Apple CEO Tim Cook Confirms Jony Ive's Design Influence On iOS 7
May 29, 2013
As expected, Apple CEO Tim Cook granted an interview at D11, this year's D: All Things Digital conference hosted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. The interview was decidedly wide-ranging, and one of the talking points touched upon was Apple's popular mobile operating system, iOS.
According to Cook, the new version of iOS, unofficially dubbed iOS 7, is set to be unveiled at next month's WWDC. He also confirmed that Jony Ive is indeed working on it and said that the well-known Apple design guru has been "really key" to the upcoming software update.
It's worth noting that iOS 7 is the first major iOS update not developed under former Apple iOS Software chief Scott Forstall, who was fired last October. Following Forstall's ouster, Craig Federighi became the new head of iOS software engineering, while Ive assumed leadership of Apple's Human Interface team.
As noted by The Verge, Cook described Ive in his D11 interview as "absolutely incredible," and said that Apple "recognized that Jony had contributed significantly to the look and feel of Apple over many, many years and could do that for our software as well."
Ive has been recently rumored to be shunning skeuomorphs, which Forstall famously favored, and introducing a "flat" design to iOS 7.
Unsurprisingly, Cook didn't provide any details regarding the update, calling instead on users to "be the judge" as to its merits and features once it's showcased at Apple's developer conference next month.
In a closely related latter part of the interview, Cook said that it would be allowing third parties, in addition to Facebook and Twitter, to provide more integrated features on iOS. A couple of these third parties may very well be Flickr and Vimeo, whose "deeply" integrated versions with iOS are rumored to be under evaluation by Apple.
