What does Jony Ive’s big promotion mean for Apple?

One thing that Apple has always had in abundance is style, and you can thank Jony Ive for. Described as a design genius and often credited with creating the design language that has guided the company’s products over the past couple of decades, it seems only natural that Apple should promote Ive to the position of Chief Design Officer. The promotion, which was announced by Ive’s good friend Stephen Fry on the Telegraph, gives Ive much more time to actually design things, as he can basically dump his management duties onto his underlings. 

I stood last week at the entrance to 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, the coolest address in the universe, remembering the time I had gone inside and managed to annoy Steve Jobs. For me that man was Willy Wonka and every time I went to Cupertino I was Charlie visiting the Chocolate Factory. I don’t mind saying that there was no one alive in the world I admired more and no one I wanted to rile less. I will come to my story, but first the background. I am sure you know most of it. Along with the great electronics wizard and programmer Steve Wozniak, Jobs founded Apple Computers in the mid-1970s. He had been fired/forced to resign from his own company the year after he had led the team that brought into the world the Macintosh, the first consumer computer to come with a mouse, pulldown menus and a graphical user interface. Outside Apple he went on to create NeXT Inc on one of whose computers Tim Berners-Lee wrote the programs and protocols of his invention the World Wide Web. Jobs then founded a computer graphics company, Pixar. When it was bought by Disney he became that company’s leading shareholder.