Apple parts ways with Jony Ive, legendary designer behind iconic candy-colored iMacs

Tech giant Apple, Inc. has parted ways with Jony Ive, a longtime designer with the company known for helping create the company's ever-iconic multicolored iMac line first released in the late 1990s. 

Ive, who also helped with the design of the iPhone and the Apple Watch, had earlier left his full-time position with the company in order to start his own firm, though both Ive and Apple promised to continue working together with Ive in a consultative role. 

Sources told the New York Times this week, however, that Ive has now fully left the company to focus on his own venture, LoveFrom. 

The iMac that Ive helped design in the late 90s brought about an economic revival for Apple, whose fortunes had been flagging prior to the iMac and the return of its longtime charismatic frontman, Steve Jobs. 

The iMac's all-in-one features and its dazzling multicolored exteriors also helped usher in a reorientation of much of the home computing industry, with copycats and competitors springing to imitate Apple's sleek, consumer-oriented design features following the computer's major success.