The designer who introduced the iPhone Air at Apple's September event left the company, reports Bloomberg. Abidur Chowdhury recently departed Apple to join an AI startup, a move that apparently "made waves" internally because he was a rising star on the design team.
Chowdhury worked on the iPhone Air, and he described its feature set in a two-minute presentation in September. His departure was not related to the iPhone Air or the disappointing sales of the device.
Chowdhury joined Apple's industrial design team in 2019, the same year that Jony Ive left the company to create a new design firm. After Ive departed, several other members of the design team left, either joining him or moving on to other companies.
There are very few designers remaining at Apple who worked under Ive, and Apple has lost several high-profile designers over the last six years.
Former Apple operations chief Jeff Williams had been overseeing the product design team since 2023, but he retired from Apple last week. Apple's design team will now report directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
