I'm a fanboy, I recognize it. I love each Apple product. Now and for years. But seeing this announcement, I feel this feeling again. One already seen. And it's scary already excited. And it is There are news that has returned to you In the stomach. This feeling that something big is about to happen. The acquisition of IO, the company of Jony IVE, by Openai for $ 6,500 million is one of them.
But how can we get here? Jonathan Ive was Apple's soul. Without it, the company would surely have not been awarded so far. Steve Jobs trusted his mind and his hands to conceive of the mythical G3 IMAC and the creations that have changed our lives as the iPhone. However, in 2019, he decided to say goodbye to Apple to create his own design business (Lovefrom). Many of us thought it was a “retirement”. A retirement to enjoy more life and Create products that in Apple could not do.
Since his departure, Jony Ive has worked for the British Royal House, he created buttons for the jackets … But when the rumor jumped that he collaborated with Openai to develop a material device a year ago, we started to suspect that there was perhaps something else. And now, that this association between two friends like Sam Altman and Jonathan Ive has been formalized, most Apple fans only ask us, How did we reach this point?
The battle of IVE between art and numbers
Let's go back to an Apple Park joint room in 2017. On one side of the table, link the managers and the spreadsheets. To the other, A man obsessed with perfection And the lost look. Indeed, it was Jonathan Ive.
Peter Stern, a newcomer to Apple, projects a graphic in the form of X. The lines show how Marketing of physical products Apple decreases while services such as iCloud and Apple Music increase. It is not even present in the room. He went out to drink fresh air. The feeling he had is that Apple's future will no longer be the material he liked to design. Sensation or not, Apple's financial results figures are inclined in favor of IVE's opinion.
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“This is another of these counters,” complained IVE to a colleague when James Bell, former Boeing financial director, joined Apple’s board of directors. For a man who had spent decades obsessed with the exact radio of the corners of an iPhone, see how Decisions began to be made according to the margins And not the experiences was even painful.
The story of the rupture between IVE and Apple is the story of two incompatible visions: that of the artist obsessed with perfection and that of the financier with the figures. When Steve Jobs died in 2011, I lost more than a boss: he lost his “soul mate” Creative, for the mere to understand that technology must be as beautiful as it is functional.
But it comes from further away. Apple Watch was the first “post Jobs” product And Jony Ive wanted it to be an object of fashion and luxury. The marketing team and the financial directors are betting on the fitness approach. For the presentation in 2014, I insisted to install a white tent which had to remove two dozen trees. Cost: $ 25 million. Marketing leaders were horrified. Only the intervention of Tim Cook, who finally gave Luz Verde, saved the project. “We have to do it,” said Tim. But what seemed to be a victory for IVE proved to be, because he would later admit to his colleagues, the first moment he considered that he had no longer the unconditional support of the company.
The white tent that was created for Apple Watch's link in Flint Center
And see him again from Jonathan Ive arrived
In June 2019, Jonathan Ive gathered his team to watch the film yesterday, which deals with the conflict between art and trade. The next day, he announced his walk. “Art needs adequate space and support to grow”He said to his teammates. At that time, IVE was barely visited by Apple Campus.
On an occasion, the software team waited three hours for IVE to appear in the battery, an exclusive social club in San Francisco. When he finally arrived, he did not apologize for the delay. He examined the conceptions, gave his opinion and left without making final decisions. The works were paralyzed. All these anecdotes were collected by the New York Times three years after the departure of Jonathan Ive from Apple.
The iPhone XR was one of the last iPhone that Jonathan Ive created for Apple
Metamorphosis: from Lovefrom to Io, and now OPENAI
It was the same year that Jony Ive Founded Lovefrom, its own design company. Apple announced it even in a press release; In fact, it would be one of its main customers as a consultant. IVE has invested $ 90 million in properties in Jackson Square, San Francisco, transforming the neighborhood for five years with an ambitious plan that included the Renaturalization of the Region and new studies for your business.
His project portfolio was very diverse: From the design of the coronation emblem of King Carlos III inside the first electric Ferrari, through an exclusive jacket for Moncler, valued at more than $ 2,000. But I wanted something else.
Details of Jonathan IVE's collaboration with the Moncler clothing company
In 2024, I founded IO products with former Apple colleagues: Evans Hankey (his successor to Apple until 2023), Tang Tan (manager of the design of the iPhone and Apple Watch until 2024) and Scott Cannon. The team worked secretly with Sam Altman for two years of Openai.
Carlos III's coronation shield from the United Kingdom designed by Jonathan IV
The revolution that Jony Ive wants (coming back) to bring to the world
“I think we have the opportunity to completely reinvent what a computer means,” explains IVE in the video presentation video with OpenAI. Next to him, Sam Altman describes him as “The deepest thinker I have never met”. Luck or not, the video represents a speech of friends such as mythical photography between Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive.
The relationship between the two started two years ago, when the son of IVe told him about Chatgpt. Since then, they have worked in secret in what IVE considers “the best work that our team has ever done”. In the video, moreover, They do not hesitate to name the iPhone or MacBook Pro. Consequently, at least for them, the device brought by hand would exceed these two in innovation.
I have the growing feeling that everything I have learned in the past 30 years led me to this place this moment, says IVE.
Sam Altman has already tried the first prototypes: “I think it's the coolest technology that the world has ever seen.”. What they build, they explain, do not intend to replace the smartphone, but to create “a completely new type” which allows to interact with AI in a more natural and intuitive way.
The products we use to connect with unimaginable technology have decades of seniority. And it is simply good to think that there must be something beyond these inherited products.
The first aircraft of this collaboration should make their debut in 2026. And we are talking to the plural, because yes, Confirm that there will be a whole family of products. When Sam Altman asked what Steve Jobs would think of this new adventure, he responded without hesitation to Bloomberg: “He would be proud in a condemned manner.” And it gives me this tingling in my stomach that I felt when I saw the first iPhone.
Apple has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to reinvent and surprise the market with innovative products such as Airpod or Vision Pro. And the best apple is a fanboy, and the worst thing Apple has are the fanboys. Sometimes we are very demanding, but we must recognize that Staying at the forefront and reinventing products year after year is a challenge Huge, and yet the company manages to do it frequently.
Now, with the WWDC just at the corner of the street and the expectation of a radical overhaul in iOS 19, it is important to remember that Jony Ive sat the foundations of the current design of iOS with iOS 7 in 2013. Now you are not in charge of these changesAnd as we saw this week with the signing of a heavyweight of nothing in the ranks of Cupertino, Apple continues to move forward and not to stop.
And above all: that Jonathan Ive and Sam Altman take a device does not mean that it will be direct competition with apples. They said it wouldn't be like an iPhone. They can even complement each other with the need to have an application where to manage it.
At present, The closest we have is June 9 To find out how Apple surprises us with its software progress. Beyond that, in 2026, he will play by looking at this birth of Sam Altman and Jony Ive with the same eyes and sensations that we had when he met the original iPhone. And it is that this same couple was the one who put the bar so high.
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