Apple's Star Designer Jonathan Ive Set to Expand Role
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With Retirement of Christie, Ive Will Continue His Expansion Into Software
April 9, 2014 6:14 p.m. ET
Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of
industrial design, will be expanding his role at the company. Roger Kay,
founder and president of Endpoint Technologies, discusses what that
means for Apple on Lunch Break. Photo: Getty Images.
In an
internal email, Apple said
Greg Christie,
who led the company's "human interface" team that designs
software for its products, is retiring, according to people who have
seen the email.
Mr. Christie's group
will report to Mr. Ive, who is Apple's senior vice president of design,
according to the email. The team previously reported to
Craig Federighi,
Apple's software chief.
Apple's Inner Circle
"Greg has been planning to retire
later this year after nearly 20 years at Apple," said a company
spokesman. "He has made vital contributions to Apple products across the
board, and built a world-class human interface team which has worked
closely with [Jonathan] for many years."
Jonathan Ive in London on Sept. 17, 2012.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Mr. Christie, an 18-year Apple
veteran, is one of its most senior software designers and played a key
role in designing the software for the iPhone. Mr. Christie testified
for Apple last week in its patent-infringement suit against
Samsung Electronics Co.
005930.SE +0.66%
Just before the trial, he was featured in a Wall Street Journal article about the creation of the iPhone.
His
departure from the company comes as Mr. Ive, revered for orchestrating
the design of Apple's hardware, has expanded his role into software. Mr.
Ive played a central role in redesigning iOS 7, the latest version of
its iPhone and iPad software. That version moved away from
"skeuomorphism"—a design philosophy of recreating real-world objects,
such as wood or felt, in digital forms that users find familiar. Mr. Ive
has called the new minimalist look of iOS 7 "an important new
direction," although reviews have been mixed.
Next to
Tim Cook,
Apple's chief executive, Mr. Ive is the company's most recognizable executive. A confidant of Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs
who regularly appears in videos for new products, Mr. Ive is seen as a torchbearer for Apple's design sensibility.
Mr.
Christie's departure was first reported by Apple enthusiast website
9to5Mac. A person familiar with the matter said Messrs. Christie and Ive
sometimes struggled to agree on software-design decisions.
Mr. Christie joined Apple in 1996 to
work on the Newton, the company's short-lived personal digital assistant
that had a touch screen and a stylus. He also worked extensively on the
Mac's operating system before being roped into the early development
team for the iPhone.
He is listed as an
inventor on nearly 100 Apple patents. On Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office granted Mr. Christie a patent for a way to unlock a
phone on a touch-screen display. He has 31 more applications pending
with the patent office.
He is listed as one of the inventors in the "slide to unlock" patent,
one of the five features that Apple is accusing Samsung of infringing
upon in the current lawsuit. On the stand, Mr. Christie detailed how the
iPhone came to dominate his life for the 2½ years before its release in
2007.
"From 2005 through to the
announcement in January and sale in June 2007, it was pretty much
nonstop. You had to be prepared to discuss what you were working on at
any time of the day, any day of the week, any week of the month," Mr.
Christie testified.
