Though Cook had a strong connection with Jobs through work, he had only a distant relationship with Jony Ive. The inherent tension between operations and design sometimes put the two at odds. Cook’s duty was to control costs by manufacturing as many products as possible with a minimum number discarded because of defects. Meanwhile, Ive’s team was scrutinizing products coming off the assembly line to make sure that they were a close approximation of their sketches and models. When Ive identified an imperfection, it could disrupt production. It ate up time and added costs. But Apple’s supply
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