Apple Inc. (AAPL): New Look iOS Will Be Radical – and Late?

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), as everyone knows, is not one to comment about rumors or news that did not come directly from Cupertino. Even if you hear something and want to do the responsible thing and go to the company to either confirm or deny the report, you will get crickets. And even the crickets won’t be talking, or chirping for that matter.

So while this is just a rumor, it seems to have some legs. Sir Jony Ive, who is the new guy in charge of all design, look and feel of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) products – expanding on his previous role as being the hardware guru – has been working diligently on the new mobile operating system called iOS 7. His work, while very careful and team-oriented, has reportedly been holding up other things to the point that some inside the company believe the new OS won’t be ready for a reveal and demonstration as scheduled at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s Ive, who has been in his expanded role for six months now, has reportedly been taking on a reconstruction project with the OS – taking iOS 6 and completely re-working it, down to even details within some of the tools like Calendar and e-mail.

He is supposedly working on a “flatter” look, where many of the details from iOS 6 are taken away, like the familiar wood shelves on the Newsstand feature, among many others. To make up for the more deliberative and collaborative work, Ive has been aggressively recruiting Mac software engineers to cross over and spend time in the iOS pool, anonymous sources said.

The question for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) at this point seems to be how Ive, who has been the Apple hardware guy, handles the very technical aspects of code when it comes to software, as especially the platform on which future iDevices will run. “(He has) a tremendous sense of design, and he’s been the guru behind a lot of these enormously successful products, but he’s always had someone like a Jobs to push back on him and give him some guidance, and it’s not clear that Tim Cook is capable of playing that role. Maybe without a collaborator, he’s not as strong,” said Opus Research analyst Greg Sterling.

What are your thoughts about Jony Ive and his work at Apple? Are you more excited or aprehensive about iOS 7 knowing that Ive is in charge of it? We’d like your thoughts in the comments section below.

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