Reporting by NUPIAO
On June 21st, renowned tech insider Mark Gurman dropped some news that Apple’s industrial design team has hit its lowest influence level in decades. Fresh off taking the helm, new CEO John Ternus is already making one thing crystal clear: reviving design is priority number one.
Honestly, you can trace the decline right back to about a decade ago when former Chief Design Officer Jony Ive started stepping back from day-to-day operations. Back in the Steve Jobs era, Ive was basically the second-most-powerful voice in the room. Every product roadmap flowed straight from the design floor up. As we’ve read in past biographies, Jobs handed over all aesthetic and innovation calls directly to Ive’s crew—and that top-down creative control is exactly what fueled Apple’s string of industry-shattering launches.
Things really shifted gears once Tim Cook fully took the reins. By the time the Apple Watch rolled out in 2014, clashes between Ive and ops over material costs and manufacturing headaches were getting serious. Time and again, design proposals got shot down by supply chain and finance teams. From there, Ive gradually faded from daily management, only popping into the office a few hours a week, while the design department’s clout steadily shrank.
When Ive officially departed in 2019 to launch his own studio, LoveFrom (and later teamed up with Ferrari), Apple’s internal structure took a hard pivot. Both industrial design and human-interface branches were lumped under then-COO Jeff Williams—a guy with zero design background. Since then, Apple lost a dedicated executive championing design strategy, and the design team lost its direct line to the C-suite entirely.
That shift in hierarchy sent our best talent packing. Design leads suddenly lost their seats at the leadership table, and fresh ideas had to climb a mountain of operational approvals before seeing daylight. Plenty of seasoned creatives just couldn’t stomach the mismatch in decision-making power, so they walked.
Take Evans Hankey, Ive’s right-hand man and former VP of Industrial Design, who left in 2022. He co-founded the AI hardware startup io with Ive, which reportedly snagged a $6.5 billion acquisition offer from OpenAI in 2025. Meanwhile, Chris Stringer, the mastermind behind the HomePod, went off to build his own audio brand, and Danny Cost—the go-to iPad designer—jumped ship to lead design at GoPro. Following the exodus, Apple tapped Molly Anderson, someone who’d never independently run a team, to head industrial design. Critics called it a painfully conservative move. Then last year, Alan Dye, who oversaw user experience design, bolted for Meta, further draining the team’s momentum.
You don’t have to look far to see how this brain drain and stripped-down authority are shaping our products. Industry watchers have pointed out that during Cook’s later years, iPhones, Macs, and iPads mostly get surface-level refreshes. The design language feels recycled, and frankly, we’re missing those signature, category-defining moments that used to make jaws drop. It’s a stark contrast to the Ive era peak.
Let’s rewind to Apple’s actual golden age starting in 1998. That translucent, rainbow-colored iMac didn’t just save the company from bankruptcy—it completely rewrote PC aesthetics. Fast forward to 2007, when the original iPhone ditched the physical keyboard for a seamless full-screen touch interface, forever changing smartphones. Then came the ultra-thin MacBook Air in 2008, setting a new benchmark for laptop portability. All of these breakthroughs were spearheaded by Ive’s squad. Their “design-first, hardware-adapts-later” playbook kept Apple sitting comfortably at the top of the industry’s style game for years.
Underneath these structural tweaks lies a pretty tricky double bind Apple faces today. On one hand, cutting-edge categories like AI wearables and foldables live or die by distinct design differentiation. Android’s been cycling through foldable generations nonstop. If Apple’s debut foldable doesn’t bring a bold, iconic aesthetic, it’ll struggle to stand out. On the flip side, Tim Cook’s fifteen-year legacy of ruthless cost control and mass-production scaling is deeply baked into the company’s DNA. Finance won’t easily loosen its grip on material and machining budgets anytime soon. For design to reclaim its old sway, we’ll need to strike a delicate balance between pushing creative boundaries and keeping things manufacturable.
Looking ahead, Apple’s gearing up for its densest hardware rollout ever. Per Gurman’s latest leak, fall 2026 is expected to bring the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, plus the highly anticipated foldable iPhone Ultra. We’re also looking at Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. Beyond phones and watches, the lineup supposedly includes several Mac updates, entry-level iPads powered by Apple Intelligence, a potential smart home hub, an OLED iPad mini, a refreshed Apple TV, and a HomePod mini.
Then 2027 rolls around, marking two decades of iPhone. Expect spring releases like the second-gen iPhone Air (aiming to fix camera gaps and boost battery life) followed by an autumn showcase featuring the iPhone 20 Pro/Pro Max, next-gen foldables, AirPods with front-facing cameras for Siri AI, and—finally—Apple’s first pair of smart glasses. Originally slated for late this year, the eyewear now points toward a late-2027 launch window. Roughly spanning 2027 into 2028, rumors also hint at a desktop robot with articulated arms and a major Vision Pro upgrade.
Talk of Apple’s first foldable has been swirling lately. In April, according to NUPIAO’s reporting based on supply chain insiders, the pilot production phase went smoothly without any major snags, suggesting no delays on the horizon. “They’ve been stress-testing the folding mechanism for years. Apple always plays it safe on the exterior design, sticking to battle-tested components, so everything looks solid,” one insider shared with NUPIAO.
And just yesterday on June 21st, per NUPIAO’s recent coverage, a key Apple supplier has already kicked off small-batch shipments for the prototype foldable iPhone Ultra. Based on the targets they’ve received internally, we’re looking at a September 2026 official launch.
With this massive product wave coming, Gurman points out that Ternus stepped in to take direct oversight of design last year. During recent internal syncs, he’s been hammering home the message that “design is Apple’s core.” To pull this off, he needs to find a leader who actually gets a seat at the executive table and has the chops to rebuild the team’s creative influence.
“Apple has brought outstanding design to more people than any company in history,” Ternus previously noted, adding that he’s genuinely thrilled to step into the CEO role because Apple is “about to change the world again.” As he put it, “As a company, our core identity isn’t going anywhere.”
