TECH: Apple’s chief hardware designer to leave after three years

Jony Ive’s pri­ma­ry suc­ces­sor at Apple is leav­ing the com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny con­firmed to Bloomberg that indus­tri­al design chief Evans Han­key will leave the com­pa­ny in three years.

A replace­ment has not yet been decid­ed, but Han­key will report­ed­ly stay on for six months as a tran­si­tion peri­od. Alan Dye, who took the reins of soft­ware design from Ive in 2019, will remain in his position.

Shuf­fling may not be strict­ly a neg­a­tive thing. Bloomberg reports that Gary Butch­er, one of Dye’s for­mer lead design­ers and now Airbn­b’s vice pres­i­dent of design, will return to Apple.

It is unclear what posi­tion Butch­er will take after his return.

In a state­ment sent to Bloomberg, Apple empha­sized that its design depart­ment has “strong lead­ers with decades of expe­ri­ence” who cre­ate prod­ucts that “unmis­tak­ably” rep­re­sent Apple.

No expla­na­tion was giv­en for Han­key’s departure.

Han­key had high hopes when he took office. Ive has designed many of Apple’s most icon­ic hard­ware, includ­ing the iMac, iPod and iPhone.

It’s unclear to what extent Han­key influ­enced prod­uct design (Ive just left the com­pa­ny for good in July), but he over­saw a mix of impor­tant tweaks and sub­tle evo­lu­tions dur­ing his tenure.

He aban­doned the unpop­u­lar but­ter­fly key­board Mac­Book for a more prac­ti­cal mod­el, and also made major design changes such as the iMac M1.

At the same time, there were occa­sions when cau­tion was required, see­ing that the Apple Watch has­n’t changed much since 2018, with the excep­tion of the Ultra.

This does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean a prob­lem for Apple. How­ev­er, espe­cial­ly for prod­ucts in unfa­mil­iar cat­e­gories, there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of chang­ing the direc­tion of the design.

The com­pa­ny is still wide­ly rumored to be devel­op­ing mixed real­i­ty head­sets, aug­ment­ed real­i­ty glass­es, and even elec­tric cars.

Han­key’s influ­ence is still there at big launch­es, but his suc­ces­sor could bring new life to those devices.