Skill and art are not necessarily linked. It's possible to be a craftsman without being an artist, and vice versa.

Think of a fabricator as an OEM. iPhones are manufactured by Foxconn, and I'm sure their technicians contribute greatly to the manufacturing and design, but it's still the Apple logo that gets stuck on the back.

That's how industry works. I don't know the details of Iphone business model, but they could in theory let all the components be manufactured by Tier-1s, let all the software be written by outsourcers, let the design and integration be done by someone else and only leave branding and marketing to themselves. But I would kind of expect of an artist to be a little bit more than self-brand manager.

I wouldn‘t call an iPhone a piece of art though.

The Design Museum in London has pretty much everything Jony Ive ever designed in their permanent collection.

They certainly are art in this context.*

And I'd argue that Apple are one of the few tech companies that genuinely view their products as art objects, as well as being boxes of mass-produced consumer technology.

* There's a wider question about whether the mere act of displaying something in a gallery makes it art, but its one that many fine art postgrads haven't been able to get to the bottom of yet :)

I would argue that the fact it's in a design museum rather than an art museum makes it design in that context.

Speaking very broadly: Designers manifest other people's ideas for money. Art is more when you bring your own ideas into the world because you want to.

it is though. steve jobs treated it and designed it as functional art. unlike most other manufacturers. he did borrow/utilize many ideas from german artists and industrial designers (bauhaus/german modernism/braun design etc.).

so like it or not i would say that iphone is a piece of art that others loved and copied. (which is good and completely natural).

Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Skill isn't required to make or present something that has an emotional reaction. Major artists have often had external craftspeople - Leonardo Da Vinci had a workshop.

Can’t see your point at all. Leonardo is the most famous of all the artist/technologists.

OK. What specifically don't you understand? Leonardo being the most famous and still using craftspeople was my point.

“Craftspeople”? You mean his architectural work? He was, by all accounts I’m aware of, an incredibly hands-on artist. Having others help out is one thing. Having others execute is another. Having a workshop (as in, tools, bricks morter, etc.) is just par for the course.

Can you point out an artefact that he instructed someone to make and then labelled as his own artwork? Or indeed a piece still called a DaVinci that it's accepted he has no hands-on input to.

FWIW we're not taking about apprentices doing blocking-in, backgrounds, or minor characters.