Whatever it is, he's working on shaving 0.3mm from it.

Still bitter that it the ivePhone branding didn’t stick

The kind of work you speak of isn't going to get highlighted at opulent photo op events like "an interview with Stripe". Necessity is the mother of invention, so conservation and repairability advances are being made where they are most needed: poor countries, where people can't afford to just throw thing away because the vendor forcibly EOL'd it. [0]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/tech/639126/india-frankenstein-lapt...

Excluding their cables Apple products held up incredibly well for me. Maybe I’m just lucky but they outlasted every single Android phone and non Apple laptop. It would be interesting to see actual statistics about the average lifespan of each category.

Which decisions?

Ive’s thinness obsession played a huge part in Apple developing the designs that permitted the M series becoming the computers with the best thermal profiles with great compute.

The buggy and unintuitive software has gotten worse, though.

I have a feeling iPod's popularity had more tondo with buying up exclusive access to mini harddrives than the industrial design. Same harddrive maker deals extended to the smaller drives on the iPod mini. iPhone typically gets exclusive access to TSMC's latest nodes a year ahead of competitors. Same with airpods, getting the power draw to that level about a year before most others using their exclusive access to a TSMC node.

Having a big enough brand that buying out exclusive access to new tech isn't a huge risk is key, though they probably got the iPod HD exclusivity very cheap and weren't so big then. Then having the exclusive access builds on the quality and mystique of the brand and makes it less risky to buy in again on the next wave of exclusivity.

I'm inclined to agree. He has moved from the Reality Distortion Field of Jobs to that of Altman.

That's where the money is, and by extension, that's the product category where "Design" wankery is likely to still have enough cachet to not induce eye-rolls.