Digging Into Apple’s Future Without Jony Ive—Data Sheet

George Colony, CEO of tech-industry consultant Forrester, emailed first thing Monday to ask if I’d read The Wall Street Journal’s outstanding piece about Jony Ive’s slow-motion exit from Apple. Indeed I had. (I recommend you do too, if you missed it in yesterday’s Data Sheet links.) And, without having to ask, I knew what was on Colony’s mind.

As I’ve written before, he and I have been shadow boxing for years now about Apple. It began when he challenged a central thesis of my 2012 book, Inside Apple, which stated that while Apple no longer would be “insanely great,” it would continue to be merely great, a nifty feat. Colony has contended that innovation died at Apple when Steve Jobs did and that the company never would be the same.

The Journal article, which portrayed design genius Ive as an increasingly distant and absent Apple leader, provided confirmation for Colony. It has now been nine years since Apple’s last truly breakthrough product, the iPad. And the article had some nice color on tension over the Apple Watch, which Ive saw as a luxury item and Tim Cook sees as an extension of the cash-generating iPhone.

I never quibbled with Colony’s contention that Apple wouldn’t innovate at the same level as it had. What company could? Successfully growing to a trillion dollars in market capitalization without the wheels coming off was an achievement in its own right. Thus began our short e-debate Monday:

Me: “I think enough time has passed now for us both to pat ourselves on the back for having successfully made our points, no?”

Colony: “As is typical, I was right in the long-term, but wrong in the short-term. But Forrester gets paid for being right in the long-term. You were right in the short term, and that’s what Fortune readers require. So we were both serving our customers! No one is guilty of blowing it at Apple – the company lost a “once-every-hundred-years” leader – no one could have replaced him. And Tim has done an admirable job of caretaking and extending the Jobs inventions. But this brand’s customers demand and will ultimately require real innovation – or they will begin to peel off. Apple’s board has to get the next CEO right.”

Me: “Agreed all.”

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Four long years ago Dan Primack interviewed now business partners Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta at Brainstorm Tech in Aspen. It’s a riveting and highly relevant interview today, especially if you’re interested in streaming, Spotify, or Taylor Swift.