The designer of Apple’s most iconic devices is now possibly about to face them in court. So where did it go so wrong?

The name Jony Ive will forever be synonymous with Apple.

In his pomp, he was directly responsible for designing many of their most iconic products. The iMac G3,the iPod, the PowerBook, and, of course, the iPhone were all born from the drawing board of one Sir Jony Ive.

Steve Jobs and Jony Ive were inseparable and together helped to create the beast that we now know. Customers flocked to Apple because it was cool, contemporary and because its devices were seen as must-have items. The look and feel of Apple products was, and is, second to none.

There’s no denying that Ive was a very intrinsic and important cog in that wheel.

So how did we go from that to last week, with Apple suing OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, where Ive is now heavily associated? The odd thing was, though, that the name Jony Ive was conspicuously missing from the 41-page document that Apple filed last week.

His latest company, io Products and his co-founder of the company, Tang Tan, were both named, but not Jony himself; instead, generically called a ‘former Apple leader’.

So, what’s going on?

Jony Ive – the forgotten friend

Apple’s aggressive attack against Ive’s new partners would suggest that there is indeed a pretty major rift developing between Apple and OpenAI. It doesn’t take much scratching of the surface to see that Apple are effectively suing Jony Ive…just not by name!

Whether or not Ive is past his best at 59 is up for debate, but his name and reputation still demand attention and fat pay-cheques. This time the pressure is on, though like never before, as I’ll chat about later.

At the time, it seemed that the parting of the ways of Ive & Apple back in 2019 was of mutual consent. There were no terse words or awkward press releases from either party.

It was carried out terribly politely and amicably.

The party line back then was that Ive and his new company, Love From, would continue to work with Apple. Looking back, the love-fest clearly started to fall apart after the passing of Steve Jobs.

While Jobs & Ive very much sang from the same hymn sheet, it was obvious from fairly early on that was not the case with the then new, and now soon to be departed CEO, Tim Cook.

That ‘working relationship’ came to a quiet end in 2022 when the contract between Love From and Apple was not renewed. Ive, who was knighted in 2012, busied himself with a few high-profile projects such as the King’s coronation emblem and Ferrari’s first all-electric car – the Luce, which was panned at its launch. To be fair, Ive was only responsible for the console & interior, not the whole project, though.

Looking back at the launch of the Luce, his words at the time were telling:

“Part of my grumpy belligerence now is I’m done working with assholes. I’m so happy that we can now place creative excellence right at the centre of what we’re doing.”

In the background, Ive had been busy setting up his new company – io Products. Most of the key employees of this new company were old colleagues from his days at Apple, including its co-founder, Tan, who was Apple’s head of design for the iPhone & Apple Watch.

io Products started to work with OpenAI from day one as they worked on a very secretive, all-new device. The relationship was made public in a blaze of publicity when the boss of OpenAI, Sam Altman, announced he was buying Ive’s company for $6.4 billion ahead of the release of this AI device.

Not bad for a start-up, eh? Clearly, Altman doesn’t believe Ive’s best days are behind him then!

For whatever reason, Ive didn’t actually join the company, but cryptically said;

“I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment”

Ive has recently said he feels some guilt for his part in the smartphone addiction that has swept our culture, saying that his work at OpenAI is now driven by the feeling that “humanity deserves better.”

The waiting game

Months on, and there is still no sign of this humanity-friendly, life-changing device that Altman & Ive spoke of. All that has been leaked about it so far is that it will apparently be “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen”.

But where once OpenAI stood at the front of the AI race, that is no longer the case. Anthropic and Claude are now arguably the leaders, with Google & Gemini possibly laying claim to the second spot. And don’t forget Elon Musk and Grok could yet become serious contenders in the space as well, when the added resources from the float of SpaceX fall into his lap.

OpenAI, who are haemorrhaging dollars to the tune of $120 billion a year, need this new device to be a runaway success – a new iPhone even!

Interestingly, one of the very few people to have laid eyes on this new device is Steve Jobs’ widow – Laurene Powell. I swear, a movie will be made about this whole episode sometime! And to further fan the flames, Powell was one of the first major investors of this new company too.

We know they have a desire to make a screen-free device, and from all the chat I heard at CES this year, it seems we can expect it to be a puck or speaker that will listen to our conversations. Working with ChatGPT, you can see how that would be a tight fit.

But consumers’ history with listening devices, such as Amazon’s Alexa, has not exactly been a runaway success. So, are we really ready to part ways with our phones for this new ‘listening’ future?

I’m sceptical, but I guess time will tell.

Although the OpenAI device isn’t expected until the early part of 2027, there is a very real possibility that they may announce some more details about it this autumn – sometime around the second or third week of September seems apt!

That, of course, is when Apple generally announces its new lineup of iPhones. This year’s event is expected to be centred around the release of the iPhone Ultra – the new and long-awaited foldable iPhone.

How much would Altman & Ive love to disrupt that moment, and equally, how much would Apple be fuming if their glory was stolen by the departed Ive?

It’s a thin line between love and hate.

Closing the final door

Originally, Apple had chosen to partner with ChatGPT to power its Apple Intelligence.

When the new, and vastly improved Siri was launched this summer at WWDC, as expected, Apple had decided to bin off ChatGPT in favour of working with Google.

It’s almost Apple putting up the proverbial two fingers, isn’t it?

The former Apple employees who didn’t jump ship directly to io Products seem to have ended up at OpenAI anyway. Make no mistakes about it, Apple & OpenAI are not friends, which is what has led to this latest lawsuit.

The lawsuit states that this is part of “a pattern of theft of Apple’s trade secrets by OpenAI employees who were formerly at Apple”.

Apple allege that during interviews with former Apple employees who were hoping to join io Products, Tang Tan, io’s co-founder, had openly asked interviewees to discuss details of Apple’s secret projects, and that OpenAI had even gone as far as to ask them to bring prototypes with them!

I’ll admit it sounds far-fetched, but it’s in the document, so one can only assume that the company has something to substantiate such wild claims…that is, unless it’s simply publicity-seeking bluster from Apple!

Apple feels that io Products & OpenAI soon realised that developing a slew of new tech was not as straightforward as they’d thought, so had sought “unlawful shortcuts” to bring products to market as they faced huge pressure to deliver on its trillion-dollar public listing, as I alluded to earlier.

As you’d have guessed, OpenAI has fired back in response to the lawsuit, saying there was “no evidence this complaint has merit”.

Remember what I said about this becoming a movie at some point?

The lawsuit has stalled somewhat in the early days as, rather embarrassingly, a lawyer representing Apple mixed up the names of two OpenAI employees – Wang & Chang.

The devil will forever be in the detail!

Of course, Apple has the clout to file this lawsuit simply to ward off any more of its current employees being tempted by the OpenAI dollar. And as a cherry on the cake, I’m sure Apple would love nothing more than to see OpenAI splashing out huge amounts of money in legal costs. If OpenAI had any sense, surely, they’d pay for this to go away early on.

This has all the signs of an extremely lengthy and expensive case.

And if it is more than simple stalling, and this does end up in court, who’s to say that Ive himself may be deposed and be forced to give evidence in the case under oath? There will be no quick resolution to this case; that’s for sure. This could easily drag on for years. These are merely the open salvos.

I hope OpenAI’s pockets are deep, because, as we know, Apple’s are very, very deep indeed and, if needed, they’ll be willing to see this thing through to the bitter end.

The Ive and Apple years were a wonderful, enigmatic and enthralling time. But when relationships like that end, it is often in a very messy and expensive divorce.

This has the makings of a very messy split-up indeed.