Apple design chief Jony Ive had taken on fewer day-to-day design duties over the past several years

Stephen Nellis for Reuters:

Jony Ive, a close creative collaborator with Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs whose iPhone and other designs fueled Apple’s rise to a $1 trillion company, will leave later this year to form an independent design company…
Jobs deeply involved himself in Apple’s design process, sometimes visiting Apple’s design studios daily to offer Ive feedback. Chief Executive Tim Cook, to whom Ive now reports, has not done the same.
After Jobs’ death, pundits questioned whether Apple could continue Jobs’ pace of new products. Ive became a symbol of continuity, bridging the Jobs and Cook eras.
But Alan Cannistraro, chief executive of online video discovery platform Rheo who previously worked at Apple for a dozen years, said Apple employees knew Ive had taken on fewer day-to-day design duties in the past several years. Around 2015, Cannistraro would often see Ive at a high-end fitness gym on Market Street in San Francisco doing mid-morning workouts.
“When I would see him there, two days a week or more, that just told me he had taken a step back,” Cannistraro said.

MacDailyNews Take: Everyone knew he’d stepped back, just as everyone knew he’d immersed himself in Apple Park. The fact that he’d already partially ceded responsibilities to Hankey and Dye bodes well for a smooth transition.
We congratulate Jony Ive on a job exceedingly well done for so many years and we look forward to where Hankey and Dye will lead Apple’s Industrial Design now!