Jony Ive could've merged MacBook lines into just one

Former Apple design chief Jony Ive wanted to converge the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro into one product line, an anecdote on his working relationship with CEO Tim Cook reveals.

Jony Ive was an important part of Apple's product designs over the years, putting his hand on almost everything that the company came out with for a long period. However, not everything went his way.

During an episode of The Vergecast first spotted by Notebook Check, veteran journalist Walt Mossberg retold an anecdote that he was told from a "high level source" who was very knowledgeable about the company's products. Mossberg explained that, due to changes in how co-founder Steve Jobs and Tim Cook worked with Ive, there was at one point a possibility that the MacBook lineup would be pared down from two ranges to just one.

"Tim is a guy who knows what he doesn't know. He knew he wasn't a product guy," Mossberg starts. Because of this, Tim Cook handed more power over to Jony Ive, both in hardware and in software, due to not handling the designer in a similar way to Jobs.

"Steve Jobs was his editor," he continues. "Steve Jobs would pull him away from his crazier instincts. Steve Jobs would say no to some things and yes to other things. Tim Cook didn't do that."

After providing Ive with more control and with Ive lacking the editorial oversight, Ive decided "there didn't need to be an Air and a Pro," Mossberg explains.

"He decided he could do the Pro and make it as light and as thin or thinner than the MacBook Air. And it would be a higher price machine, so that would be better for their bottom line and people would buy it even if they didn't need the extra power it gave," the journalist continued.

While Jobs wanted two notebooks covering consumer and Pro users, Ive wanted just one. This way of thinking started "a big war between the design team and its acolytes" led by Ive, and the "engineering and product manager side of the company."

The pushback from engineering was due to it desperately wanting an improved version of the Air, since "the Air was their best-selling product, probably the best-selling laptop in the world, the thing everyone was chasing, and they did not want to leave it on a hill to die."

Mossberg concludes the anecdote by saying "the product guys and the engineers managed to yank it back. And they brought out a new MacBook Air with very minimal changes, but it was a new model."

While Mossberg admits the story doesn't have "journalistic rigor" due to it being from one source with little other evidence, anecdotes from elsewhere certainly help make it seem true.

In 2019, biographer Walter Isaacson claimed he knew Ive was reducing his role at Apple, and insisted that his biography on Steve Jobs "softened" complaints from the co-founder about Tim Cook "not being a product guy."

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34 Comments

timmillea 246 comments · 16 Years

About 9 months ago

There is hardly any difference between the MacBook Pro and Air since Apple silicon. One has a fan and the other doesn't. All other differences are purely down to marketing and deliberate product placement. Improved heat sinking would remove the need for a fan, the display could be made premium and suddenly there is no need for two product lines. Ive was right.

mikethemartian 1485 comments · 18 Years

Kind of obvious considering the direction the MBP went during that period of time.

Xed 2871 comments · 4 Years

timmillea said:

There is hardly any difference between the MacBook Pro and Air since Apple silicon. One has a fan and the other doesn't. All other differences are purely down to marketing and deliberate product placement. Improved heat sinking would remove the need for a fan, the display could be made premium and suddenly there is no need for two product lines. Ive was right.

The lack of a fan affects the weight, internal space usage (i.e.: overall size), power usage, and speaks to the performance allowable. An improved heat sink will improve that but I'll need hard numbers showing cost and benefit to know if that's both worth it or even feasible with a maxed out MacBook Pro.

Additionally, Ive has been gone for 5 years and that was before Apple Silicon Macs starts to be introduced. Was Ive talking about the then unreleased Apple Silicon Macs, but this also could've been a quote from years before that was on the table. Personally, I'm very happy that Cook didn't listen to Ive —assuming this is all legitimate in terms of discussion and memory of past events — as I don't to use the anemic MacBook Air as my primary computing device.

And let's not forget that Ive is not infallible in his ideas. The hockey puck mouse, the clamshell Mac with the upside-down Apple logo when open, charging port on bottom of Magic Mouse 2 to name a few. But at least we're not all talking about the MacMan, which is what Steve Jobs wanted to call the iMac. Bullet dodged there.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/06/30/the-worst-apple-designs-by-jony-ive-according-to-the-appleinsider-staff

mrstep 523 comments · 15 Years

Xed said:

timmillea said:

There is hardly any difference between the MacBook Pro and Air since Apple silicon. One has a fan and the other doesn't. All other differences are purely down to marketing and deliberate product placement. Improved heat sinking would remove the need for a fan, the display could be made premium and suddenly there is no need for two product lines. Ive was right.

The lack of a fan affects the weight, internal space usage (i.e.: overall size), power usage, and speaks to the performance allowable. An improved heat sink will improve that but I'll need hard numbers showing cost and benefit to know if that's both worth it or even feasible with a maxed out MacBook Pro.

True on sustained performance, but the odd thing is that there's been almost no weight difference ("Air"?) for years when it was 2.8lbs vs 3lbs. Apparently the solution was to make the Pro start at 14" and 3.5 lbs, I'd still love to see a true Air show up at the 2 lb mark again. 🤷‍♂️

mrstep said:

Xed said:

timmillea said:

There is hardly any difference between the MacBook Pro and Air since Apple silicon. One has a fan and the other doesn't. All other differences are purely down to marketing and deliberate product placement. Improved heat sinking would remove the need for a fan, the display could be made premium and suddenly there is no need for two product lines. Ive was right.

The lack of a fan affects the weight, internal space usage (i.e.: overall size), power usage, and speaks to the performance allowable. An improved heat sink will improve that but I'll need hard numbers showing cost and benefit to know if that's both worth it or even feasible with a maxed out MacBook Pro.

True on sustained performance, but the odd thing is that there's been almost no weight difference ("Air"?) for years when it was 2.8lbs vs 3lbs. Apparently the solution was to make the Pro start at 14" and 3.5 lbs, I'd still love to see a true Air show up at the 2 lb mark again. 🤷‍♂️

I know that the larger chassis of the MacBook Pro needs a beefier aluminum structure to support the extra weight over an extra distance without flexing, and I wouldn't be surprised if the higher cost of the MBP is more than than just the performance components, but also some better components for cooling which can be lower in weight compared to the entry-level MBA. I'm not sure where these components will fall but I do know that there are a lot of variables to consider to make a valid comparison.