Engineering the next Jony Ives

Hey y’all, it’s Austin in Boston. Apple shared a rare peek inside its secretive design studio, but first…Today’s top tech news: U.S. consume [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hey y’all, it’s Austin in Boston. Apple shared a rare peek inside its secretive design studio, but first… Today’s top tech news: - U.S. consumer prices rose at [the fastest annual pace]( in nearly 40 years - Twitter asked a federal judge to [throw out Donald Trump’s lawsuit]( - Regulators cleared Jeff Bezos’s space company of [safety allegations]( Here’s (the next) Jonys Apple Inc. finally gave the public a glimpse inside the design studio at its newish headquarters for a [spread]( last week in Wallpaper, an architecture and design magazine. The “global exclusive!” was touted as the first look at the space inside [Apple’s circumferential offices]( and a deep dive into their approach to product development following the [departure of the former design chief, Jonathan Ive](. So what is Apple’s design group up to? By all appearances, pretty much the same stuff as every high-tech design studio in the world. The story is full of quotes featuring various design clichés and buzzwords. If the access Apple granted was intended to distinguish the company’s designers, it actually did the opposite: Perhaps the most interesting revelation of the piece was that the studio, once a source of invaluable corporate cachet for Apple, now seems kind of boring. Wallpaper’s story tries to anatomize what makes Apple’s design so special. Yet, the findings are what you’d hear from any other sophisticated design group at Microsoft Corp., Google or elsewhere around Seattle or Silicon Valley: - Design is more than just a veneer - “We care about making great products, but we’ve worked equally hard at making a great team and culture” - Research is important - Prototyping and typography are also important - “We iterate and reiterate” - Cross-pollination helps Additional conclusions are equally anodyne and stale. The story notes that the team’s “most useful quality” is a “sense of curiosity”; that “an awareness of craft and construction is essential”; that “accessibility and inclusiveness are vital components”; that they’re driven by a “reverence for the creative process”; and that there are tables at the studio where “collaborative discussions take place.” Under Ive and the late Steve Jobs, the studio was perceived as a mysterious and magical place where Apple injected je ne sais quoi into pioneering hardware. A lot of this, of course, was self-serving myth—the [reality was a bit messier](—but Jobs and Ive were dazzling, if not enigmatic, frontmen who could narrate Apple’s unique design ethos for public consumption. Jobs could be [brutally]( [blunt]( about [products]( that fell short of his expectations and brought a distinct point of view to everything from [interaction paradigms]( to [skeuomorphism](. Ive, meanwhile, was a quieter force but added [depth](. Without them at the helm, Apple has sought to publicize a new generation of potential fanboy heroes under Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, including such executives as [Kevin Lynch](, [Craig Federighi]( and a slew of other fresher faces. The design studio is now jointly led by Evans Hankey and Alan Dye. Whereas stories about Apple historically focused on a single leader, Wallpaper highlights Hankey, Dye and a handful of other designers, none of whom sound either empowered to say anything Jobsian or possibly just don’t know how to spin a story as well as their predecessors. Yes, much of this is theater, but that has long been important to Apple’s marketing. There was a strong sense that the company was letting you in on a massive secret anytime they lifted the curtain. This is no longer true given how contrived their unveilings are these days. Take the design team’s insight on AirPods: Apple, their designers explain, did a ton of ergonomic studies on ears to ensure the resulting design offered a nice fit. (Zzzzz…) The Watch, which Hankey says they designed to be the “most intimate” and “most personal product that we’ve ever made,” is a nearly verbatim reconstruction of how Cook labeled the [wearable on stage in 2014]( and how it was [described in press releases](. The irony is that both are magnificent, blockbuster products. They were also both principally designed while Ive was at Apple. Which indicates that the company is still, after all these years, defined by a luminary who no longer works there. —[Austin Carr](mailto:acarr54@bloomberg.net) If you read one thing If you want to read more than one thing, peruse Bloomberg Businessweek’s annual [Jealousy List](, where reporters and editors link to great stories from other publications that gave us the most envy this year. Here’s what you need to know Rivian is close to unveiling plans for an electric-vehicle factory in Georgia. The state has just [one other automotive facility](, a Kia Motors plant. To keep up with the holiday crunch, DHL is adding 15,000 seasonal workers and [doubled its use of warehouse robots]( in the U.S. this year. Flink, a rapid grocery delivery startup in Berlin, raised $750 million in a deal led by DoorDash to [fund expansion](. Follow Us More from Bloomberg Dig gadgets or video games? [Sign up for Power On]( to get Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more in your inbox on Sundays. [Sign up for Game On]( to go deep inside the video game business, delivered on Fridays. Why not try both? Like Fully Charged? | [Get unlimited access to Bloomberg.com](, where you'll find trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Fully Charged newsletter. 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