Apple Announces Upcoming Departure of Lead Product Designer Evans Hankey

Making the design team thinner.

Maybe that's his reason for leaving, he's had enough of Tim Apple?

If this is the guy that decided the over priced entry level iPad should have the landscape oriented camera, yet the iPad Pros shouldn’t, then I say Bye!!

Evans Hankey’s a woman.

Stares at two people in photo.

Wants the table they are leaning on.

Thanks for all the hard work Evans, so many amazingly good designs over the last years, will be missed.

I’m not really well-versed with company structure, but my question is… isn’t it also up to the executives, Tim etc to sign off on designs too? like, is it really all on the designers? do they come up with the designs *and* say “this must release just as is. no changes.”?

I just figure some other players would have a say in how something looks after the designers draft it up.

You nailed it here. It's going to be a combination of what designers want with what engineers can do within cost constraints enforced by others (hello Apple pencil v1 on the new base iPad total cost call there) - and then of course you have the top execs who oversee it all who could affect things.

As others have pointed out, Apple has done astoundingly well under their current CEO, but the company misses someone at the flyover exec level who would put their foot down and say "you know what folks, this really sucks, we can't do it like this.", that Job's did - thinking of Apple Watch v3 carried on for years where you could not do a OS update without doing a factory reset 1st, every single time, or this goofy v1 pencil on the iPad etc..

The company is doing fine without that, but it would do better with someone making these calls and keeping the user experience quality at top notch (for everything). Tough to get someone like that, which the CEO could trust who wouldn't also be an ego centric nut job though.

explains a lot really, the latest products show it, they need to hire a new team that are best for the job

Maybe that's his reason for leaving, he's had enough of Tim Apple?

She could have left for a variety of reasons; from her Apple stock vesting, to wanting to pursue a different opportunity, to moving to another part of the country, to wanting to retire and enjoy life, and on and on.

Tim Apple? Why the juvenile slam?