didn’t have Jony Ive in mind when I made that prediction, but here we are.

Joking about a podcast aside, this is obviously huge news, but I think the bigger news is further down the press release:

Design team leaders Evans Hankey, vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, vice president of Human Interface Design, will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. Both Dye and Hankey have played key leadership roles on Apple’s design team for many years. Williams has led the development of Apple Watch since its inception and will spend more of his time working with the design team in their studio.

“After nearly 30 years and countless projects, I am most proud of the lasting work we have done to create a design team, process and culture at Apple that is without peer. Today it is stronger, more vibrant and more talented than at any point in Apple’s history,” said Ive. “The team will certainly thrive under the excellent leadership of Evans, Alan and Jeff, who have been among my closest collaborators. I have the utmost confidence in my designer colleagues at Apple, who remain my closest friends, and I look forward to working with them for many years to come.”

For the first time since Steve Jobs promoted Ive, is seems that the Design team at Apple won’t have a seat at the table as an independent voice. Obviously none of us know the ins-and-outs of this, but it sure seems like a massive change in how Apple works at the very top.1

Some have said that Ive has had too much power over the years, and claim Apple has put aesthetics over usability in many of its products. Clearly, there are examples of that, but when the system was working well, the relationship between design and engineering at Apple led to some incredible products.

I believe that will still be the case after the dust settles. There’s no doubt we’re entering a new era when it comes to the company, and with Ive’s job being split into two — and a woman leading the industrial design team for the first time — I’m excited to see what may change about Apple’s products.

  1. To help offset Williams’ additional responsibility, Apple has named Sabih Khan SVP of Operations. Khan has been Apple since the 1990s. Also, Jeff Williams is totally the next CEO. ↩

Connected #249: Federighi Snapped His Fingers ⇢

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This week’s Connected is a packed one:

Myke resumes his role as the tvOS guy and Federico’s Memoji have all been killed. Apple’s Public Betas have arrived, as have new rumors of a future small iPhone. Stephen preaches the good news of Carbon.

Yes, that’s right. Carbon.

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