[cseelus]

That would be Dan Riccio, wouldn‘t it? He is senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, directly answering to Tim Cook and leading the Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod engineering teams.

Some of the current/recent failures that come to mind:

- The MacBook keyboard issues discussed here

- The MacPro disaster (thermal design issues -> no real update since almost six years)

- The The MBP 2018 thermal design issues

- The MBP „Flexgate“ (display connector design flaw)

- The AirPower debacle

- The iPad Pro 3rd gen. „Bendgate“

[chipotle_coyote]

Dan might be the guy who falls on his sword if anyone does, but I suspect that he is struggling with design constraints imposed from someone higher up. Someone obsessed with making everything as thin as possible -- which is arguably the root of many of Apple's hardware woes, large and small. Someone with a British accent who is fond of white rooms.

(Having said that, I think some of those issues are somewhat overstated. The keyboard is a real issue; the Mac Pro's thermal corner is a real issue, but it's one we have solid evidence is being addressed by both the forthcoming Mac Pro and the already-existing iMac Pro; AirPower is a debacle, but I don't know if that's really his purview; the rest...eh. I'm not saying they're not real, but I don't know how widespread they are as real issues. But with the exception of AirPower and the Mac Pro, all the issues you listed would probably have literally been solved by making everything 1mm thicker.)

[atomical]

I think Ive is preparing us for laptops without keyboards. Two screens, one that you type on. It's a dumb idea but I think they will go through with it.

[mcphage]

> The AirPower debacle

I'm not sure "debacle" is the right word for a product they announced, and then later decided they couldn't make, and so cancelled. There were no physical copies out there, no consumers wasted money on it, it was just... a cancelled product.

[pier25]

Do you think the engineering team decides the thickness of laptops or the design team (Ive) impose specs onto the engineers?

[kevin_b_er]

Apple operates on Form Over Function and has for years. The engineering team is subservient to the design team. You are seeing the consequences of it live. The engineering team knows the butterfly keyboard design is fundamentally flawed, but the design team has priority. There's only so much the engineers can do to make it Function while being constrained by Form.

This is the same type of corporate structural flaw as Boeing has, just without the loss of life for Apple. They needed to sell the plane without re-certifying, so the management demands some poor engineers work around it while having their hands tied behind their back.

[scarface74]

Do you really think if the head of engineering went to Tim Cook and said that Ive’s design wasn’t technically feasible he would have been told to ship it anyway?

[scarface74]

The MBP 2018 design issue was fixed by a firmware update a week later.

The AirPower debacle was anything but. They noticed they had an unfixable design problem and cancelled the project. The alternative would have been something similar to the Samsung/Galaxy Fold issue. Shipping a bad product.

Even the Mac Pro not being updated was halfway because they thought the IMac Pro bad external GPUs was the answer. Honestly, for most people it could be and has gotten great review. They had a change of heart.

[mikestew]

The alternative would have been something similar to the Samsung/Galaxy Fold issue.

Nope, there's another alternative: announce it when it's sitting in the backroom of every Apple store, like back in the old days. I'm sure Apple has their reasons for not doing that much anymore, but it would have avoided this very issue.

[raverbashing]

That, or he is overridden by the design team and their failure to comprehend bending stress requirements or flexing fatigue in cables

[caycep]

There is a need of a new Bob Mansfield, apparently...