Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design Jonathan Ive is moving back to the UK to spend more time with his family, according to Mashable.

As reported by The Times, an anonymous pal of Ives said, “unfortunately he is too valuable to Apple and they told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them.”

The 44-year-old designer is the head of the industrial design team that created most of Apple’s products. He’s known as the driving force behind the design of the iPod, iPhone, today’s iPad and the upcoming iPad 2, all the MacBooks and the iMac, among others.