Apple's longest-serving senior industrial designer is leaving, marking a near-complete replacement for the design team once led by Jony Ive. Bart Andre, who joined Apple with Ive in 1992, told colleagues this month that he was retiring, people familiar with the matter said.
Andre is one of the few remaining designers from Ive's era. He helped create the aesthetic of Apple products over the past 30 years, even before Jobs returned to take the helm at Apple in the late 1990s.
Andre is known as Ive's right-hand man, and he helped manage the team after Ive's successor, Evans Hankey, left last year. He is also known as one of the largest holders of Apple patents.
Apple's design department has experienced a wave of departures in recent months. Top designers Colin Burns, Shota Aoyagi and Peter Russell-Clarke all left around the end of last year. Several veterans of Apple's software design team have also hinted that they plan to leave in the near future.