Kickstart: Apple parting ways with the designer who made it colorful

Think of almost any Apple Inc. product, and you're picturing something designed by Jony Ive. Items launched such as the translucent plastic iMac in the 1990s to the rounded corners of an iPhone in the early 2000s and the iWatch in the 2010s — and even the ill-fated iPhone 5c from 2013 that Ive called "beautifully, unapologetically plastic" — were designed by Ive and his team.

And now, three years after Ive stepped down to run his own design firm while retaining Apple as its major client, the technology company and the designer have split ways, according to The New York Times.

"Some Apple executives had questioned how much the company was paying Mr. Ive and had grown frustrated after several of its designers left to join Mr. Ive's firm," the Times' Tripp Mickle wrote, quoting people familiar with relations between Ive and Apple. "And Mr. Ive wanted the freedom to take on clients without needing Apple's clearance."

Ive's design company LoveFrom will now be free to take on work from a wide variety of corporate clients, including the carmaker Ferrari and Airbnb.

From the outside, the past several months have looked pretty chaotic for the Plastics Industry Association.

Perhaps it was even more chaotic than we knew.

Assistant Managing Editor Steve Toloken has a couple of updates on the Washington-based trade group for the plastics industry, starting with the return of Perc Pineda as its chief economist. Pineda's departure from the association in February after five years was a clear signal that there were staffing problems within the group, a move that then-CEO Tony Radoszewski blamed on the "Great Resignation."

But Radoszewski was then forced out in late March, quickly replaced as president and CEO by Matt Seaholm, who had been the group's chief lobbyist.

Since then, Radoszewski and the association have continued to battle, Steve writes, noting that the trade group filed a lawsuit seeking a return of $163,000 in moving expenses it paid, although Radoszewski never moved from Texas.

Meanwhile, Radoszewski filed a lawsuit in May in state court in Texas seeking more than $609,000 in severance payments, as well as a similar lawsuit July 11 in federal court in Dallas.

We've mentioned before at Plastics News that prosthetics are expensive and complicated. Each one must be tailored specifically to the user, and insurance companies aren't quick to pay for replacements.

So when Brandon Smith's $80,000 carbon-fiber prosthetic leg fell into the water while he was floating on a lake in suburban Detroit, it was a devastating loss.

Smith had undergone 17 surgeries since injuring his leg in a fall from a tree while hunting. He'd only had the prosthetic for a month when it somehow detatched from his leg and dropped to the lake bed 40 feet below, the Oakland County Sheriff's Department said in a Facebook post.

When the family couldn't retrieve it, they contacted the department's dive team hoping it could help out.

Sgt. Brian Burwell, who heads up the team, met with the family on July 11 and used GPS coordinates they supplied to find a likely location for the leg. On July 13, Deputy Justin Wiegand retrieved it after just a 10-minute dive.

Smith plans to have the leg checked for any damage and to ensure it won't easily slip away again in the future.