Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products (21 page)

Jony and Ruby had been getting into regular shouting matches. Jony was always pushing the envelope, constantly challenging how things were made and designed. It was Rubinstein’s job to get products out the door, and he frequently balked at Jony’s demands. According to a former designer who worked with the pair, Rubinstein avoided Jony and the studio as much as possible and, if he did have to meet with Jony, he became visibly agitated. “Jon’s blood would just boil whenever he had to go into the studio and deal with Jony,” said one source.

The relationship was equally problematic for Jony. The confrontation that had been brewing for years finally happened. Jony reportedly went to Jobs and told him, “It’s him or me.”

Despite Rubinstein’s essential role in the development of the iPod and scores of other products, Jobs chose Jony.
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In October 2005, Apple issued a press release that framed Rubinstein’s exit as a long-deserved retirement. He was replaced as head of the iPod division by Tony Fadell.
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Rubinstein would spend some time building a house in Mexico before later becoming CEO of Palm and developing a rival to the iPhone.

Speaking of the affair years later, Rubinstein was diplomatic about his relationship with Jony. “Jony and I worked very closely over many years and did a lot of work together. My job was to instill balance and get products out the door. Sometimes working with Jony could be difficult.”
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Even if they had their hard moments, during their shared time at Apple, Jony and his then-superior Rubinstein steered the company’s design language through several phases, moving from multicolored plastic to monochrome plastic and on to a range of metals. Importantly, each stage marked a growing sophistication in the tandem of design and manufacturing.

That the manufacturing methods became a larger and larger part of the design process undoubtedly added to the tension between the two men. The design team was no longer concerned with merely how the products looked and worked. Their brief became how the products were made, and Jony’s team, which had always spent a lot of time designing products, invested more and more time in figuring out how to manufacture them.

Former design team leader Bob Brunner gave his view on the travails: “Apple designers spend ten percent of their time doing traditional industrial design: coming up with ideas, drawing, making models, brainstorming. They spend ninety percent of their time working with manufacturing, figuring out how to implement their ideas.”
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It’s little wonder, then, than Jony’s star was ascendant in a company where design and materials had become the industrial equivalent of conjoined twins.

Jony’s outlook on the cost of R&D and development work was simple: He didn’t want to know about it. As he told a former engineer who worked in the operations group, “I do not want any of my guys thinking about cost. They should not even care about the cost because that is not their job.”

To some in the company, it seemed as if Jony reported to no one, not even Jobs. Reportedly he told suppliers, “Imagine I have a bucket of money in my hand. I will let you pull out as much as you want to make this happen,” said the operations engineer. Discussions between Jony’s group and product development and operations tended to go in one direction, from the designers to production.

As the operations executive summed it up, “ID rules Apple.”

The intimacy of design and manufacturing is what led apple to China. Apple’s shift to manufacturing its products in China has been credited to Tim Cook, the company’s CEO and Jobs’s chosen successor.

Jobs himself had been managing Apple’s suppliers and factories when he hired Cook in 1998 as senior vice president of operations. Raised in Robertsdale, Alabama, Cook was formerly an operations executive at Compaq and had spent twelve years at IBM. With his cool demeanor, he bonded immediately with the volatile Jobs, who had already rejected a number of candidates for the operations manager role, walking out of at least one interview within five minutes. But the formidable CEO connected with Cook and offered him the job, giving him an office near his own.

Cook inherited the unenviable task of overhauling Apple’s manufacturing and distribution networks, which were in a notorious state of disorganization. Apple had its own factories operating in California (Sacramento), Ireland (Cork) and Singapore. The three sites produced motherboards and assembled the same products that, in theory, were intended for sale in their respective geographies, America, Europe and Asia. In practice, however, motherboards were often shipped from Singapore to Cork for partial assembly, then shipped back to
Singapore for final assembly, and then to the United States for sale. “As you can imagine,” Cook said of the arrangement, “the costs weren’t so good, and the cycle times weren’t that good.”
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Jobs’s streamlining of Apple’s product line to just four products simplified things. Instead of four motherboards for desktops, there was now just one. The machines in his 2×2 product matrix shared as many common parts as possible, and instead of using exotic Mac-only technology, they used industry standard parts shared by other PC manufacturers.

Still, Apple’s factories were costly and inefficient, so Cook started using outside manufacturers. Cook began by visiting every supplier that did business with Apple. He struck hard bargains, consolidated suppliers and encouraged suppliers to move their own factories close to assembly plants.

When Apple introduced the iMac in 1998, it was initially made at the three Apple factories, though LG made the iMac cases and monitors. In February 1999, the company shifted streams, outsourcing the iMac entirely to LG and selling off Apple’s factories. In 2000, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd. took over iMac production. The electronics manufacturer, based in Taiwan, is better known internationally as Foxconn.

Cook would do the same thing with laptops, shifting production from Apple factories to Quanta Computer in Taiwan (for the PowerBook) and Alpha Top Corporation in Taiwan (the iBook). By moving production to outside partners, Cook solved one of Apple’s biggest headaches: inventory, namely, stock sitting in storage. The more parts and machines Apple had in its warehouses, the more money the inventory cost the company. Warehouses full of unsold machines had nearly sunk Apple in 1996, so the new normal had become the less inventory, the better. Cook once referred to inventory as “not only evil, but fundamentally evil.”
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Too much inventory was a consequence of forecasting sales in advance, which had always been mostly a matter of guesswork. Traditionally a company would manufacture goods to suit expected orders over a period of months; that also meant that each machine that was built, shipped and stored cost money until it was sold.

Cook wanted a better system, looking to harness emerging information technology programs that made it possible to fulfill actual customer needs. He created a state-of-the-art IT system that allowed Apple to build in response to demand. He helped set up a complex enterprise-resource-planning system (ERP). The Intranet-based system hooked directly into the IT systems at Apple’s parts suppliers, manufacturers and resellers, giving Cook a detailed view of Apple’s entire supply chain, from screws to customers. With that data, he could manage daily production on the basis of weekly sales forecasts and keep precise tabs on stock at its resellers. He could tell if CompUSA had excess inventory or if it was running out of stock. Later, the ERP was extended into Apple’s own retail stores and became so precise it tracked and reported sales every four minutes.

The ERP allowed Apple to build computers only if they were needed, so-called just-in-time production. And it allowed parts to be left in suppliers’ warehouses until they were required.

Within seven months of Cook’s arrival, Apple had reduced its on-hand inventory from thirty days to six. By 1999, inventory had been reduced to just two days, beating by far the industry’s gold standard, Dell. Thanks to improved operations, Cook was credited with playing a big part in stemming Apple’s losses and returning it to profitability.

Over the years, Cook fine-tuned the system until it was capable of delivering millions of products in secret just in time for massive product launches, accounting for much of Apple’s massive growth. In overseeing Apple production lines, Cook successfully managed not only to keep
inventory low but to keep profit margins high at Apple. The company could never have grown so rapidly and so large without such operational excellence. Just as Jony and the design team designed great products, Cook and his team figured out how to produce them in their millions—and deliver them all over the world, on time and in utmost secrecy.

Another reason Apple shifted manufacturing to China was that the design team started designing products in aluminum, and that’s where the supply chain was located. The Titanium PowerBook G4 had been a big hit, but titanium is an expensive and difficult metal to work with. Plus, it had to be coated in a metallic paint to protect against scratches and fingerprints, but the paint had a tendency to flake off. When Jony’s first prototypes for the iPod mini didn’t work in acrylic and steel, he shifted to anodized aluminum.

According to his design team’s research, aluminum looked like a good material for laptop cases and iPods. It is strong and light, and it can be finished in a range of colors when an anodized coating is bonded chemically to the metal. At that stage, Jony and his crew knew little about aluminum manufacturing, so they started researching camera manufacturers like Sony, which produced a lot of cameras in aluminum.

These Japanese-based manufacturers turned out elegant, long-lasting and well-made products. But the aluminum’s point of origin was in China. “We got introduced into that supply chain,” said Satzger. “I remember many trips to go over to understand how you do things with aluminum.”

Apple has taken much flak for outsourcing to China, but when Jony and the team first started using aluminum, they tried to work with manufacturers stateside. Satzger, who was in charge of materials and
finishes for Jony’s group, made the initial contacts. He researched the suppliers to find companies that could make components in the quality and quantity that Apple required.

When the design team was creating the first Mac mini, Satzger started working with a U.S.-based aluminum supplier. The directive from Tim Cook’s operations group was clear: They wanted the Mac mini to be manufactured in the United States. The U.S. supplier looked like a good bet because it was able to supply high-quality aluminum that was relatively free of impurities and would anodize well.

The Mac mini looked relatively simple, but its case was surprisingly complex. The mini’s square case was made from sheet aluminum extruded into a square shape, which was then machined to achieve the right tolerances and finish, especially on the top. Then the case had to be anodized. Again, the design group had exacting requirements, as the anodized layer had to be just the right texture, color, gloss and thickness.

Satzger spent months working with the U.S. supplier but as the deadline approached, the company failed to produce sample cases. A stressed-out Satzger went to the operations group. “We reached a point in the program where I said to the representative of the operations team that was pushing the move toward manufacturing in the USA, ‘We have a really tight schedule, and the [US manufacturer has] not yet delivered a part in spec from the extrusion machine; they haven’t delivered a finished part. When are they going to do this? If they don’t deliver, we don’t have a product. Where is our backup plan?’”

There was none. An increasingly frustrated Satzger observed that the American supplier had no concept of the quality that was required by Apple. “At Apple, good enough is not good enough,” said Satzger. “American companies could not understand the quality that is required for a customer-facing part on an Apple product—the little things that customers notice.”
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By contrast, when Jony’s team went overseas for other projects, the Asian suppliers bent over backward to get the contract. “We first went to Japan, and started using titanium, and moved from there onto aluminum for the first iPods and PowerBooks,” remembered Satzger. “Then we were able to take that knowledge and experience and move, along with a couple Japanese companies, into China and we could say to people such as Foxconn, which had been molding parts for us, ‘Can you make basic sheet metal for us?’ and we started working with them from there. In China, their attitude was very much, ‘We’re going to work on a product to make sure it meets all its specs.’”
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The Mac mini would be produced in Asia, along with iPod minis and other products, at Foxconn.

Another product, the Power Mac G5 tower, would mark a big shift in the relationship between Apple and Foxconn. The design group wanted to make the tower in aluminum instead of plastic, as it had done with its predecessor, the Power Mac G4. Even by Apple’s standards, the project was immensely challenging. “Multiple people got shifted [to different jobs] because they just couldn’t do it,” said Satzger.

The project took more than a year. One cause of the delays was the 2003 outbreak of SARS, which quarantined some of the design team at Foxconn, including Jony. “I stayed for three months in a dormitory to work on the process,” he said. “Ruby and others said it would be impossible, but I wanted to do it because Steve and I felt that the anodized aluminum had a real integrity to it.”
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Jobs wanted the case to be an extruded part, and he thought the big swooping handles on the previous towers were really important to the image of the product. Jony’s team started looking for a huge extruded aluminum tube that could be flattened like a lozenge, and then have two holes scooped out to create the handles. But they found that the only extruded aluminum tubes at the time were eighteen-inch tubes
made for plumbing, which would be too small to suit their needs. Jony’s team investigated whether they could take two extrusions and join them together.

As they struggled, Satzger suggested that instead of using extrusions, the case could be done by the process of roll forming, the way steel gutters are made. A flat sheet of aluminum could be bent at various points as it is passed through a series of rollers to make the lozenge shape. When Satzger suggested this in one of the group’s biweekly brainstorming meetings, one of the other designers said it wasn’t a good idea because Jobs had set his mind on an extruded case.

“You don’t get it,” the other designer told Satzger. “Steve wants it extruded.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Satzger replied, “it’s not possible.”

Finally, Satzger went to Jobs and persuaded him to go with the roll process, despite the opposition of the whole team. The sheets were roll formed into a C shape, with a large door installed on the open side. At first, Jony’s team was concerned about the two small joints on the open side (they wanted it seamless), but eventually decided they could live with it because the joints couldn’t be seen from the front.

Because customers would be opening the machine up, Jony decided they had to design the internal components too. “That was the first time we went internal,” said Satzger. “We controlled board color [the color of the motherboard]; we controlled every connector, every cable. We designed every part inside it: the fan housing, the plenum for the air flow.”

Jony’s team spent months trying to find a good way to lock the door in place. Their first efforts were elaborate locking mechanisms on the door itself, but those ruined the case’s austere surface. Next they decided the G4 tower would have a locking ring, like the recessed deck latch on a sailboat. In one of the brainstorms, Satzger suggested putting the latch
on the back of the machine. “I finally said, ‘Why does it have to be on the door? Look at the hood latch on your car. Don’t interrupt a surface with other details. Leave it for the Apple logo.’”

The team designed a latch that resembles an automobile hood latch connected to a pair of slender deadbolts. The latch is indeed on the back of the machine and, when activated, it slides deadbolts on the insides of the door at the top and bottom that hold it in place. It’s complex but elegant, with no sign of the mechanism from the outside.

When the first cases came off the line, Jony saw that the new machine would become a showpiece. Machines in this category were usually put under a desk, but this one looked so good, Jony figured, it would be put on top of desks instead. That meant all the surfaces had to be treated like the front.

With most products, the front is what’s called an “A” surface. As the best surface, it has to be finished to the highest standards. The sides are “B” surfaces, the backs “C,” the insides “D” surfaces. But, said Satzger, “This product was so beautiful, everything was an ‘A’ surface.”

When the design team conveyed this directive to the manufacturer, Foxconn was flabbergasted. “They were like, ‘What do you mean? This is crazy,’” recalled Satzger. “It got to the point where Foxconn’s team said we’ve never done anything like this, we just can’t.” In the end, they would meet Apple’s standards.