products is leaving the company, chief design officer jony ive is starting his own design firm with apple as one of his clients. for more let's welcome ed lee reporter and a cnbc contributor we've talked about it a few times already. was it a big surprise to you i just wouldn't think so. >> there was always a question about whether he was really fully back in the fold or not. he had been instrumental in the design of the new headquarters. >> right. >> he had taken a break from every day apple stuff while he was doing that, people think, oh, is he really kind of leaving? and then when the headquarters was finished he was like, no, i'm back, i'm back at work. >> really? >> so it was a shock in that way. all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, i thought you said you were going to be back. but the bigger picture is that he sort of stepped away for a while. >> you think he has not had his imprint on, for example, the last ipad, the last iphone >> because there are not big step changes in the design, right? there are improvements certainly, like software improvements and then there's certain tweaks into the hardware, they're not massive. >> wha