By now, you’ve probably heard about Jony Ive’s departure from Apple. As the chief design officer of Apple since 1996, Ive was responsible for designing many Apple products you know today. To most people, his departure may seem very sudden.

However, several reports that surfaced not long after the news went public are suggesting that Ive has been slowly exiting Apple, citing tension between the designer and Apple’s current CEO, Tim Cook. Essentially, his departure from Apple “has been a long time in the making,” said a source to Bloomberg.

In fact, Bloomberg’s report really goes into detail about Ive’s involvement in Apple over the years. According to Bloomberg, Ive became less involved with the design process after the original Apple Watch was launched back in 2015. In fact, he supposedly only came to Apple’s headquarters “as little as twice a week.”

Not surprisingly, Apple’s design team grew frustrated with Ive’s absence since then. In a separate report by The Wall Street Journal, Ive was said to be “dispirited” by Tim Cook’s lack of interest in the product development process.

On top of that, Ive also supposedly grew frustrated with Apple’s board of directors. It’s said to be filled with individuals from backgrounds not related to the company’s core business.

Of course, Tim Cook himself responded to the WSJ report, saying that the story is “absurd,” and the conclusions “just don’t match with reality.” He further elaborated that Apple’s design team is stronger than ever, and that the projects the team are working on “will blow you away.”

For a company as secretive as Apple, we don’t often see such a response, especially not from the CEO himself in regards to supposed internal issues. Nonetheless, we probably won’t know the actual reason behind Ive’s departure from Apple.

Despite his exit, Ive will still work closely with Apple through his own design firm, LoveFrom. He will supposedly work on a range of exclusive projects with Apple, and chances are, this collaboration will continue long into the future.

Naturally, having Apple as a client will bring in a lot of revenue for LoveFrom. In WSJ’s report, it is said that Ive’s firm will be paid “millions of dollars a year to continue to work with Apple.” However, it remains to be seen exactly how involved LoveFrom would be with Apple’s product development in the future.

After all, it’s not specified just what kind of projects the two companies will work on together.

It will be interesting to see just how Apple will be affected by Jony Ive’s departure from the company. Even though Ive will still work closely with Apple through LoveFrom, it’s not quite the same as having him a part of the same organisation.