Ive has gone, and there's been a notable uptick in the workability of product designs and (more subjectively) in visual coherence.
Ive did best under Jobs. There were numerous disasters when Jobs was no longer around to keep Ive on the rails, including iOS7, the butterfly keyboard, the touch bar, and the clunky first few iterations of Watch itself.
Big Sur is more Fisher-Price than it could be. Visually it's not a classic, but it's also better that mediocre.
But the new iMacs are probably the best iMacs ever, without the backward references and very visible Design™ of the post-Jobs Ive years.
Analyzing the contribution of particular individuals gives us no insight here. Sure, iOS7 definitely happened because Forstal was fired and Ive put in charge. But Ive didn't personally design any of iOS7, he was guiding others.
Apple just purely politically decided to reject everything they've done up to that point and bite more than they can chew, in precisely the same way Apple NEVER DOES, and other companies, like Microsoft with Vista or Windows 8 for example, often do.
This was very uncharacteristic for Apple, and yes the aftermath is still present to this day. We're at iOS15 almost, and they're still scraping bits of shit that hit the fan in iOS7.
Ive did best under Jobs. There were numerous disasters when Jobs was no longer around to keep Ive on the rails, including iOS7, the butterfly keyboard, the touch bar, and the clunky first few iterations of Watch itself.
Big Sur is more Fisher-Price than it could be. Visually it's not a classic, but it's also better that mediocre.
But the new iMacs are probably the best iMacs ever, without the backward references and very visible Design™ of the post-Jobs Ive years.