Tim Cook: WSJ article about Jony Ive leaving Apple is ‘absurd’

Tim Cook finds an article in The Wall Street Journal about the last years of chief designer Jony Ive at Apple ‘absurd’. According to Cook, the article shows “a lack of understanding” about how things work at Apple.

Tim Cook sent the response in a mail to an NBC reporter, an American TV channel. “Many of the details of the article, and certainly the conclusions, don’t match reality,” said Cook, who rarely responds to negative articles about the company he leads. The Wall Street Journal said in a response to NBC that it remains behind the article.

Cook claims the article “twists” relationships, decisions and events. “To a point where we don’t even recognize the company it’s trying to describe.” The attack on The Wall Street Journal is notable because Apple has always had a good relationship with the business newspaper and has often provided exclusive information to the medium. Both companies still work together. For example, the business newspaper is one of the few newspapers that is in Apple News+.

The WSJ article describes that for years Ive seldom came into the office and was no longer involved in the company’s design department. This is how the article describes a meeting between designers and Ive, where the designers came to San Francisco to present the interface for the iPhone X. Ive would have been three hours later than agreed and subsequently failed to make important decisions about the design.

Out of frustration, four experienced designers are said to have left last year and others are said to be looking for another job. Ive himself would have wanted more distance, because after the death of founder Steve Jobs in 2011, Apple would have received more attention for things other than design. The rumors that Ive would have kept more distance had been going for years.

Apple announced last week that Ive is leaving and starting his own design company LoveFrom. Apple will be one of the first customers, which means that Ive will remain involved in Apple projects for years to come, Apple says.