[HN Gopher] Why Jony Ive left Apple to the 'accountants'
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Why Jony Ive left Apple to the 'accountants'
Author : mcone
Score : 230 points
Date : 2022-05-01 13:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| easton wrote:
| https://archive.ph/y3on0
| MBCook wrote:
| I've always gotten the impression that Ive may be a truly great
| designer be he needs an editor. He had that in Steve Jobs.
|
| Once he lost his editor the designs Apple shipped moved more and
| more towards being perfect designs at the expense of thoughts of
| usability.
|
| And now he's known as the guy who helped "ruin" Apple's products
| until they kicked him out.
|
| Unfortunate. For the lack of an editor.
| educaysean wrote:
| > being perfect designs at the expense of thoughts of usability
|
| This is an oxymoron. Being a desinger doesn't mean that you
| focus on making things look good while someone else comes along
| and reminds you about "usability". A design isn't "perfect" if
| it has usability problems. Any designer worth their salt will
| be the first to tell you that.
| bornabox wrote:
| I think your comment on Jobs being Ives editor is spot on. They
| worked as a team and complemented each others shortcomings (at
| least to a degree). There was apparently never this kind of
| relationship between Cook and Ive.
|
| But to say Apple kicked Ive out seems wrong to me. They rather
| wore him out and he left.
| bborud wrote:
| We can speculate why he left. But I think a lot of people
| agree on the observation that he had probably been irrelevant
| for a good while by the time they parted ways.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Not so much irrelevant as superfluous, and possibly a
| negative influence.
|
| To give credit to Cook he listened to the chorus of
| complaints and acted on it. The results aren't as pretty as
| the Ive era designs. But they give users a lot more of what
| they really want, instead of a nice case with missing
| useful features.
|
| Ive actually had a lot of misses, from the gradients and
| flat look in iOS 7, to the infamous butterfly keyboard and
| missing USB ports, to the early versions of Watch, to (at a
| guess) the touchbar. There were also Jobs-era failures like
| the hockey puck mouse and the Siri Remote for Apple TV.
|
| And personally I'm not a huge fan of the current Apple
| typography and branding.
|
| So - not really missing his influence. I'd love to see
| Apple find a new design head who could inject more
| personality than the current products have, but I don't
| think Ive's departure was a terrible loss in any way.
| neighbour wrote:
| >The results aren't as pretty as the Ive era designs
|
| Not saying Ive hadn't had some great designs in his time
| at Apple but saying the new designs aren't as pretty is
| highly debatable. From what I can tell, I don't think
| many people found the touchbar to be particularly
| "pretty".
| Rapzid wrote:
| Yeah, Apple would have made him irrelevant so he could go
| without tanking the stock.
| masklinn wrote:
| > There was apparently never this kind of relationship
| between Cook and Ive.
|
| That seems obvious, Cook was never the "taste" person, which
| is what Jobs was (brutally so). Cook has always been the ops
| guy (his original role was SVP for worldwide ops, then EVP
| for sales and ops, before becoming COO).
| omnimus wrote:
| This is not how design process works. There is not single
| genius outputing some designs that get implemented. There are
| teams of people making and testing thousands of variations.
| Dont think these teams dont know about the issues with their
| designs. Theyve dealt and solved questions we cant imagine.
|
| Ive as design lead already is the editor. Thats job of art
| director.
|
| What Jobs has done for Ive is that he probably pushed many
| other departments to do what Ive and his team came up with.
|
| Its very likely Ive "fails" are organisation issues and his
| inability to push things to completion.
|
| I am not a big fan of Ive but Apple turned their trajectory
| completely around because of designs comming from department he
| was leading. And the big turn around the old iMac was comming
| mostly solely from him.
|
| I wouldnt give so much credit to Jobs in same way as i wouldnt
| give so much credit to Ive. They are just on top.
| Closi wrote:
| I think OP means that without the influence/editing of others
| this led to asthetic-centric thinking rather than including
| the right balance of product/function-centric thinking, and
| the 'editing' was that Jobs could influence him to ensure the
| right balance was in the products.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > I've always gotten the impression that Ive may be a truly
| great designer be he needs an editor.
|
| You aren't a brilliant designer if your design choices make a
| product less functional. And there's a long track record of Ive
| doing exactly that.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| You can tell finance took over.
|
| They are deleting soft(ware) cultural relics because not enough
| people use them.
|
| The many pennies saved!
| davidhariri wrote:
| It's interesting that the article attributed the shift in Apple
| Watch's marketing strategy to Tim Cook. I am pretty sure that
| Jeff Williams led that change. He is a smart guy who doesn't get
| the press he deserves, in my opinion.
| barnabee wrote:
| "a shift in strategy that has made the company _better known_ for
| offering TV shows and a credit card than introducing the kind of
| revolutionary new devices that once defined it "
|
| I nearly stopped reading here. Does anyone think that's true?
| Sure they make much more money than they used to but to everyone
| I know apple is still very much a hardware and product company.
| perardi wrote:
| The sheer ubiquity of AirPods in ears I see at the gym would
| sure suggest that people know they are a hardware company, and
| have in fact bought new hardware products introduced post-Jobs.
| interlocutor wrote:
| Ive may have done great work under Steve Jobs, but his work since
| Jobs' passing has been disastrous.
|
| Let's consider Jony's performance on software design first. This
| is what some prominent people have said about iOS 7: The Verge
| wrote in their review: "iOS 7 isn't harder to use, just less
| obvious. That's a momentous change: iOS used to be so obvious."
| Michael Heilemann, Interface Director at Squarespace wrote, "when
| I look at [iOS 7 beta] I see anti-patterns and basic mistakes
| that should have been caught on the whiteboard before anyone even
| began thinking about coding it." And famed blogger John Gruber
| said this about iOS 7: "my guess is that [Steve Jobs] would not
| have supported this direction."
|
| And what about Jony's other responsibility, industrial design?
| The iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and other Apple products from
| Jobs era are all amazingly well designed and breathtakingly
| beautiful. But these products weren't designed by Jony Ive all by
| himself. He designed them under Steve Jobs's guidance and
| direction. Steve was the tastemaker. Apple's post-Steve products
| are nowhere near as well-designed.
|
| Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors were horrid, and when
| you added those Crocs-like cases it looked more like a Fisher-
| Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen
| holding. That the 5c didn't do well in the market shouldn't
| surprise anyone.
|
| As an Apple shareholder and customer I am glad Ive is gone.
| baisq wrote:
| >Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors were horrid, and
| when you added those Crocs-like cases it looked more like a
| Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to
| be seen holding.
|
| The iPhone 5c was not a device for executives.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Exactly. It was the device well-heeled parents might get for
| their teens, or twenty-somethings might buy for themselves.
| __derek__ wrote:
| > But these products weren't designed by Jony Ive all by
| himself.
|
| This goes for iOS 7 and the iPhone 5c as well, no?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I think the OP is saying that they're basically a refresh of
| a design that was conceived while Steve Jobs was alive.
|
| Eg. The clean aluminum case and the black keys etc. It looks
| fundamentally the same.
|
| Contrast with the butterfly keyboard, which was new in a post
| jobs world. And universally a disaster.
| jen20 wrote:
| Not "universally". I have a stock of 2016-18 era laptops
| because they are the only thing I can comfortably type on
| for extended periods. I prefer them to every laptop that
| came before and every one that has come since.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I, for one, very much prefer the aesthetics introduced in iOS
| 7. The first version was rough and sometimes inconsistent, but
| that can be expected when the changes are so radical in such a
| big project.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| Personally, I found the 5c colors nice. I dont see much of a
| difference to those huge (ugly?) cases that people wrap around
| their phones today. I dont know many people who are using naked
| phones today and my feeling is that phones today are not
| designed anymore to be case-less: the camera bump, razor-sharp
| edges, too thin bodies.
|
| The 5c flopped because of other reasons: it was artificially
| made worse than the 5s. It started with 8GB memory that was
| already WAY TOO LITTLE back then, it had no touchid, it had a
| bad camera and so much more - and yet, the price was high.
| Apple learned from the mistakes and changed their segmentation
| strategy and it worked since then (with the exception of the
| weird XR thing).
| perardi wrote:
| I had an iPhone XR from work. It flopped...but it was a good
| phone, and it was not necessarily an obviously bad idea, in
| my opinion.
|
| People like big phones. The idea of a big iPhone that has
| contemporary guts but lacks some of the really wild camera
| abilities of the Max models didn't inherently seem like the
| wrong plan to me. But it just kinda went nowhere, probably
| because you can just go buy last year's iPhone model.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| It flopped because apple did that: "here is our standard
| model.. and by the way, here is a cheaper, crappier model".
|
| Now they have the approach to have a full price standard
| model - and there is a super duper "pro" model for the
| extra successful, professional and rich people.
|
| This approach makes more sense for the consumers and this
| makes the 12 and 13 fly the way they do.
| ribit wrote:
| I entirely agree that Ive's design brilliance required Job's
| meticulous attention to details and taste to be really
| successful. He did make some questionable choices after Job's
| passing.
|
| And the article doesn't make much sense to me. While I don't
| agree with everything Cook does, Recent Apple computers are
| traditional Apple at its best -- extremely well designed,
| minimalist, functional, with best in class performance,
| displays and portability.
| Bud wrote:
| Calling this "disastrous" goes beyond hyperbole into a realm of
| parody, so I can only assume you're kidding.
|
| A lot of the iOS 7 changes were positive, and those which were
| missteps were far from "disastrous" and have already been
| reversed.
|
| If you have to go all the way back to a fringe product like the
| 5c, that kinda proves the opposite of your point, doesn't it?
| The 5c is the exception that proves the rule.
|
| Nobody should be glad Ive is gone. It was a tremendous loss.
| For every decision you might disagree with, there were a
| hundred others that were spot-on.
| layer8 wrote:
| The flat design introduced with iOS 7 absolutely has been
| disastrous for the obviousness of the UI.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| I'm also very glad that Ive is gone and I think iOS 7 was a
| disaster that gave up an enormous UI/UX lead.
|
| His value existed solely when his extremes were moderated by
| someone like Steve Jobs.
|
| When handed the reigns, Ive ran roughshod over what made
| Apple -- and his own work -- worthwhile. He prioritized form
| over function, and ego over empathy.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| Why do we ever only read stories about Ive, and not nearly as
| often about people who made software design decisions, who work
| on the OS or security, or who made strategic decisions such as
| Apple's walled garden?
|
| The only technocrat who triumphed seems to be Ive.
| sremani wrote:
| Because Ive is a public figure and he was show cased during SJ
| era. I am not trying to diminish Ive's contributions but the
| software guys will never get the mainstream love as the design
| guys.
|
| If stories about Software guys are written that would be tech
| media which is heavily dropping the ball, because they have
| some product to unpack and try it for a day and given it some
| useless score.
| toomim wrote:
| You must mean software vs. hardware, not software vs. design.
|
| Software is designed. Hardware is designed. Design is not how
| something looks on the outside. Design is how something
| works.
| [deleted]
| armadsen wrote:
| I agree with you, but it's worth noting that shortly after
| Jobs' death, Scott Forstall was kicked out, and Jony Ive took
| over software UI design as well. The result was iOS 7 and its
| flat UI.
| turingbook wrote:
| Not much information, very verbose. The only valuable information
| is that Apple's strategy under Cook has shifted from devices to
| more profitable services.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Regarding the title with "technocrats" reminded me of Bret Victor
| referring to it as a "designer aristocracy" -
| http://worrydream.com/#!/DynamicPicturesMotivation (2011 ,
| mentioned later on in the essay)
|
| --
|
| The 2011 Bret Victor essay: "I spent a few years hanging around
| various UI design groups at Apple, and I met brilliant designers,
| and these brilliant designers could not make real things. They
| could only suggest. They would draw mockups in Photoshop, maybe
| animate them in Keynote, maybe add simple interactivity in
| Director or Quartz Composer. But the designers could not produce
| anything that they could ship as-is. Instead, they were dependent
| on engineers to translate their ideas into lines of text. Even at
| Apple, a designer aristocracy like no other, there was always a
| subtle undercurrent of helplessness, and the timidity and
| hesitation that come from not being self-reliant."
|
| --
|
| The 2022 NYT article "technocrats triumphed at apple": "Mr. Ive's
| absence, the designers say that they collaborate more with
| colleagues in engineering and operations and face more cost
| pressures than they did previously."
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This is actually a thing in design, and it's inexplicable. Too
| many designers think like architects. They design the case to
| look good, and aren't interested in the much more demanding
| process of productising an item so it looks good _and_ isn 't
| feature constrained.
|
| A lot of design is pure fantasy. There were some renderings of
| Mars habitats being sent around a year or two ago, and they had
| _wood panelling_ - pretty for sure, but not exactly easy to
| find on Mars in industrial quantities.
| eternalban wrote:
| > Too many designers think like architects.
|
| How would you know how architects think? Are you an
| architect?
| philwelch wrote:
| If you're living on Mars in the first place, you're going to
| need to grow some plants just to have food. I don't think
| it's inconceivable to also grow some bamboo.
| closeparen wrote:
| Exactly the same complaint could be made about the civil and
| structural engineers that this website so idolizes, right? All
| they can personally make are plans.
| hammock wrote:
| > But the designers could not produce anything that they could
| ship as-is. Instead, they were dependent on engineers to
| translate their ideas into lines of text.
|
| Why is this scenario presented as a bad/uncommon/exploitative
| thing? It is exactly how architects and engineers work on
| buildings, etc. and is considered a functional (as opposed to
| dysfunctional) mode of working. It's certainly not a
| characteristic unique to Apple.
| scns wrote:
| > the designers say that they collaborate more with colleagues
| in engineering and operations and face more cost pressures than
| they did previously
|
| Great! This is how it should be IMHO.
| scrlk wrote:
| > In the wake of Mr. Jobs's death, colleagues said, Mr. Ive fumed
| about corporate bloat, chafed at Mr. Cook's egalitarian
| structure, lamented the rise of operational leaders and struggled
| with a shift in the company's focus from making devices to
| developing services.
|
| I think this is particularly clear when you compare Apple's
| current product introduction keynotes to ones from the Jobs/Ive
| days: nowadays, they to forego the bit where they talk about how
| the device was made.
|
| Ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SjIuzhdd_g (Apple Watch
| Steel introduction video, with a heavy focus on how it's made)
| vikbytes wrote:
| I had completely forgotten about these. I have to say I do miss
| this kind of detail in the presentations these days, even if I
| like the products of late way more than the ones that came in
| the latter half of the 2010s.
| victoryhb wrote:
| The bottom line is Apple products post-Ive have improved
| dramatically in terms of practicality, efficiency, and even
| design. Without Jobs, the guy should be without jobs.
| shuckles wrote:
| If that's true, shouldn't one of the underlying concerns -
| Apple's shift in priority from hardware to service products -
| be even more disappointing? How many innovative and user
| friendly gadgets are we being deprived of so the company can
| focus on US-only credit card and content streaming services?
| barneygale wrote:
| HDMI ports and SD card readers ftw
| adrr wrote:
| I love not carrying around a dongle for my new macbook pro. I
| can't believe they removed those in the first place. Its a
| pro model.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'd really like to have a list of engineers I'd need to
| wine-and-dine to add two USB-A ports for the good of the
| people.
| spenrose wrote:
| Shirky's review is much better than the excerpt:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/01/books/review/after-steve-...
| elefanten wrote:
| This article is from some clown that wrote a book with an
| opinionated story (this same one) about Apple.
|
| It's an advertisement for his book and dovetails with NYT's
| crazed and rabid need to attack the tech industry that diluted
| their chokehold on discourse.
|
| There is nothing serious going on here.
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| jdrc wrote:
| Car design is much more interesting than the wholly homogeneous
| world of mobile and computing. Hasn't anyone come up with a nice
| idea for 15 years?
| soheil wrote:
| I think he created the Apple look and feel which will stay with
| the company probably forever as something to distinguish it from
| all the other products in the marketplace. For this reason he
| should be celebrated. Sure we can blame him for the terrible
| butterfly keyboard and the nearly port-less MacBook major
| blunders, but in the end without Ivy Apple hardware would not be
| distinguishable from a generic laptop running Windows.
|
| Without a rigorous and function-first engineering mindset it's
| dangerous to let designers run havoc. An Ivy without Jobs was
| doomed from the get-go.
| dr_ wrote:
| The article leaves out some of the consequences of focusing on
| design over practicality and usability. The MacBook Air keyboard
| had become a disaster. It was as close as one could get to just
| typing on a hard surface. It was around this time that I switched
| to a Surface laptop because it felt to me Apple was giving up on
| their own laptops in favor of the iPhone. Fortunately, they've
| now fixed this.
| gumby wrote:
| What a testament to ego.
|
| Rather than the Apple watch being a Vogue-celebrated product for
| the 1%, it's an attractive and high quality product for many
| people. I see it on the wrists fashion icons and on the wrists of
| people working at my local grocery store. Billionaires and
| ordinary people can have basically the same phone, watch, and
| AirPods. _That_ is the true genius of Cook, reviving the
| "computer for the rest of us".
|
| I do think Apple's design has become a little stale, but if there
| has to be a choice of once vs the other they are currently
| picking the right one. Let's not forget that the vaunted focus on
| design has given us a mouse with the charger on the bottom as
| well as innumerable other botches over the years. I am glad Apple
| was willing to push the envelope, but some of that stubbornness
| has worked against them.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Good point about Apple creating great products that broad
| swaths of society can afford.
|
| I do take issue with people thinking Apple's designs are stale.
| I mean, to an extent this is a matter of taste. My take is that
| at their best Apple's designs are so good they are timeless. Is
| a vintage Leica stale? Is a 1964 Porsche 911 stale? No. People
| who think these are stale have bad taste I would argue.
| listless wrote:
| Lots of folks pointing out how the design is now "pragmatic",
| which is exactly why it's not at all interesting anymore.
|
| Current Apple is never again going to give you something like
| the "Luxo Lamp iMac".
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Maybe they will fix the Magic Mouse similar to how the original
| iPad pencil was really weird in that to charge it (unless you
| had a power brick) was to connect it to the iPad's lightning
| port.
|
| It could be that the next Magic Mouse revision could address
| that but I don't think that could really be counted upon. It
| would make sense though if that the Magic Mouse two or if there
| was a total revamp of their peripherals got rid of lightning
| ports and either could be wirelessly charged or charged by USB
| C
| visarga wrote:
| My personal experience with AirPods used on a MacBook was so
| bad I gave up and went to a wired headset. Always having to
| fiddle to make it.. you know, make sound, the most basic of its
| functions. The same company building both devices and the OS,
| what a shame.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The AirPods on MacBook are definitely fiddly but switching
| sound output to AirPods always fixes all problems if
| switching audio doesn't work for any reason, and the ability
| they have to sync to watch (for workouts), iPhone, iPad, Mac,
| and AppleTV at the same time is totally bonkers even if the
| end result is somewhat flaky.
|
| I also appreciate that Apple leaves a highly amplified
| headphone jack on their MacBook pros because there's tons of
| Pro applications where Bluetooth headphones just don't work
| due to latency.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Interesting. I assumed this would be a problem, and was
| astounded at how well the new wireless buds work (using Pixel
| Buds, but I imagine if they're any better than AirPods, it's
| not much).
| razemio wrote:
| What happened? Never had issues with basic AirPods. Works for
| me on the iPhone, iPad, MacBook and on a Windows PC with
| basically zero configuration.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Bluetooth on desktop OSes has been extremely hit or miss with
| me.
|
| On Windows, none of my headsets or controllers would
| automatically connect, most of the time requiring me to pair
| them manually every time.
|
| On Mac, pairing would generally stay remembered but I'd
| typically need to manually select the device I want to
| connect to in the Bluetooth menu.
|
| On Linux, prior to Pipewire, I had to close all of my audio
| apps to connect Bluetooth headphones. Now _with_ Pipewire,
| the connection is so "sticky" that I have to turn off
| Bluetooth on my desktop if I want to use it on any of my
| other devices, since it always steals the connection.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| It was stale when Ive was there.. Normally esthetics should
| follow function. Not the other way around. I'm glad Ive's gone.
| Apple is finally making great stuff again.
| bornabox wrote:
| I think it got stale when Ive didn't have Jobs as a
| counterpart. Or vice versa. Once Cook & Ive didn't seem to
| have the same relationship, things stopped working. But I
| agree that Apple is doing quite well again with the M1-era
| Macs.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Yeah he def. needs the counterpart. Design needs
| constraints ;-)
| brundolf wrote:
| I would refine the above by saying:
|
| Apple's biggest and most persistent strength has never been
| visual design, it's been holistic _UX_ design. Those often get
| lumped together but they are different. Letting either visual
| design _or_ engineering take priority over the user experience
| is the big pitfall, and while Apple doesn 't have a perfect
| track record here, they're not even in the same galaxy as most
| of the tech world. I would even say that in the post-Ive world,
| they may be at an all-time high.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Stale is not a bad thing, design for design's sake is.
|
| Apple had some pretty nice stuff before Ive, I see no reason it
| won't have amazing stuff in the future without him.
| perardi wrote:
| And the new MacBook Pros seem to indicate they're steering
| out of that "thin and sleek above all else" whirlpool.
| criddell wrote:
| I wonder if the push for thinness helped drive Apple to
| produce their own CPUs?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| > Let's not forget that the vaunted focus on design has given
| us a mouse with the charger on the bottom as well as
| innumerable other botches over the years.
|
| If the charging port was not on the bottom, a huge percentage
| of users would just leave it plugged in. Then a wireless mouse
| would functionally be a wired one.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah? So? This is the hubris of the designer assuming the
| thing will always be used exactly as the designer intended.
| However, in the real world, people tend to not know the
| designer's intended use or just don't care what they
| intended. Users will use thing however they want/need.
| There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I put the "wrong"
| as "hmm, didn't think of that" on the short sitedness of the
| designer.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It should not surprise you that Apple has hubris and strong
| opinions about how their products should be used. You see
| this in everything from the design to the features they
| support (and disable). This certainly existed in the Jobs
| era and it still exists in the Cook era, and they're not
| "design features" in the sense that it's only about
| appearance. The allegation of the previous post was that
| the charging port was purely a design feature rather than a
| product-experience one. And further that it's a "botch"
| rather than an intentional feature that may actually be
| achieving a useful goal that the post author just doesn't
| assign value to. To be a "botch" would imply that people
| dislike the device and it's a sales failure.
| dylan604 wrote:
| When the CEO of the company gives an official response as
| "You're holding it wrong", I was never under the
| impression that Apple was concerned with anything other
| than their opinions
| fuckcensorship wrote:
| What are you basing this assumption on?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The fact that everyone I know leaves their Apple wireless
| keyboard plugged in most of the time. (Sample size N=~5.)
| reaperducer wrote:
| Perhaps his personal experience. Which is the same as mine.
|
| When I was still working in the office pre-pandemic,
| everyone with a cordless mouse kept it plugged in all the
| time, presumably out of fear that it would discharge.
|
| They turned a cordless mouse into a corded mouse. The only
| difference being that instead of plugging it into their
| computers, they were plugged into their monitors or hubs.
| librish wrote:
| I think this highlights how not black-and-white this is. Some
| of the focus on design are clearly what made Apple so popular
| and tech people can be dismissive of that.
|
| The magic mouse is so much better than any other mouse I've
| used (because the scrolling is so much better) and the charge
| port being on the bottom has not been an issue a single time
| over multiple years.
| munawwar wrote:
| Its battery lasts for several weeks. So I never realize it's
| battery hitting close to zero. And unluckily its hit bottom
| several times at the beginning of a work day. It wouldn't
| have hurt if they made the thing useable while plugged in.
| jfengel wrote:
| And the screen doesn't pop up a toast? It's an awkward fix
| but straightforward.
| rob74 wrote:
| For me, the charge port at the bottom is a clear case of
| design being more important than functionality. Of course, if
| you're the kind of person that always remembers to charge
| their mouse before the battery runs out, it's not an issue
| for you, but for the "rest of us", having the option to
| charge it and use it at the same time would sure be handy...
| cco wrote:
| Because pedantry is king at hn. Design was not the most
| important aspect of the magic mouse, _aesthetics_ was. A
| key difference in this conversation.
|
| Aesthetically the mouse is great, very beautiful,
| especially for the time it came out.
|
| The design of the mouse is amazing in several ways, but
| very lacking in others, specifically ergonomics and
| charging. In fact, had they made the mouse larger, in all
| dimensions, they could have solved two birds with one
| stone. The mouse is too small to comfortable use for most
| people, making it larger would fit the human hand better
| and decrease the amount of contortion your hand has to do
| to use it. And with this extra height they could have put a
| charging port on the front! Win win on the design side of
| things!
|
| There are several products you can buy that help with this,
| I have both wings and a palm bump added to my magic mouse
| that makes it much more comfortable. I tried to take one
| apart once to explore making a new case for it that
| addresses some of these concerns, but I ended up breaking
| it.
|
| I think that final bit really is the crux, the scrolling
| and gesture support is so good I'm sufficiently motivated
| to try and solve the problems with the mouse. A beautifully
| flawed product.
| cromka wrote:
| > Design was not the most important aspect of the magic
| mouse, _aesthetics_ was. A key difference in this
| conversation.
|
| On point. People too often confuse aesthetics with
| design.
| rob74 wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out! I'm not a native speaker,
| and around here (Germany) the loan word "design" refers
| only to designing the aesthetic side of things. Again
| what learned (https://www.nicolabartlett.de/again-what-
| learned/)...
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| That's astute. Also the exact reasons I use the magic
| trackpad instead of the magic mouse.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| > Because pedantry is king at hn. Design was not the most
| important aspect of the magic mouse, _aesthetics_ was. A
| key difference in this conversation.
|
| Be as pedantic as you want, but aesthetics is an aspect
| of design, not exclusive to it.
| scarface74 wrote:
| How do you "forget"? You get plenty of warning
| notifications.
| ambrose2 wrote:
| This topic comes up again and again, and what I've noticed
| is that folks who use the mouse often find that it lasts
| for months and months without recharging. Folks that like
| the mouse (myself included) agree that the frequency of
| charging is very low, while folks that don't like the mouse
| will say that it's unacceptable.
| kalleboo wrote:
| I use the wireless Apple keyboard and trackpad, which
| both have similar battery lives, but when the battery
| runs out it always somehow happens to be right before a
| meeting where I really need to plug it in and use it
| right now
|
| (and these days when everything else is USB-C, instead
| I'm scrambling to find where my damn lightning cable has
| gone)
|
| Although I get why they would not put the port on the
| back - their Lightning cables are not built for the
| repeated motion/strain of a plugged-in mouse. Anything
| more strain than plugging your phone in and setting it
| down causes the cables to break down in months.
| fmajid wrote:
| The cables don't last because of pretty but ineffective
| strain relief. Another failure squarely imputable to Jony
| Ive.
| Redoubts wrote:
| > I use the wireless Apple keyboard and trackpad, which
| both have similar battery lives,
|
| ?
|
| The keyboard has 3-5x the battery life of the trackpad.
| Not sure how they can be similar to the mouse if they're
| not even similar to each other.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I can only recommend using BetterTouchTool for adding
| more guestures to the mouse - and it comes with a nice
| feature, it reminds me when the charge of the mouse goes
| below 25%. This gives me several days to recharge it
| before it actually gets low.
| philwelch wrote:
| In my experience it needed charging much more frequently
| than that, and often at completely unpredictable and
| inconvenient times. I resorted to keeping a spare plugged
| in at all times when I worked in an office.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Some of us who use the mouse always want to keep it
| plugged in all the time because the extra cable on the
| desk is less important to us than (a) having it not
| occasionally glitch due to Bluetooth and/or (b) not
| wanting the extra burden of having to charge it. I guess
| scheduling the charging is minor if you don't have ADHD,
| but it's still one more stupid thing to take care of that
| really isn't necessary.
| ambrose2 wrote:
| I have ADHD, but it presents itself differently. For me,
| a more minimal desk free of the sight of cables (all the
| time) and free of annoyance of the tension of a cable or
| sound of a cable grazing against the desk (all the time)
| trumps plugging in a mouse twice a year when I stop
| working for the day. But I'm the type that can't focus
| when I see a battery icon is low, and so I'll just take
| care of it when I notice.
| Someone wrote:
| I, too, think that an extra battery isn't worth it, but
| that there are people who want a mouse that is always
| plugged in doesn't mean a wireless mice that can't always
| be plugged in is badly designed.
| wonnage wrote:
| It almost feels like the silly charging port was placed
| there on purpose. It tells users that you're not meant to
| use it plugged in, stop worrying about the battery, it'll
| be fine. And conversely it forces the engineers to build
| something that doesn't need to be charged constantly.
|
| ...I still prefer my Logitech mouse that works plugged in
| though.
| na85 wrote:
| People who complain about the charge port on the bottom
| don't use the mice.
|
| It's a stupid location for a charge port but the battery
| lasts for several weeks if not months; it's just not that
| much of an issue in real world use.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| The battery degrades.
|
| My Magic Mouses battery only lasts for 5 to 10 minutes...
| if I could use it while plugged in I could still use it.
| As it is I can just toss it.
| mattl wrote:
| How long have you had it?
| newaccount74 wrote:
| I don't know. I have several Magic mice, and I switched
| them between various computers often enough that I don't
| know which computer the broken one came with. The oldest
| one is probably from 2016.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I have several Magic Mice, including the one that still
| runs on the battery. I never had any of the batteries
| going bad - my oldest one is 5 years old at least still
| goes like a month on a charge.
| dudeman13 wrote:
| >People who complain about the charge port on the bottom
| don't use the mice.
|
| People who don't like pink bags don't buy pink bags.
| tobtoh wrote:
| > but the battery lasts for several weeks if not months;
| i
|
| In my experience, this is exactly why it's an issue.
|
| All my less tech savvy family who use this mouse forget
| to charge it because "it never needs charging" ... and
| then it runs out of juice whilst they are in the midst of
| something and now they can't use the mouse.
| s__s wrote:
| But MacOS warns you that the batteries are low several
| times before they run out.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I saw an article where someone rigged the magic mouse so
| that the cord was not on the bottom. They found that the
| mouse was unable to be used while charging. So putting the
| charge port on the bottom may have been driven by larger
| design decisions that made use while charging not possible.
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2022/03/25/unnecessary-inventions-
| magic-...
| kergonath wrote:
| > having the option to charge it and use it at the same
| time would sure be handy
|
| That's the theory. In practice, charging it whilst getting
| a coffee gives it enough battery life to finish the day.
| Sure, you need to remember to charge it then. But you never
| have to chose between using it or charging it for more than
| a couple of minutes in the real life.
| dylan604 wrote:
| With the example of the charger-on-the-bottom, where does
| the break down come from?
|
| Was this never even considered an issue? As in, did it just
| never get considered as something bad? Did it never get
| focus grouped in a wide enough range of users for someone
| to question this? Was it noticed, questioned, decided it
| was works as intended?
|
| It just seems like with a company the size of Apple who all
| work under draconian NDAs, why not have an internal
| employee focus group? Hubris of the design silos?
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Much more likely is that they studied the situation,
| understood the problem, and concluded that the trade off
| was worth it.
|
| We may disagree--I think that surely there must have been
| some way of solving the problem--but it seems very
| unlikely to me that they missed it.
|
| They just exercised judgement that I think was
| suboptimal.
|
| Of course, they are selling millions of products and
| making billions of dollars doing it, so not sure I can
| claim I'm unambiguously right.
| peteradio wrote:
| Have you used it and found an actual issue with the
| problem? If you randomly remember 1 time a month to plug
| it in when you go to lunch its effectively a non-issue.
| Consider it was well thought out.
| taeric wrote:
| The few times I've been asked to help my neighbors on the
| computer, it has been a non-starter because the mouse
| needed charging and we were unable to do anything because
| of it. :(
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Yeah, but how long did charging actually take? 5 minutes?
| taeric wrote:
| ? I don't actually know. Is an elderly neighbor and we
| couldn't find the cable at the house while I was there.
| Redoubts wrote:
| This sounds like a comedy of errors.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Wouldn't know as an issue like this makes it a non-
| starter since I'd never buy it.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| What's so wild to me about this, is that the Magic Mouse
| design is 100% evident there was meant to be a flush
| charging dock sister product that got nix'd just like the
| recent wireless charging pad -- there's intention and a
| continuity one can follow, but recently has been cut at the
| knees for operational efficiency.
| Ecco wrote:
| I'm curious: how is the bottom charge port not an issue for
| you? What happens if your mouse runs out of battery while
| you're working?
| b3morales wrote:
| For me, in 6+ years of daily use this has only happened to
| me twice or so that I can recall. I do check the level from
| time to time so I can be sure to charge it overnight. But
| even if you forget the trick is that the battery charges
| _surprisingly_ quickly from 0 to "enough to get through
| the rest of the day". Coffee break quickly, 10, maybe 15
| minutes. So I do keyboard-only stuff for a bit and/or step
| away for a breather. It's been a non-issue in my personal
| experience.
| dolni wrote:
| > I do check the level from time to time so I can be sure
| to charge it overnight.
|
| So here's the rub, isn't it? Consumer mice from decades
| ago did NOT require you to check battery levels.
|
| There's no good reason for a charging/wired port on the
| bottom of the mouse. It may only be a problem rarely, but
| it could just not be a problem AT ALL.
| librish wrote:
| I get a battery notification when the power is running low.
| That means I usually have a couple of days of usage before
| it's completely out. So then I charge it while I go to
| lunch or overnight.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| I _never_ remember to plug it in after I've finished my
| work and am ready to leave for lunch or for the day.
|
| Short of putting a post-it note on my screen, I don't
| think I ever will. My brain doesn't work that way, and
| the point of technology is to support _me_ , not for me
| to support technology.
|
| Requiring users to perform their own async mental
| scheduling of a trivially forgettable pending task like
| "plug in the mouse" is bad design.
|
| Perhaps some people have an innate ability to perform
| that kind of task scheduling without it being a
| significant cognitive load, but many others do not.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I think you must be exaggerating a little bit, because if
| true then it doesn't really matter if the charging port
| is on the bottom. You need a corded mouse. Apple doesn't
| make any, but I've yet to see any 3rd party USB mouse
| that a Mac won't work fine with. I've got a Logitech
| connected to a USB-C dongle for the infrequent times that
| I want a mouse on my MBP. Mouse+Dongle is also cheaper
| than a Magic Mouse.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| I'm not exaggerating at all. I can try to drill "remember
| to plug in the mouse" into my head, but it doesn't
| matter. I'll forget.
|
| The previous magic mouse worked fine; if I ran out of
| juice, I just swapped the batteries immediately and kept
| going.
|
| If the current Magic Mouse supported charging while in
| use, I'd just do that. Problem solved.
|
| The turtle-mode charging is a ridiculous design
| constraint for those of us for whom "remember this
| trivial and stupid task to be performed at some arbitrary
| later time" does not come at all naturally.
|
| My (ridiculous) solution is two magic mice. When one
| dies, I swap it for the other. No cognitive load, no
| breaking flow -- but it's silly to have to keep a spare
| $99 mouse around to solve this problem.
|
| My employer has plenty of spare magic mice floating
| around, or I'd probably just buy myself a Microsoft mouse
| that uses AA batteries.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I just swapped the batteries immediately
|
| So even if I'm at home where I (almost) always have
| batteries, this still involves going downstairs, digging
| a couple batteries out, and swapping them. (In an office
| I probably wouldn't have batteries handy.)
|
| I won't defend a rechargeable mouse you can't use while
| plugged in; the Logitech mouse I generally prefer lets me
| do this. But just swapping batteries isn't clearly better
| than can't use a mouse while it's charging to me. And
| with a laptop I'm actually fine with using the built-in
| trackpad 90% of the time.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| I always had batteries at my desk. Either way, an instant
| fix is preferable to "remember to do this later, and if
| you forget, your mouse dies at a most inconvenient time".
| rmatt2000 wrote:
| You get a low-battery notice when there are only a few
| hours of charge left. For me, there's always been enough
| time to finish up my work and let it charge overnight.
| [deleted]
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| The only time it was an ever an issue when I used one, was
| I plugged it in, I went to the bathroom, I got a coffee.
| And it was charged enough to use it until I could charge it
| for hours later.
|
| The sleep cycle of a mouse microprocessor is 99.9%+. A few
| minutes charge will get you hours of use.
| tikhonj wrote:
| That's what I was paranoid about with wireless mice: what
| if the battery runs out while I'm in the middle of a
| competitive, time-sensitive game? With my Logitech mouse, I
| can plug it in from the front, so it's a minor
| inconvenience.
|
| Of course, just _thinking_ about using the Magic Mouse for
| FPS games hurts my wrists, so it in particular was never a
| real consideration anyhow :P
| altarius wrote:
| I don't think it's the design, it's the usability. I might
| argue that it has always more about usability than design.
|
| Sure, the iconic designs of the G4 Cube, iMac, metal
| Powerbooks and later Macbook were what drew people in, but
| the usability is what kept many people with Apple.
|
| Is the better scrolling a design or a tech thing? Probably
| tech, but I'm sure it's only that good because someone really
| understood how people use it and what it really needs to do
| well and then insisted that the tech worked flawlessly.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| If I had to start from first principles and I had to either
| be the tech person who figured everything out or the person
| who insisted it work flawlessly, I'm pretty sure I know
| which would be the easier job.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Usability is a sub-discipline of user experience, which is
| a sub-discipline of... wait for it.. design.
|
| Design, from _designare_ - to mark out, to prepare the
| plans for, especially to plan the form and structure of
|
| Usability is just one area of emphasis for design. Apple
| simply included too few elements of usability in their
| efforts.
| visarga wrote:
| I prefer the wheel of Logitech mx master 3.
| dandellion wrote:
| Me too. It would be even better if we could disable mouse
| acceleration on MacOS, it's terrible and drives me nuts.
| initplus wrote:
| MX Master 3 has inbuilt mouse acceleration, even if you
| can set acceleration to zero in software it's still there
| in the hardware.
| monetus wrote:
| Since someone brought up trackballs, the scrollwheel on
| CST trackballs are awesomely, in the literal sense of the
| word, smoother than any other I've felt.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Apparently there's a Terminal command that can do this:
| https://www.isiko.de/how-to-disable/
| tehnub wrote:
| One little trick I use is to turn the tracking speed all
| the way down in System Preferences, and then set it as
| high as I need in the Logitech settings. This makes the
| acceleration pretty unnoticeable for me. Also could use
| something like this:
| https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels
| mlindner wrote:
| The magic mouse doesn't work at all for me because I want to
| be able to right click while left click is down and vice-
| versa for some special operations for some applications.
| Magic mouse only lets you click one button at a time.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > because the scrolling is so much better
|
| Unless you use _any_ application that requires more or less
| precise scrolls. Like any game, or _any map in the browser_.
| The experience of using Google maps / Apple maps /
| Openstreetmap with Magic Mouse is unbelievably shitty. Almost
| every time I want to make a click it interprets it as a
| scroll and zooms in or out. I eventually replaced magic mouse
| because of this with a regular mouse when I use an Apple
| computer, and it is much much better.
| goosedragons wrote:
| The free and horizontal scrolling benefits can also be
| found on much better mice. Logitech has some nice ones that
| allow both ratcheted and free scrolling with the click of a
| button.
| azemetre wrote:
| I'm not a fan of the magic mouse because the ergonomics isn't
| good for your hand over extend uses of time. I wish Apple
| would make a "magic" trackball.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >reviving the "computer for the rest of us"
|
| That's just the spirit of Apple and the place where Steve Jobs
| wanted it to be.
|
| The genius of Tim Cook lies in doing that while keeping 30-40%
| margins on the products they sell.
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| amelius wrote:
| > >reviving the "computer for the rest of us"
|
| > That's just the spirit of Apple and the place where Steve
| Jobs wanted it to be.
|
| Eh, there's nothing that points in the direction that Steve
| Jobs wanted Apple to be computers for the rest of us. Apple
| was always marketed as expensive and exclusive. Which is
| ironic because Apple devices are clearly mass products, with
| design that has little variation over the quite limited
| product line, and almost zero variation between Apple
| products owned by people. Somehow Apple made people believe
| it is hip to own the same thing as everybody else, and feel
| privileged about it, which defies all logic.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| Steve Jobs literally said that several times. But he wasn't
| referring to cost. He was referring to ease of use.
| Especially in the 80s the difference between graphical and
| text interfaces was a massive gulf. 90% of people simply
| could not be productive with a text only interface. Even
| the good ones they had on the AppleIIs. GUI changed
| everything. That's what Jobs meant by a computer for the
| rest of us.
| adventured wrote:
| Cook scaled up the iPhone (and its broad ecosystem, which
| includes the iPad, iWatch, iServices), maximizing its global
| potential.
|
| I don't know if it qualifies as genius, however it's plainly
| obvious that Cook is an exceptionally competent manager and
| logistician. He has also been a stable hand on an
| increasingly sprawling behemoth that easily could have gotten
| out of hand (~$400 billion in operating profit every five
| years - in the wrong management hands that's a disaster
| waiting to happen). He's successfully operating a mass
| consumer product company with the profit of Saudi Aramco, a
| once unthinkable outcome (Aramco used to tower over the
| profit of most every other corporation globally). Ten years
| ago Microsoft was one of the few global profit giants with
| ~$20b in annual profit; Apple is near six times that scale
| now. Cook has done a relatively good job of keeping a leash
| on Apple's financial behavior.
| kranke155 wrote:
| This. I had doubts about Cook until the new M1 macs came
| out and I realised he's doing just fine. Cook is no Steve
| Jobs, I think of him more as a Bill Gates figure - a
| relentless executioner. But Cook has made a better and more
| ethical company than Gates ever did.
|
| It'll all change when the AR revolution kicks in and it
| will all depend on how apple deals with it. If they succeed
| there again, then Cook will be one of the best CEOs in the
| business. He's got his own way but underestimating him
| after the M1 chip and successful transition seems foolish
| to me.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The AR revolution has been promised since the 80s.
| Bud wrote:
| I can only quote Steve in response to this silliness:
|
| "Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it
| looks like. People think it's this veneer -- that the designers
| are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not
| what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and
| feels like. Design is how it works."
|
| Citing the mouse thing is a prime example of this silliness.
| First, it ignores that it doesn't matter whether the charging
| port is on the bottom, because _that mouse cannot operate_ when
| it 's plugged in. Second, it ignores that you can charge the
| thing in a few minutes, so, again, it doesn't matter that the
| port is on the bottom.
|
| Only people who don't actually use an Apple Mouse think that
| this matters.
| mplanchard wrote:
| But to be fair most wireless mice _do_ work just fine when
| plugged in, so the failure to make a mouse that for some
| reason can't work while plugged in is also a part of their
| design.
| pushrax wrote:
| Apple's own wireless trackpad and wireless keyboards work
| while being plugged in.
|
| I think the sleek visual and ergonomic design specifically
| resulted in the charge port being put on the bottom, which
| resulted in their decision to disable the mouse when it's
| charging. Not the other way around.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Many people I know leave their trackpad and wireless
| keyboards plugged into the Lightning/USB ports all the
| time. This is basically fine for a keyboard or trackpad,
| since very little of the functionality of those devices
| benefits from mobility.
|
| By contrast, a wireless mouse is fundamentally a
| different animal than a wired one. If (say) 90% of your
| users are going to leave it plugged in 100% of the time
| (to offset against the ~3 hours per year when they'll
| actually need to charge it), then a huge percentage of
| your users will experience an inferior product. It's like
| buying a mobile phone and then encouraging users to leave
| it plugged in by their bedside all day.
| zerocrates wrote:
| By the same token, you _could_ make it impossible to use
| your phone while it 's charging, but that's rightly
| understood to be a terrible idea that's not even
| considered. Rechargeable game controllers pretty much all
| allow you to plug them in if you want while you use them,
| and in some cases to just drop the battery entirely and
| use them as wired. I recognize that neither of these are
| perfect analogs, mostly because both of these need to be
| charged much more often.
|
| I can't really decide if the Magic Mouse thing was
| primarily an aesthetic decision to have no visible ports,
| or a decision that the user couldn't be trusted to use it
| "correctly" if it allowed itself to be plugged in
| normally, or an equal mixture of both. Either reinforces
| some typical Apple stereotypes which is why it keeps
| getting brought up even though it needs to be charged
| relatively rarely.
| _ph_ wrote:
| No one would assume that a mobile phone requires to be
| plugged in to work. With mice it is not as clear cut. And
| looking at my magic mouse, I wouldn't know where they
| would put a charge port without making its wireless use
| worse. So I prefer it as it is. Would be nice though, if
| wireless charging would be possible.
| pushrax wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand this argument. Why can't users
| simply use the mouse wirelessly even if it's possible to
| use in a wired way. Are you claiming that people would
| end up leaving the mouse plugged in, like they do with
| the trackpad? If the point is that using a wireless mouse
| is a better experience, then why wouldn't people use it
| wirelessly except to charge?
|
| I have an Apple keyboard and trackpad that I use at my TV
| wirelessly but have benefited from the ability to use
| while charging a few times when the battery died. Doesn't
| stop me from using it wirelessly 99% of the time because
| the experience is better.
|
| By the way, I have an older phone I leave plugged in all
| the time by my bed, the battery life on it has
| deteriorated but it works perfectly for music.
| powersnail wrote:
| > why wouldn't people use it wirelessly except to charge?
|
| For some users, the point of a wireless mouse is to be a
| portable mouse. You can take it on the go with your
| laptop without worrying about cables. When they are at
| home, they don't care about cable drag, and they want the
| peace of mind that the mouse will always have full
| battery when they need to go. They leave the mouse always
| plugged in when they can, so they can use the mouse
| unplugged when they need to.
|
| I think most modern mouses have long enough battery life
| now, that more people can have the peace of mind without
| constantly docking their mouse. If the battery lasts
| weeks, it feels pretty secure.
| K7PJP wrote:
| In practice, there is no problem to be solved here. I have
| used a Magic Mouse for at least five years. It has never
| run out of juice while I'm using it, and I simply plug it
| in at lunch or overnight or on a Zoom call for a bit when I
| start getting notifications about the battery. It runs for
| three weeks of daily use without need for a charge.
| robonerd wrote:
| Five years doesn't seem like a very long time. My
| intellimouse is 20 years old. The battery will never wear
| out because there is no battery.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes, but to make one that works when plugged in takes some
| extra considerations and might cost a bit more
|
| For example, having the port in front would change the
| overall design of the magic mouse, would mean that it would
| be thicker (at least in the front) and might also fight for
| space with the click switch
|
| But yeah, given it charges to usable in a couple of
| minutes, it's a non-issue
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Design is how it works.
|
| But the design of having the charge port _not_ on the bottom
| would not negatively affect how it works. In fact, the port
| on the bottom goes against "how it works" philosophy.
| goosedragons wrote:
| I own a magic mouse 2. Honestly the charge port is the least
| of its problems. Apple does not like to put a second switch
| in their mice, so right clicking is done entirely in software
| and touch. The problem with this approach is that it's not
| possible to click both buttons at the same time, it also
| makes it harder to trigger because there's only 1 switch and
| it's on the left side. Plus it's just uncomfortable and has
| these plastic rails that make horizontal movement harder on
| some surfaces. It's just all around an awful mouse.
|
| Apple has frequently ignored how it works for looks and still
| do. They would for the longest time stick all the USB ports
| on the left hand side of the laptop very close together such
| that a larger USB stick or a 3G dongle or whatever would
| block your only other port. They do things like awkwardly
| hide the power button on the back of iMacs, no fronting
| facing or side mounted ports, etc.
| _ph_ wrote:
| The magic mouse is by far my favorite mouse and I prefer it
| to the fancy Logitech MX I used before. No other mouse gets
| scrolling as right as the magic mouse does. Why would you
| want to be able to have a simultaneous left and right
| click? Be sure to check out BetterTouchTool to set up more
| guestures for the mouse, like a 3 and a 4 finger click.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it
| looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
|
| Which is exactly why many Apple fans had become so frustrated
| with bizarre "form over function" design in the waning Ive
| years. Even if the butterfly keyboard hadn't been vulnerable
| to making an entire computer unusable due to a tiny speck of
| dust, the "tapping on glass" feel of it was the prime example
| of "usefulness be damned" at the alter of Ive's bizarre
| obsession with thinness. If anything, the most recent
| MacBooks, where they just essentially undid all the bad
| decisions of the previous 3-4 years, were an admission that
| they had chased weird design obsessions at the cost of "it
| just works".
|
| The other commenters have already pointed out the absurdity
| of a mouse that can't be used while it is charging.
| jahnu wrote:
| I know plenty of apple ecosystem centric people who used an
| apple mouse and hated that design. So much so they gave up
| and got another one eventually. It's clearly a bad design
| because there is an obvious alternative with no downsides.
|
| A better example though might be the mess that is the design,
| or rather lack thereof, of the notification system and
| haphazard gesture meanings in iOS. I use both a Pixel Android
| and an iPhone, but mainly the iPhone these days and it's
| clear that Apple don't get everything right.
| namdnay wrote:
| So your argument against the bottom charger beign bad design
| is that the mouse is also designed so it can't charge and
| operate (contrary to the keyboard for example)? That's kind
| of circular :)
| KerrAvon wrote:
| > Only people who don't actually use an Apple Mouse think
| that this matters.
|
| I actually would use an Apple mouse and I think this matters.
| I don't use one because of this issue. See my response above;
| tl;dr: I don't ever want to leave the mouse unplugged.
|
| > First, it ignores that it doesn't matter whether the
| charging port is on the bottom, because that mouse cannot
| operate when it's plugged in.
|
| Yes, and this is a fundamental design flaw and it should be
| fixed.
|
| > Second, it ignores that you can charge the thing in a few
| minutes, so, again, it doesn't matter that the port is on the
| bottom
|
| Interrupting my flow for a few minutes is really
| unacceptable.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| > Only people who don't actually use an Apple Mouse think
| that this matters.
|
| I use one (several, actually -- that's what work provides)
| and I absolutely think this matters.
|
| I forget to charge it. I don't check the battery level. I
| don't remember to plug it in at the end of the day.
|
| I also shouldn't have to. That's an annoying, unnecessary
| cognitive load.
|
| If it dies in the middle of something important (and it
| does), stopping for some unknown number of minutes to let it
| charge is not a suitable option.
|
| Currently, my fix is to have _two_ magic mice; when the
| battery in one dies, I swap it out for the other one.
|
| This is the only solution that doesn't offload the cognitive
| burden of remembering to charge something at the end of the
| day onto me.
|
| This is also a ridiculous solution to that problem.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| > Only people who don't actually use an Apple Mouse think
| that this matters.
|
| You got that backward. The people who are annoyed by these
| shortcomings don't use an Apple Mouse.
| hammock wrote:
| >Rather than the Apple watch being a Vogue-celebrated product
| for the 1%, it's an attractive and high quality product for
| many people. I see it on the wrists fashion icons and on the
| wrists of people working at my local grocery store.
| Billionaires and ordinary people can have basically the same
| phone, watch, and AirPods. That is the true genius of Cook,
| reviving the "computer for the rest of us".
|
| Reminds me of that famous Andy Warhol quote from 1975:
|
| _What's great about this country is that America started the
| tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same
| things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-
| Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor
| drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is
| a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than
| the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are
| the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the
| President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it._
| kingofspain wrote:
| The same is true of Bovril
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I agree with you on all points. The Apple Watch is an
| especially significant universally appealing product for people
| who can both afford it and a monthly data plan. For me the
| killer feature is being able to leave my cell phone at home and
| still get messages, calls, and see email headers. I don't know
| about the rest of you here, but I struggle a bit separating my
| human-ness from technology. Not having the temptation of
| looking at a cell phone when I am running errands and hanging
| out with friends - but still be in communication - is really
| good for me. Yeah, if I had more will power and self control
| then the Apple Watch wouldn't be as valuable to me.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| On the flip side, one wonders what the departure of Scott
| Forstall meant for Apple, and where it would be today if he
| continued to be in a decision-making position.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I think Forstall's trajectory after Apple shows that he was
| ready to be done with being a technology leader. If he had
| wanted to stay, he could have.
| gnicholas wrote:
| This frames his departure as being about conflict with the
| 'accountants', and it doesn't mention the laptop thinness
| debacle. I have zero inside information, but I understood Ive to
| have been pushing for thinness, even at the expense of
| functionality. The company went down his path for a few years,
| but it has recently made an abrupt about-face. It seems strange
| not to mention this dimension of Ive's work and the possible
| conflicts it could have caused.
|
| OTOH, this guy apparently conducted hundreds of interviews, and
| I'm just some guy who's been watching from the outside! Maybe I'm
| way off-base.
| [deleted]
| trzy wrote:
| This is a "debate" that exists only on HN. Laptops are not what
| propelled Apple to become the most valuable company in the
| world and their importance inside the company reflected that
| until fairly recently.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Jony Ive's ,,design is everything, function is last" approach.
|
| I think Apple ,,grew up" a little bit in the last years and
| realized, that they can not deliver any more or such substandard
| products.
|
| - Like the Mac Pro (2013) which was thermal limited even with the
| launch configuration and could not be refreshed because more
| power would mean less power through throttling
|
| - Magic Mouse 2 which well u could not use while charging
|
| - Macbook Pro Touchbar which is there because there was nothing
| else to ,,innovate"
|
| - MacBook Pro Keyboard which is so thin and lookin good that the
| owner has to replace it every 6 month
| kappuchino wrote:
| Question: After reading some comments here, I still think I might
| be in a bubble? I think its all becoming better now that Ive is
| not responsible for then mac design any more.
|
| All the mac hardware (mini, imac, macbooks) became smaller, less
| repairable and overdesigned to the extent of being impacted in
| usability after steve jobs died and Ive was running without
| counterweight:
|
| The magic mouse you could not use while charging. The horrible
| keyboard that died from merely a few crumbs. having only two
| ports on a computer so you would always need a couple of dongles.
| Just to name a few.
|
| Sometimes clever design has to be combined with _boring_ choices,
| like still having a hdmi port and micro sd slot. A decent,
| resilient keyboard. Now I long for a macbook that has replaceable
| /repairable memory (ram, ssd) again as well as a battery that is
| not glued in place ...
| jmrm wrote:
| > The magic mouse you could not use while charging.
|
| I totally think they done this on purpose to prevent anybody to
| use the mouse while charging it. In that way, there isn't
| anybody continuously using the mouse without removing the
| cable, making the product look like is wired instead of wired,
| and breaking that minimalism design they want to.
|
| Apple is a company that not only design product to look good in
| a shop window or an ad, but also in how other people will use
| the product and what image will give to the rest when its in
| use.
| PolygonSheep wrote:
| > In that way, there isn't anybody continuously using the
| mouse without removing the cable, making the product look
| like is wired instead of wired, and breaking that minimalism
| design they want to.
|
| Is this a common problem? I only use wired trackballs but I
| notice other major brands of rechargeable wireless mice don't
| seem to care whether you use them plugged in or not.
|
| What I think would have been better would be to put the
| charging port on the back instead of the bottom so you can
| still use it if you absolutely _need_ to while charging but
| it 's just awkward and uncomfortable enough to discourage
| doing so on a regular basis.
| paulcole wrote:
| > The magic mouse you could not use while charging
|
| Do you think this just slipped past everyone at Apple?
| [deleted]
| dschuetz wrote:
| I think Apple has lost its mojo when they have started to
| sacrifice function to form, to make their Laptops even thinner.
| Remember the "revolutionary" butterfly keyboards that could not
| survive outside a clean lab? That was the moment.
|
| Btw, the watch struggled rightfully so, because the battery still
| does not last a day. I can imagine how hard it was to sell it as
| a fashion accessory. It needs daily care, charging at least one
| time a day. Staggering! I have a different smart watch product
| that lasts a week! Now that's a fashion accessory!
| bayareabadboy wrote:
| I used to worry that Apple was slipping. Apple TV+ especially
| made me question the direction of the company. Then I got a
| MacBook Pro with an M1 chip. It's honestly stunning.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| I listened to this author's interview on the A16z podcast. An
| important detail is that Scott Forstall brought him up through
| Apple over the years. Scott Forstall, the head of software for
| Apple, later lost a power battle after Steve Jobs' death to Tim
| Cook & Jony Ive. One wonders if this is coloring his opinion.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > It was 2014, and Apple's future, more than ever, seemed to
| hinge on Mr. Ive.
|
| What?
|
| I was there then and long before, and that's just nonsense,
| fabricated nonsense by whoever Tripp Mickle is. What a
| sensationalist assertion.
|
| The engineering, hard-core engineering, was a not entirely hidden
| powerhouse, and still is.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Are you sure? Engineers have no control over the isolated
| designers
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _whoever Tripp Mickle is_
|
| NYTimes journalist, before that, WSJ.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/trippmickle/
| ghaff wrote:
| That seems like a very engineering-centric view of the world.
| The engineering (both software and hardware) of Apple's
| products has certainly been important. But, especially as they
| were transitioning to increasingly be a consumer electronics
| brand, design was certainly a key piece that set them apart.
| tptacek wrote:
| Design still is a key piece that sets them apart.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Agreed, and, to both your points, it's interesting that
| there is significant engineering never trumpeted in the
| press about the teams doing engineering to make the designs
| (physical designs) manufacture-able. it's a super
| interesting world where mechanical engineering and
| aesthetic design crossbreed.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Jony Ive leaving Apple was there best thing that could have
| happened. The horrible keyboards, the form over function trash
| can MacPro, the removal of ports, the one port MacBook ("the
| adorable"), the gold Apple Watch, are all the fault ultimately of
| the design team under Ive.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| It was the Jobs Ive combo that worked. I think Ive was making too
| many form over function decisions towards the end which
| benefitted neither Apple nor its customers. Cook is a bean
| counter.
|
| That does not neat to be all bad as much as I hate to say it.
| That is why I liken get he new Apple to Microsoft with all of he
| pros and cons that entails:
|
| https://erik-engheim.medium.com/apple-is-turning-into-the-ne...
| fmajid wrote:
| Jony Ive is a hack without the firm hand of a Steve Jobs to keep
| his self-indulgent tendencies in check. He is responsible for the
| butterfly keyboard fiasco. Scott Forstall was famously fired for
| refusing to apologize for the Apple Maps first release woes, but
| AFAIK Ive never has for those garbage key switches, and I'm sure
| there are multibillion dollar class-action lawsuits working their
| way through the legal system.
|
| It is notable Apple has not named a new Chief Design Officer.
| Ive's failure is so manifest he's destroyed designers' seat at
| the table in the company that was the poster child for design.
| illwrks wrote:
| I don't disagree with anything you've said however I think if
| apple were to name a new chief then that person would have to
| be as good or better than his/her predecessor. That's a lot of
| pressure from the public on day 0.
| daviddever23box wrote:
| ...an infomercial for the author's new book? Weak sauce, NYT.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| I completely cut nytimes out of my life. I don't think I'm
| better informed, probably worse, just happier. Definitely
| happier.
| pegasus wrote:
| Ignorance is bliss, then?
| somenameforme wrote:
| "To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a
| newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful, I
| should answer 'by restraining it to true facts & sound
| principles only.' yet I fear such a paper would find few
| subscribers. it is a melancholy truth that a suppression of
| the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of
| it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution
| to falsehood. nothing can now be believed which is seen in
| a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put
| into that polluted vehicle. the real extent of this state
| of misinformation is known only to those who are in
| situations to confront facts within their knolege with the
| lies of the day.
|
| I really look with commiseration over the great body of my
| fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the
| belief that they have known something of what has been
| passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts
| they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of
| any other period of the world as of the present, except
| that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
|
| general facts may indeed be collected from them, such as
| that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a
| successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion
| of Europe to his will, but no details can be relied on. I
| will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is
| better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who
| knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is
| filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will
| still learn the great facts, and the details are all
| false."
|
| - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 [1]
|
| That's one of my favorite quotes that's becoming more
| relevant by the day. The reason, among many, is that that
| was written more than 200 years ago. It emphasizes that the
| brief window of media that many of us grew up within was
| some weird brief bubble of competence, integrity, and
| accountability that was for seemingly most all of the rest
| of humanity's existence, not the case. And we're now simply
| returning to the 'good ole days.'
|
| [1] - https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-
| 01-02-5...
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Couldn't follow the link.
| jaclaz wrote:
| It is truncated for some reasons, the document is:
|
| From Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 11 June 1807
|
| This one, even if it is truncated in the view on HN,
| seems to be working:
|
| https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-0
| 2-5...
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| It's so good! I love it!
|
| "defamation is becoming a necessary of life: insomuch
| that a dish of tea, in the morning or evening, cannot be
| digested without this stimulant [the newspaper]. even
| those who do not believe these abominations, still read
| them with complacence to their auditors, and, instead of
| the abhorrence & indignation which should fill a virtuous
| mind, betray a secret pleasure in the possibility that
| some may believe them, tho they do not themselves. it
| seems to escape them that it is not he who prints, but he
| who pays for printing a slander, who is it's real
| author."
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I quit viewing the NYT as a reliable news source after they
| sold all those lies about Iraqi WMDs to the American public
| on behalf of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld neocon crowd. It's
| not hard to say informed without relying on such corporate
| media outlets with obvious ulterior motives. For example,
| if I want to read about Apple's M1 Ipad (I do like ipads,
| though mostly use Linux now), just go to DuckDuckGo and
| enter
|
| Apple M1 Ipad "engineering" design
|
| Flip through the first 50 results, you'll get a better view
| on what's up than the NYT provides, with its drivel about
| 'the soul of Apple' and similar fluff nonsense. You can try
| it on Google as well, but then half the page is just ads.
|
| [edit: one thing I discovered by doing that is that the M1
| Ipad is going to be very difficult to repair, which is a
| huge negative for me]
| Bud wrote:
| So who did you choose as a reliable news source going
| forward, then, instead?
|
| I think you need to be mindful that NYT got duped just
| like Powell did. It doesn't magically mean they are all
| bad journalists. It doesn't. You can fantasize that it
| does if you like, but it doesn't.
|
| NYT is not an in-depth tech reporting organ, so I agree
| with you on that. But if you want detailed global-scale
| investigations of complex new issues? Good luck, in the
| US at least, finding a substantially better source than
| NYT. You won't. It's not there.
| [deleted]
| HidyBush wrote:
| Since when do newspapers equal knowledge?
| ghaff wrote:
| I see a disclosure right at the very top. And an article
| adapted from a book, that most of us won't get around to
| reading, seems like a perfectly reasonable topic.
|
| ADDED: I'm actually more inclined to read an article written by
| someone who did the research/put the effort into writing an
| entire book on a subject.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Agreed. Both book authors and journalists face comparable
| financial motivations to distort facts for the sake of story
| telling (and in this case the author is also a NYT
| journalist).
| trowawee wrote:
| I understand the thought, but a weird reality about book
| writing is that, since the author bears the cost for fact-
| checking books, they're often less extensively fact-checked
| than longer reported pieces for newspapers or magazines.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Rock star designers leaving big companies is nothing new. I
| happen to like "Bangled" BMWs like the original Z4, before it was
| watered down to a retro-ish design. But I also know I'm in the
| minority.
|
| Apple's primary advantage is gaining unique capabilities and
| protecting them through domination of the supply chain. Not all
| of these succeed ( _vide_ large sapphire crystals) but these
| kinds of competitive moats are actually more important than
| unique designs.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| How was this ever going to work?
|
| If I worked for 20 years with one of history's most influential
| entrepreneur, and we had a deep working partnership sustained by
| mutual respect and trust, and then that person died, I simply
| don't know how I'd continue showing up every day.
|
| Keep in mind that when Jobs returned to Apple, Ive was not at all
| influential within Apple and on the verge of leaving. To go from
| that place to one of the world's most influential industrial
| designers -- gosh, I'd have some ego too.
|
| I'm grateful for his contribution. And I'm also grateful that his
| departure seemed to have opened new avenues of creativity and
| flexibility of thought at Apple.
|
| After all, it was Jobs himself at the Stanford connection who
| said that death (or, thought of another way, departure) is life's
| change agent.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Read the whole thing, I was really not convinced. Ive had some
| brilliant hits, but I think became more of a liability in the
| end. Look at what happened to the MacBook Pro, losing most of its
| ports and the thinness causing them to put a much worse keyboard
| in it that caused massive problems. Sacrificing a bit of thinness
| and going back on those changes with the newest iteration has
| been much better.
|
| Honestly to me the M1 era of Apple is the more exciting than
| things have been in years. The article linked is really negative
| (saying Apple only have "legacy products") but with the M1 series
| they seems to be smashing it out of the park...
| bschne wrote:
| > Honestly to me the M1 era of Apple is the more exciting than
| things have been in years.
|
| Yes, I feel like this is somehow still massively
| underappreciated. They pulled off a major hardware transition
| without big hiccups (I'm sure someone's going to point some I
| have missed in the comments /s) and launched a bunch of devices
| that are an incredible leap forward. I mean the baseline M1 air
| starts at $1k and is an _incredible_ piece of hardware for most
| usage.
| [deleted]
| sremani wrote:
| The M1 iPad Air is $499, couple that with Apple Pencil, the
| writing experience is near frictionless.
|
| The M1 era is going to redefine the industry in subtle and
| not so subtle ways.
| coder543 wrote:
| > M1 iPad Air is $499
|
| $599, actually.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| That's a lot of money to pay for a device that locks you
| into the App Store.
| saghm wrote:
| To be fair, the iPhone does as well and is way more
| expensive than that
| imwillofficial wrote:
| A lot of money for whom?
| layer8 wrote:
| The M1 iPad Air is actually $599 for the entry-level 64 GB,
| which nowadays isn't that much storage. If you go for the
| 256 GB (there's no 128 GB, for profit-maximization reasons)
| and add the Pencil plus maybe the missing charger, then
| you're already at over $900.
| Bud wrote:
| Might want to check your dosage on the "omg no bundled
| charger omg omg the world is ending" memedrugs.
|
| The iPad Air ships with a USB-C charger. A nice one.
| layer8 wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up, can't edit the comment anymore.
| raydev wrote:
| What is the average person actually storing on their
| iPad, though? Photos taken with the iPad, maybe?
|
| I think for most people it's just an expensive, nicer
| Chromebook. Everything they want to consume needs an
| internet connection anyway.
|
| If you're a creative or just a nerd, then sure, you'll
| need to spend more money to get the specs you need.
| layer8 wrote:
| Or photos/videos taken with the iPhone. The iPhone now
| starts at 128 GB, so it's surprising they still start the
| iPad Air at 64 GB.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Downloaded videos for long flights! You have to get a
| storage bump to actually get a variety of content
| downloaded.
|
| Also local copies of cloud storage are very valuable to
| keep on iPad.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I think you missed the "average person" bit.
|
| The average user does know what local copies are.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why wouldn't they? Most of the popular streaming apps
| have download functionality.
| wildzzz wrote:
| One thing I've really appreciated on flights is the
| addition of streaming videos to your own device. If it
| saves fuel and maintenance costs, I'm perfectly fine with
| them ripping all the personal TVs out of the plane as
| long as they can keep a selection of movies available in
| case I forget to download my own and don't feel like
| reading.
| midislack wrote:
| No it's not. Even the multi-core era failed to do that with
| laptops. If you're going to redefine the industry you need
| a radical new idea, not just 'the same, but slightly
| faster, slimmer, and lighter.'
|
| Whatever will redefine the industry will probably be
| laughed at and only adopted by nerds for a while. Like OS X
| back in the day. Only people interested in the first couple
| versions were Unix nerds. Everybody else's software they
| needed was on OS 9.
| uuyi wrote:
| The radical bit is they deliver holistic software and
| hardware that actually works.
|
| No other vendor comes close.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah I was one of them.
|
| Unfortunately the Unix part seems to be very
| underappreciated by Apple recently so I've already moved
| on again. I was an early adopter of macOS and have
| 'converted' many more mainstream users that still use it.
| But for me it's become too locked down.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Which OS/distro did you move onto?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| FreeBSD with KDE
| rch wrote:
| Nixpkgs on Fedora w/ i3wm
| smoldesu wrote:
| Amen to that. At work one of my responsibilities includes
| maintaining bootstrapping scripts for MacOS so we can
| reliably develop on the platform. Getting things to "just
| work" the way they do on our deploy servers is an actual
| nightmare, especially once you toss Apple Silicon into
| the mix. Not only are we running different kernels, but
| different architectures; it's simply impossible to
| guarantee that something that runs locally will work fine
| on production, or vice-versa. I definitely do my
| development on Linux where possible.
| azinman2 wrote:
| What is it too locked down to accomplish? There are many
| knobs to unlock it.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Changing the sshd_config to only accept key
| authentication for example. Since the recent locking down
| of significant parts of the OS this keeps getting
| reverted to default.
|
| But there's many more issues, I've gone into them before
| (I used to be a Mac admin) but I don't want to bring it
| all up again
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| You sort of can sidestep the issue by supplying your own
| launchd plist for openssh, and disabling Apple's one, but
| it's a thorn in the side anyway -- the fact that you even
| need to bother to sidestep the issue in the first place,
| while there are systems which go to great lengths to
| respect your changes to the configuration.
| kergonath wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "too locked down"?
| What could you do on, say OS X 10.8 that you cannot do
| now?
|
| I am still running and compiling the same open source
| software as I did 10 years ago and more besides. There
| have been a couple of rough transitions with the new
| security things, SIP, and whatnot. I disabled it for a
| couple of releases but now that's not really a problem.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| You have an increased number of hoops to jump through if
| you want your computer to be programmable.
|
| At first, it was Gatekeeper. Yeah, appeared in 10.8. Then
| notarization. Now, on M1 you need to sign your binaries
| ad-hoc or they won't run. Custom kernel extensions? No
| way.
|
| It's like slowly boiling the water in which you sit.
| Little things, but one by one they accumulate into quite
| a lump of red tape, and Apple seems to drive home the
| point that a developer is a different caste than the user
| is, and there's some sacred knowledge that you should be
| in possession of, and update it every year for $99, so
| that you can program your computer. All the while the
| user is supposed to be clueless and in awe from this
| technological marvel the caste of engineers is bestowing
| unto them.
|
| Oh, and Apple wants to be a bottleneck in each and every
| process connected to programming their computers. They
| also remind you that the machines you pay mad bucks for,
| you don't really own.
|
| I like the pure Unix approach more, when the line between
| using the computer and programming it doesn't really
| exist, and where the system is basically your IDE too,
| and where you're going from being a user to being a
| programmer and back without really noticing. Mind you, it
| doesn't mean you have to go from one to the other, but
| when you want/need to, it's damn frictionless, and the
| system is as malleable as you want it to be.
| nine_k wrote:
| I hazard yo ask: have you tried Linux recently?
|
| Apple wants to produce customer appliances, not entirely
| but mostly locked down in the name of security and smooth
| customer experience, and there seems to be a large market
| for these.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Everything you list makes the Mac more secure and more
| stable.
|
| For instance, with system integrity protection, a bad
| browser installer can't wreck your entire computer.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2019/09/no-it...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| A lot of people look wistfully back on the good old days
| of futzing around with drama in their PC.
|
| Time moves on. If you want computing to be an adventure,
| that's what Linux is for.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I like to be in control precisely over how hardened I'd
| like my system to be.
|
| If I wreck it, I know how to reinstall it and restore my
| backups, thank you very much.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| And you can do that. Just turn it off.
|
| I honestly thing the 'lock down' is so overblown.
|
| Yes there's 'more hoops' - but you go through the hoop
| once. Seriously, if you're running a dev machine turning
| off 3, maybe 4, things once and never touching them again
| is hardly the biggest hurdle.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Different people have different annoyance levels with
| security restrictions. Personally, I'm all right if
| Apple's security model makes things I rarely do -- e.g.,
| install privileged system extensions like Rogue Amoeba's
| Audio Capture Engine -- difficult but still _possible._ I
| understand why other people might make different choices.
|
| Having said that, I do roll my eyes whenever I come
| across the phrase "walled garden" when applied to the Mac
| in particular, especially when people stridently insist
| that the Mac is just a year or two away from being locked
| down like iOS. (I've been hearing that prediction for
| over a decade, and find it less likely than ever in the
| era of Apple Silicon Macs.)
| scarface74 wrote:
| They have been warning about Apple requiring all Mac apps
| to come from the app store since 2011.
| fartcannon wrote:
| You should thank those people. They made enough noise to
| prevent what was and is surely apple's long term plan.
| 7speter wrote:
| Theres also a lot of commercial service overhead, like
| apple music starting up on boot (and even being
| installed) and asking if you'd like to subscribe or
| whatever.
|
| 15 years ago apple had people on stage bragging how there
| was only one version of OS X while Microsoft had
| countless versions of Windows (Vista Home, Vista Pro,
| Server, etc). I wonder if there should be a standard
| MacOS and a MacOS Pro that would be a relatively stripped
| down unix environment without all of the bloat thats been
| added on to MacOS recently...
| the_other wrote:
| Absolutely not. There should just be easy switches.
| darkerside wrote:
| You probably thought the original iPhone was pretty
| stupid, too, I would guess.
| p1necone wrote:
| The original iPhone /was/ stupid until they relented and
| decided to allow 3rd party apps with the iOS 2 update.
| eastbound wrote:
| Didn't everyone recognize the first iPhone as a
| revolution? I mean, the entire Android team took a day
| off, knowing they had failed.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| No, there was widespread derision. The idea that people
| would accept a phone without a physical keyboard was
| nothing short of heretical in business circles.
|
| Steve Ballmer famously went on one of the popular morning
| TV news shows and laughed at the iPhone. The fact that he
| still had a job when he got back to Redmond explains a
| lot about Microsoft's stagnation under his leadership,
| and its subsequent return to a successful path once he
| was gone.
| bobochan wrote:
| My memory is that MS laughed because they did not believe
| the hype. The laughing stopped when they got the first
| iPhones in house and were able to see how much space
| Apple was able to dedicate to the battery.
| ghaff wrote:
| Not really. I had a fairly recent Treo at the time. I
| certainly didn't buy an iPhone when it first came out.
| Come the 3GS I was definitely ready to go with Apple but
| it wasn't an instant switch.
|
| Of course, I was also not an Apple customer at the time
| except for an iPod sometime around that time.
| __alexs wrote:
| I was also a die hard Treo user at the time but as soon
| as I saw the iPhone it was obvious this was the future
| and I got in line on release day to get one and never
| looked back.
| scarface74 wrote:
| When the original iPhone came out, it couldn't run apps
| and didn't have GPS. Capabilities that my Blackberry and
| even feature phones had.
|
| The iPhone wasn't really good until the iPhone 4.
| rusk wrote:
| Intel's failing will redefine the industry in many ways.
| ARM and AMD and other players are taking chunks out of them
| at the cutting edge. They seem to be redefining themselves
| as a "couture" fabricator rather than taking leadership on
| the design end of things ... playing off their scale rather
| than their velocity. It's a big change and probably has as
| much to do with why apple ditched them. Remember Apple did
| this before when they switched to _to_ intel from IBM
| /Motorola, when they too had stagnated.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| This take totally misses the mark on the realities of the
| situation.
|
| Intel made a bad bet on tech and wasn't able to shrink
| the node. TSMC got the right choice. TSMC was therefore
| able to make better tech in the short term. Intel designs
| are not directly related to that shortcoming.
|
| TSMC makes way more chips than intel. TSMC is therefore
| able to buy the fabs, equipment, engineers, etc at a
| lower price per chip (since more chips). TSMC is
| therefore able to spend more on their fabs, and invest
| more in research. Intel can't keep up on the
| manufacturing side even if they can on the design side.
| The only way to justify the research costs and fab costs
| is to amortize it across more chips which means they need
| to manufacture for more than just intel. It's basically
| the AWS model - you can be your best customer, but you
| can drive prices down for yourself with extra customers.
| Amazon didn't abandon the revolutionary 2 day shipping
| when they became a data center provider. Assuming intel
| still has good designers left, they won't abandon their
| own chips.
| dtech wrote:
| Multiple reports over the years indicate that it's not
| just a single bad bet that got Intel into this, but a
| corporate culture where engineers have less and less
| influence and MBAs more and more, leading to worse and
| worse tech. Similar to Boeing.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Yet Intel is still competitive to AMD, and now has an
| engineer in charge. Intel's problems feel pretty over
| stated their products are still good, they're launching
| new ones which will bring new competition to the GPU
| space.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >. The only way to justify the research costs and fab
| costs is to amortize it across more chips
|
| or make more money per chip, which is what intel does,
| since lets say compared to an AMD chip TSMC
| manufacturers, TSMC takes a cut of the chip for
| manufacturing and then AMD takes the rest, while intel
| collects both portions.
| klelatti wrote:
| In return it also has two sets of R&D to support and two
| sets of risks - architecture and manufacturing. If it
| falls behind on either of these it starts to lose.
|
| TSMC for example can solely focus on manufacturing
| assured that it will fill it's fabs if it keeps pace.
|
| Maybe Intel made super profits when x86 was the only game
| in town but that's not the case any more.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >If it falls behind on either of these it starts to lose.
|
| If TMSC falls behind in one of these they lose, and they
| don't have the other. Is that an advantage as you seem to
| put it? If they make a wrong choice like intel did for
| 10nm they're going to be immediately a non-entity with no
| 'other' business. Having two sets of money make
| businesses puts intel at a big advantage in terms of
| financing and owning their own platforms.
|
| If TSMC falls behind a node all of their orders will
| disappear to whoever has a more advanced node. They don't
| have another business. Instead of two risks, they have
| one risk thats identical to intel's, and their entire
| business depends on it. That's a lot less anti fragile.
|
| Intel has two sets of risks and in exchange on many many
| fewer chips they basically made the same amount of money
| last year, when they were behind on CPUs at almost every
| metric. That's resilient. People talking about the fall
| of intel are talking about something that intel is
| actively maneuvering ahead of. TSMC has no chip design
| risks much lower per chip profits in exchange.
| klelatti wrote:
| Vertical integration is great if it generates synergies.
| It's really bad if the tie into the internal customer
| hinders the development of each part of the business.
|
| Intel is not remotely robust as it's almost completely
| dependent on x86 and needs to catch up with TSMC. It lost
| smartphones in part because of x86. Now it's fallen
| behind AMD because of manufacturing weaknesses. Hence a
| P/E ratio of 9 vs c20 for TSMC.
|
| TSMC on the other hand has a huge variety of customers at
| a wide variety of nodes.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "This take totally misses the mark on the realities of
| the situation."
|
| No, this comment misses the mark.
|
| Intel's largest issues are not economic or technological.
|
| It's the bloated bureaucracy that squanders the best and
| brightest money can buy.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Stagnated? Weren't PowerPC chips pretty advanced compared
| to Intel whose chips were carrying a lot of baggage at
| the time? Given that PowerPC chips were based on RISC,
| I'd guess they're a lot closer to the M1 than modern
| Intel chips are.
|
| My understanding is that IBM/Motorola's struggle with
| achieving volume is what doomed them not a lack of
| innovation.
|
| This is all way outta my area of understanding though.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The PPC processors may have been decent. But they were
| hamstrung by having to run an emulated 68K operating
| system and Apple cheaper out by having slower buses.
| b3morales wrote:
| If I recall, the scuttlebutt was that Motorola had
| promised Apple (meaning Steve Jobs) that faster clock
| speeds were just around the corner for a while, and when
| that repeatedly failed to materialize Apple (meaning
| Steve Jobs) got pissed and activated the Intel backup
| plan.
| kalleboo wrote:
| By the time Apple dropped PowerPC and went to Intel,
| Motorola was already out of the picture and IBM was
| making the G5
| b3morales wrote:
| That's a good point, thanks.
| rdsnsca wrote:
| The G5 was the desktop chip, it was Motorola's task to
| scale it down for laptops, which they were unable to do.
| philwelch wrote:
| Sort of. The G4 chip was still used in laptops until the
| Intel transition, and was produced by Motorola until they
| spun off their semiconductor division into Freescale,
| which continued producing the G4 until the end.
| 7speter wrote:
| Well it wasnt really clockspeeds, it was performance per
| watt. The g5 was able to go into a (watercooled) powermac
| but IBM couldnt get it to run cool and efficient enough
| to go into apple laptops (or the mac mini iirc). By 2005
| intel was, at the very least, probably prototyping
| multicore (I dont remember if IBM's processor offering to
| apple was multicore at the time) chips that blew ibm (and
| previous intel offerings) out of the water performance
| and efficiency wise and apple announced the transition.
| kergonath wrote:
| The last generation of PowerMacs had dual-core G5s. They
| still ran very hot and it did not change much in the end.
| mattl wrote:
| Last generation had quad core with water cooling I think.
| They were really trying to get everything out of them.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > My understanding is that IBM/Motorola's struggle with
| achieving volume is what doomed them not a lack of
| innovation.
|
| Before Apple announced their Intel transition laptops
| were more than half of their Mac sales. Of their desktop
| sales, the iMac dominated over PowerMacs. So a majority
| of the systems they were selling had relatively tight
| thermal envelopes.
|
| Neither IBM nor Motorola was willing (or able) to get
| computing power equivalent to x86 into those thermal
| envelopes. The G5 was a derivative of IBM's POWER chips
| they put in servers and workstations. They were largely
| unconcerned with thermals. Motorola saw the embedded
| space as more profitable and didn't want to invest in the
| G4 to make it more competitive.
|
| Meanwhile Intel had introduced the Pentium III derived
| Core series chips. Good thermals, high performance,
| multiple cores, and 64-bit. It was better performance
| than Apple's G5 in the thermal envelope of the G4.
|
| Neither IBM or Motorola had general issues with
| production volume. Apple switching was all about the
| future direction of the architecture. There was no market
| for desktop PowerPC chips besides Apple. Neither IBM or
| Motorola really wanted to compete directly with Intel and
| saw their fortunes in other segments.
|
| So Apple went with Intel because they were making chips
| compatible with what Apple wanted to do with the Mac. The
| first Intel Macs ran circles around the PowerPC machines
| they replaced with no major sacrifices needed in thermals
| or battery life.
|
| So Intel innovation in the 00s got Apple to switch to
| them and a lack thereof got them to switch away again.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Weren't PowerPC chips pretty advanced compared to Intel
|
| PowerPC had better floating point performance which was
| important for graphics and publishing workflows.
| Photoshop performance comparisons seemed to happen at
| every year's MacWorld during that period.
|
| Unfortunately, IBM used Power as a workstation chip, and
| making a version of the chips for laptops was not on
| their radar. Of course, at the time, Pentium IV chips
| weren't known for running cool either. The more popular
| laptops got, the more this was a problem.
|
| After Intel transitioned to the Core architecture, Apple
| transitioned to Intel so they could make laptops with a
| much better performance per watt than PowerPC offered.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| People weren't buying laptops for everything during the
| PowerPC transition. They were buying desktops. No one
| doing "serious" work bought laptops in 1994. Not for
| coding, not for photo manipulation, or even gaming.
|
| It wasn't until the 20-teens (2013 - 2015) that Macs for
| coding caught on. Apple transitioning to PowerPC made
| perfect sense for graphics workstations.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| >People weren't buying laptops for everything during the
| PowerPC transition.
|
| That was the period where it became obvious that laptops
| would overtake desktops and become the most popular form
| factor for computers.
|
| Neither PowerPC or Pentium IV were a good fit for
| laptops, but once Intel transitioned from NetBurst to
| Core it was a new ball game.
|
| Apple even transitioned back to 32 bit for it, since Core
| didn't offer 64 bit support until Core 2 shipped.
| ghaff wrote:
| In general, IBM was just going in a different direction
| with Power than Apple needed them to be going in. IBM was
| and is focused on the highest end, high priced end of the
| server market.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > Apple did this before when they switched to to intel
| from IBM/Motorola,
|
| Apple + (Intel) "Core" (geddit)?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Intel's failing will redefine the industry in many
| ways. ARM and AMD and other players are taking chunks out
| of them at the cutting edge_
|
| Failing? Have you looked at Intel's 12th Gen CPUs? This
| trope was valid till the 10th Gen 14nm++++ era from 2019
| but you might have overslept the last couple of years.
| Intel has improved massively since then starting with
| 11th Gen and Xe graphics.
|
| Intel's 12th gen big-little tech really shook up the
| market and even AMD now is feeling the pressure.
| 7speter wrote:
| 11th gen Intel chips were still 14nm, the top chip had
| less threads than the 10th gen because of the thermals,
| and intel xe was, iirc, only offered with the
| 11900/11900k (i.e. the top of the stack). Intel has had a
| stranglehold on integrated transcoders for a while but
| AMD's integrated vega cores (soon to be RDNA2) still
| wipes the floor with current integrated XE offerings
| gaming wise...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> 11th gen Intel chips were still 14nm_
|
| Nope, 11th Gen was 10nm. You might be confusing it with
| 10th Gen which was a mix of 14 and 10 nm.
| klelatti wrote:
| Intel adding big.LITTLE ten years after it appeared in
| Arm is an interesting development.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| One could argue it took ten years for Intel to have
| enough competition from ARM to actually wake up and do
| something again.
|
| I don't care, I got a 12th gen i7 with integrated
| graphics (in the weird time window and edge case where
| Intel was ahead of AMD again for a bit) which is super
| fast and was way better priced then Intel used to be.
|
| Comperition is good for consumers.
| klelatti wrote:
| Agreed - I think it's indicative of a less insular
| attitude which can only be positive.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Well, desktop and laptop PCs didn't have the extreme
| power constraints that mobile devices had.
| klelatti wrote:
| So why are Intel using it now?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| The goal posts moved since then.
| klelatti wrote:
| Which goal posts? Competition from Apple?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| No, consumer demand. It takes years to design, test and
| prepare for manufacturing a new CPU architecture, so
| Intel had their big-little in the pipeline long before
| Apple came out with the M1, same how it took Apple over
| 10 years of iterations to get to M1.
|
| The real question is what is AMD gonna respond with?
| klelatti wrote:
| It's a strange argument that customers didn't want better
| battery life from their laptops until now.
|
| All credit to them now but lagging 10 years behind Arm in
| having this is not impressive.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Not to mention, they intend to compete with Apple on
| transistor density before 2024. Time will tell how
| successful they are, but I do get a laugh out of the
| people who are counting Intel out of the game right now.
| Apple doesn't sell CPUs, they sell Macs. They aren't even
| competing in the same market segment.
| bmitc wrote:
| It's always interesting to me how Apple gets so much praise
| for taking things away, almost always needlessly with some
| made up excuse meant to sell more of something, only to later
| bring them back as if they're some oracle of utility. Big
| surprise Apple, non-arbitrarily thin computers, usable
| keyboards, and ports are useful.
|
| The M1 chips are nice. But Apple also continually throws
| developers under the bus forcing them along their deprecation
| strategies.
| xmprt wrote:
| I used to feel like you do but nowadays I applaud that
| (while still not really using Apple products much due to
| the walled garden ecosystem) because it's really hard to
| take something away when you know it's good but could be
| better. For all the things that they've "taken away" over
| the last 10 years, it feels like the newer laptops are
| significantly better than they could have been if they just
| kept on adding and making incremental improvements like
| most other manufacturers.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| They've pulled off major hardware transitions twice before
| without hiccups. But this time they make the whole platform
| which is quite impressive imo.
| ghaff wrote:
| The striking thing about this time is that it is
| essentially transparent to most people. Probably more third
| party programs have been broken by security changes that
| Apple has made over the past five years than have been
| broken by the M1 transition. Yes, there are performance
| implications but M1 is sufficiently fast and most important
| performance sensitive programs are being quickly ported
| that it doesn't matter that much. (And, for most people,
| ultimate performance is mostly not a big deal on laptops
| these days.)
|
| Transitive's tech, combined with processors that can afford
| some inefficiency, is pretty much magic to anyone who
| remembers what ISA transitions used to look like. (As a
| hardware product manager, I lived through a couple of them
| including a Motorola 88K to x86 one on Unix.)
| adolph wrote:
| Gosh I had to think back a moment to remember 68k to PPC. I
| wonder if that transition could be considered "botched" in
| that it happened at instead of going directly to x86.
| Outside hindsight I recall it was considered a questionable
| choice at the time.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| My recollection is that the PPC at launch was much faster
| than x86. Jobs talked about the road map a bit, and there
| was a lot of press about it too, but the road map didn't
| pan out, and their partners dropped the ball. And many
| other companies made the transition to x86 (Data General
| was one I worked with) and subsequently died.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Not really, PPC was a reasonable choice for a high-
| performance architecture back then, and arguably a better
| fit for former 68k coders than x86. And a move was
| necessary because the 68k was becoming a dead platform by
| then.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It wasn't really though. Motorola was going nowhere. As
| to why not x86, that's another story but Intel has gone
| down the wrong path several times. Like with the Pentium
| 4.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The 68K to PPC transition was pretty good. But the
| operating system was running emulated 68K code for five
| years.
| philistine wrote:
| They just released a brand new computer, the Mac Studio. This
| is not a legacy product.
| ghaff wrote:
| MacBooks in particular went through a period with some notable
| downs--through some combination of design, engineering, and
| manufacturing missteps. Even my 2015 MacBook Pro had to get its
| display replaced (after Apple extended the warranty) to deal
| with a defect. But there was basically no MacBook between then
| and now that really tempted me to upgrade. (And the 14" M1 Pro
| is pretty much perfect for me.)
| atom_arranger wrote:
| I did like the move towards less ports, although it was
| inconvenient at times. I do wonder if Apple had incentivized
| the ecosystem to move more to USB-C if things could have gone
| better. If there were lots of monitors and TVs actually
| supporting USB-C/Thunderbolt it would be nice, it's a thinner
| nicer cable, also has more bandwidth.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Agreed. I have looked at Apple products for years but couldn't
| make up the mind to switch, until my company gave me a M1
| laptop and OMG it is so good. Last time I had this feeling was
| when iphone 3 or 4 came out.
|
| My previous company also gave me a Macbook pro but that was
| 2017 and I found enough quirks not to buy one for myself.
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| Global PC shipments down 4% in Q1. Mac shipments up 8%. The M1
| Macs are the most exciting thing Apple's done since the Watch.
|
| https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-pc-shipments-q1-...
| bombcar wrote:
| Thinness matters when everything else is an absolute chonk.
|
| But there's a point at which it becomes basically worthless to
| get thinner.
| mgh2 wrote:
| It is not uncommon for media to create controversy to sell the
| author's book...
| dtrizzle wrote:
| You are not wrong. But in this case there was a significant
| amount of contemporaneous reporting when Ive left, predating
| this book.
| mgh2 wrote:
| It doesn't mean the investigation is completely false
| either, you just have to pinpoint the truth in between.
| chrischen wrote:
| Small nitpick the butterfly keyboard was problematic because of
| the high failure rate. Many, me included, actually like the
| feel better and the smaller key travel.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| That was one of many reasons.
|
| I would say the majority of people disliked the small key
| travel, that's why apple "fixed" it in the latest iteration,
| specifically calling it out as a benefit.
|
| What do you like more about it compared to the newer one?
| chrischen wrote:
| In particular my main mechanical keyboard is a 35g electro
| capacitive one, so I'm been pretty adjusted to lower key
| weights. The new Macbook keyboards are just too stiff and
| have too much travel for me to type fast/not get fatigued.
|
| I think even if one is accustomed to heavier keys, all
| things being equal, if they learned to type on
| lighter/shorter travel they can get faster at typing.
| moondev wrote:
| What keyboard? I've been using a low profile keychron
| with mt3 caps recently. Great feel with very short
| travel. Everything else feels so sloppy now.
| chrischen wrote:
| Niz plum EC keyboard. The combination of 35g + the dome
| switches are a great combo of light activation but still
| letting you rest your fingers on the keys without
| triggering them because the activation is at the top
| rather than linear.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| No, it was problematic because most people hated the lack of
| depth, even if you didn't.
| chrischen wrote:
| I didn't say most because I couldn't really prove "most".
| Do you have a source showing that most hated it because of
| the lack of depth? Most articles I saw were just talking
| about the reliability issues.
| salmo wrote:
| It's a big deal because a) they never fixed it and b) you
| have to replace the whole top half including the touchbar,
| etc. Mine died twice under 3 years of Apple Care and is going
| out again now. I don't like the short key travel, but that's
| such a tiny detail to me. The 4 USB-C ports are fine with me
| except the external video compatibility is such a flaky mess.
|
| I'm stuck using this "cool design" as a desktop now because
| it costs ridiculous money to repair. And I get to flip my
| monitor on and off twice to get it to come back from sleep.
|
| This is my 4th macbook pro. Previously, I had 1 battery
| problem in my first 2008 model and it was replaced at the
| Apple Store same day. My old macs ran until the batteries
| finally swelled years later. They weren't just sleek and
| cool, but super high quality and amazingly sturdy.
|
| The other thing that stinks is that the issue wasn't
| something accountants did to save some bucks, but a design
| feature that cost me more.
|
| I'm honestly only buying an M1 because I know that they've
| left the sexy-at-the-expense-of-the-customer approach.
|
| I think Ivie sans Jobs got too focused on design and not
| customer experience. Apple made excellent hardware before
| Ivie, and likely will after. Just maybe not as many fashion
| shows.
| chrischen wrote:
| I agree the reliability was a massive problem. I had to
| replace the keyboard (and thus logic board) for every one
| of those macbooks I owned until I started using a keyboard
| cover to prevent the issue (which Apple actually recommends
| _against_ ). No doubt after the 1 year warranty the
| keyboard would have failed again had I not upgraded on an
| annual basis.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| With my machine of that era I just gave up and started
| using an old bluetooth keyboard I had around. Even when
| covered over apple care the third time my F key was
| showing the signs I just couldn't stomach the hassle.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| That could just be a cycle thing. In an age where computers
| were at best boring, Ive and Jobs were what was needed to
| create the next great products. But maybe we hit a
| technological wall, and now we need strict hardware
| improvements.
|
| We all complain about the thinness, but it's not really that is
| it? It's the sacrifice they made to achieve it that pisses
| people off. Because we still need the things they threw away.
| If it all worked as imagined we'd be all over the slightly
| thinner machines. In some ways, the M1 is going to enable the
| thinness again.
|
| When we hit the next tech wall, you may need another Ive and
| Jobs to dream up things.
| [deleted]
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Let's say it this way in another domain - no matter the
| rationalization, Mikey And Bob with Jerry is completely
| different than with John.
|
| That's all this is. Not that big of a deal, but without a doubt
| very different.
| arinlen wrote:
| > Look at what happened to the MacBook Pro, losing most of its
| ports and the thinness causing them to put a much worse
| keyboard in it that caused massive problems. Sacrificing a bit
| of thinness and going back on those changes with the newest
| iteration has been much better.
|
| Adding a useless touch bar and losing F-keys also doesn't do
| much to win over fans, and it should be stressed that the
| infamous MacBook pro keyboards were a constant source of
| problems.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| I love the Touch Bar!
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| I don't love the Touch Bar entirely, but I do really like
| the slider for brightness and volume.
|
| I'd rather have fkeys for everything else. Maybe they could
| give us a mini touchbar just wide enough for going volume
| and brightness.
| robonerd wrote:
| Volume slider is useless to me. I adjust volume with the
| scroll gesture on my mouse pad.
| wwweston wrote:
| Brightness and volume are actually my two biggest
| touchbar annoyances... w/ older mbps I could simply feel
| my way to where I knew the keys were via muscle memory
| and adjust them with a few quick taps (or one long press)
| without looking or even having my eyes open. Near
| impossible with the touch bar.
|
| Always good to remember other people can have different
| experiences, of course, so ymmv.
| Kerrick wrote:
| I would love a full width Touch Bar right above the fn
| key row they just brought back. I don't see why it has to
| be one or the other.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I think the touchpad would be the better location for the
| Touch "bar" rather than additional row
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| I'm surprised no one made an app that turns Touch Bar
| into fn (without having to press fn) and a button to
| switch to the apps choices.
|
| Love Spotify with touchbar, debugging with vs code etc -
| shame it was hated.
|
| A mini Touch Bar with fn keys above would be lovely!
| smoldesu wrote:
| > I'm surprised no one made an app that turns Touch Bar
| into fn (without having to press fn) and a button to
| switch to the apps choices.
|
| That wasn't the issue. My main gripe with the touch bar
| is a lack of tactility; I don't need to look down at my
| hands to pinpoint the location of "F5" for debugging in
| VS Code, nor do I need to make sure my finger is hovering
| over the escape key before I press it. On top of that,
| capacitive touchscreens just don't make good buttons, my
| fingers frequently bump against the screen and trigger
| mutes and screenshots that simply wouldn't happen with a
| button. It's something of a usability nightmare.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I'm surprised no one made an app that turns Touch Bar
| into fn (without having to press fn) and a button to
| switch to the apps choices.
|
| This has been a setting in Preferences since a year or
| two after Touch Bar was introduced.
| bad_good_guy wrote:
| I thought I loved the slider for volume/brightness, and
| was concerned about losing them, but then realized how
| little I cared when I went back to no slider
| 7speter wrote:
| The funny thing is apple probably transitioned to their in
| house arm architecture in part because the intel chips ran too
| hot and throttled in the ultra thin ive products.
| davidhariri wrote:
| > Honestly to me the M1 era of Apple is the more exciting than
| things have been in years
|
| The average person doesn't know or care about M1. If you are on
| HN, you are an enthusiast ("Pro" in Apple parlance). To
| everyone else, Apple just made their already pretty quiet and
| fast laptops, quieter and faster.
|
| I think the article is right that the world is waiting to see
| if Apple's new bottom-up design org can deliver a _new_
| category-owning product. So far, they 've proven that they can
| improve the legacy suite of products in meaningful ways and
| aren't afraid to roll back poor past decisions. I think the
| author is probably right that Apple's services org is getting
| much more attention than in the past.
|
| When everything flows downwards, you get a singular vision,
| blind spots included. I think we saw that with Ive. This was
| true with Jobs' Macintosh too, before Ive joined. Today, we
| have fewer blind spots, but we haven't seen evidence that there
| are leaders willing to take big swings into new categories.
| Time will tell...
| scarface74 wrote:
| All you have to do is tell someone - 20 hours of battery life
| and it doesn't sound like a rocket ship under load.
| nathancahill wrote:
| 50% of customers purchasing a Mac in Q2 2022 were new Mac
| users: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/28/mac-
| users-q2-2022-new-t...
|
| Which is actually incredible when you think about it. They
| might not know or care about what "M1" is (although I doubt
| that), but it's clearly a commercial success.
| davidhariri wrote:
| Great stat. I might be underselling the achievement... I
| bet some of that growth is driven by the insane battery
| life, which we know people care a lot about. To be clear, I
| own and love 2 M1-based machines :-)
|
| I stand by my overall comment, though: They are better
| Macs. Not a new category or a new product for Apple.
| opan wrote:
| They are powerful ARM laptops. I'm considering getting
| one purely because of that + Asahi Linux. My Pinebook Pro
| just doesn't cut it as a main machine, and I'm sick of
| x86.
| davidhariri wrote:
| X86 is bloated. Linux on Mac is a dark forest, though.
| You might be better off sticking with MacOS despite that
| it's gone downhill lately.
| pie42000 wrote:
| This figure is useless without context. What was this
| number for previous generations? I suspect it's always
| super high because a huge demographic for mac's is college
| students buying their first laptop, obviously it's gonna be
| their first Mac. Same with software devs. Tons of Macs are
| used by software devs getting their work computer.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Apple's hierarchal organization based on technical expertise is
| key to its innovation: https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-
| organized-for-innovatio...
|
| Everything else is a complement, but they don't drive
| leadership internally or externally to stay ahead of the
| industry.
| hintymad wrote:
| People as talented as Ive still need a champion and a leader to
| balance his artistic sense to constraints in business. Jobs was
| that champion. Without the counter balance and support from
| Jobs, Ive became less effective.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > the M1 era of Apple is the more exciting than things have
| been in years.
|
| Abso-frickin-loutly. The 2020 MacBook Air M1 is the best laptop
| hardware device you can buy on the market right now. The
| battery life is amazing and this makes the laptop almost
| invisible since I am hardly ever struggling to search for
| power. The sound is great as well. Price per pound you cannot
| beat it.
|
| My one small gripe is the black glass bezel, which turns into a
| distracting fingerprint magnet.
|
| They do need to up their game on SSD storage. but I am sure the
| MBA's at Apple do not care because this drives people to buy
| iCloud storage. And if that is the case, they really need to
| work on iCloud because the syncing sucks.
|
| I would certainly buy an iPad M1 if they let me run apps like
| LibreOffice, so they need to get their act together on
| software. Yeah, I have a lot of issues with their software.
| Software, IMHO, is where they really need to innovate.
|
| Once Asahi Linux is stable I will probably abandon MacOS again.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Yet it still does not have a touchscreen, and I personally
| would prefer 2-in-1.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I have a Dell with a touchscreen. I never use it. The 16x9
| ratio is the wrong ratio in either portrait or landscape.
| otterley wrote:
| Sounds like you might prefer an iPad Pro with a keyboard.
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| Sticking a keyboard on an iPad does not a laptop make.
| Being limited to mobile app versions of web browsers is
| itself a big enough quality-of-life downgrade to make the
| setup much less convenient than a laptop for leisure-time
| media consumption, not to mention professional work.
| philistine wrote:
| Sticking a touchscreen on a laptop does not a tablet
| make.
| LegitShady wrote:
| unfortunately the ipad os is the limitation on the pro. I
| tried to make it work but its back to its previous
| position as media consumption, music production box
| (which is annoying to deal with due to lack of audio
| outs), and occasional text editor.
| sirmike_ wrote:
| Sure the iPad has its down sides. But it also does
| complicated things dummy easy. Example tossing a
| pixelated/blurred box onto a video. That's ridiculously
| complicated on windows and requires a hell of a steep
| learning curve. No problem if you have the time. But a
| blocker if time is and your video editing skillsets are
| short.
| spockz wrote:
| I would instantly go for an iPad Pro, if it would run
| normal macOS. Or things like vscode and docker, and
| games. I just can't justify to myself the expense
| compared to an m1 laptop, just for the form factor.
| [deleted]
| klabb3 wrote:
| How does touch screen work on desktop? From the fact that
| nobody but apple has made a decent touch pad in.. 15
| years?, I'm first assuming hardware wise it'd suck. But ok,
| let's assume that works. Doesn't a ton of desktop
| interfaces rely on hover, scroll, etc? For what purposes
| are touchscreen superior assuming you have a mouse/touch
| bar at hand?
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, lack of a touch screen would be a deal breaker for
| me. The iPad is attractive, my kids have them, and I might
| convince one of them to let me use it for a week this
| summer to see if it handles basic things like Jupyter
| notebooks and talking to homemade hardware gadgets.
| philistine wrote:
| If you're asking to use macOS with your fingers, you have
| not realized how terrible that would be. I do not mean in
| a _desktop-OS is terrible for touch input_. I mean in a
| _macOS_ specifically is not built for fingers and would
| require so much work that Windows has been doing for a
| decade at this point.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's not like Windows 10 is touch ready in any real
| sense, either. Windows 11 fixes some of the basic
| problems, but the gold standard for a desktop OS that's
| productively usable in tablet-only mode might ironically
| be GNOME on Linux.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I tried. The limited software and lack of desktop OS made
| it painful. I wouldn't try it again, personally. It felt
| like an exercise in compromise after compromise after
| compromise.
| nojito wrote:
| I don't think that was due to Ive but more so that he couldn't
| excel without Steve around.
|
| It's also clearly stated in the article that this was one of
| the reasons that Ive was given the CDO role. So that he could
| do less of what Steve did for him.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This. It seems clear Jobs served a "you made it very pretty
| but it sucks to use" role in feedback.
| kergonath wrote:
| There are many counter-examples, from the original iMac's
| mouse to the iPod Hifi. Jobs said no a lot, and that was a
| good thing, but he did not have absolute good taste. To his
| credit, he was good at learning from mistakes, even though
| he very rarely acknowledged them in public.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Don't have to get every single one right to still play
| the role. The man was effective, not infallible.
| kergonath wrote:
| But then it works both ways: you cannot cite a couple of
| failures under Cook to say that Jobs was irreplaceable.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You seem to be debating someone else; I haven't said
| that?
|
| I think Jobs and Ive were a pair that complimented each
| other. I think when Jobs died, Ive lost that moderating
| influence, and "thin at the cost of good" and "we got rid
| of buttons" were the result for a while.
| innagadadavida wrote:
| No one talks about the mega disaster that is Apple Park. When you
| inside it mostly feels like hospital or airport. The glass
| cleaning is a major pain to do. Apple bought a quarry in Italy so
| that the wall tiles can line up or something. Will be fun ti see
| what happens when it gets damaged. The sinks are all carved out
| of one block of stone. Last but the least the chairs are 7k and
| are the works ever to sit on. There are som many apple buildings
| in Cupertino and collaborating with another team is quite
| painful. Ive without Jobs was definitely a disaster. After
| spending those billions on that building that looks like a tomb
| for Steve Jobs, I wonder what purpose was achieved.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Jony Ive was Steve Jobs' extension. Steve needed Ive at Apple but
| Cook didn't really need him because Apple fast became something
| entirely different since the introduction of iPhone. In my view,
| Apple will always be in its best form guided by engineers. I
| think there was a period (a couple of years since Jobs' passing)
| where Apple was playing "What-would-Steve-do?" and I am so glad
| the executives leapfrogged that mentality of chasing after an
| icon's shadow.
| nottorp wrote:
| <looks at the broken keyboard on his 2018 emoji macbook pro>
|
| ... and you're missing Ive... why?
| mdasen wrote:
| I think the problem that happened with Ive's designs is that he
| kept trying to out-do himself _in the same direction._ I 've was
| important with regard to making really nice products that felt
| really good. Even a plastic iPhone 3G felt really solid compared
| to the creaky Android phones that would keep coming out years
| later, never mind an iPhone 4 with its amazing metal and glass
| feel.
|
| However, Ive kept wanting to push things in the same direction.
| Apple made wonderful and thin MacBooks that were solid with
| unibody enclosures. I remember the thick, creaky, plastic PC
| laptops of 2008 and the MacBook Pros were just amazing in
| comparison. Later, Ive wanted to shave 0.25mm worth of keyboard
| space and we ended up with MacBooks that no one wanted.
|
| I think labeling this as "the technocrats won" is way overstating
| the case. Ive's legacy is all around Apple's new products. It's
| in the Mac Studio which is a small and quiet machine made out of
| nice materials. It's just a tad more balanced with the practical
| implications of managing heat. Instead of trying to make the Mac
| Studio as small as humanly possible, they've made it small and
| nice. It isn't anything like the mini-towers that are typical.
| The new Apple Watch really pushes the display to the edge. It's
| amazing.
|
| I think part of it was that Ive didn't have a lot of places to
| go. He'd won. Apple had moved over to his way of thinking almost
| entirely - with tiny exceptions like "I'd like a functional
| keyboard." The industry has moved over to his way of thinking a
| lot. Android phones aren't creaky plastic nearly as often - you
| can get ones with nice materials and build quality. Once everyone
| is won over to your way of thinking, where do you go?
|
| In fact, I think a lot of people really like attention. For a
| long time, Ive got attention. He'd get positive attention from
| Apple fans who loved his nice designs and negative attention from
| those who would complain that the iMac didn't have a floppy drive
| or whatnot - but he was sure he was correct. Fast forward to 2016
| and what was Ive really doing that would garner such attention?
| Apple's product line was all Ive'd. The industry had copied him
| in a lot of ways (even if they were potentially bad copies). In a
| way, he wasn't a thought-leader anymore because people had all
| accepted his thesis. If Newton were around today talking about
| gravity existing, we'd all be like "yea, we know...got anything
| new?"
|
| As time went on Ive would either need to find some amazing new
| way of pushing things forward or his work would just be passe.
| Oh, another unibody MacBook Pro. Oh, another computer like the
| last one. He didn't have a battle to fight anymore.
|
| Back in 2000-2010, he could be telling engineers "you need to
| make it this way because it's better" and most of the time he was
| right. Once he'd proven out the fact that he was right over that
| decade, everyone was on board because they saw the value. What
| would the next thing be that he was right about? Maybe there
| wasn't a next thing. Maybe they'd taken computers to the right
| level of design.
|
| Apple's whole lineup is basically Ive's legacy - with a tiny bit
| of extra room for a decent keyboard or cooling.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| What if I want a "creaky Android phone" so I can, like, replace
| the battery? There are advantages to alternative designs, too.
| zxienin wrote:
| It has always puzzled me. Why Steve Jobs chose his ops head over
| product ones, to succeed him?
| jasoneckert wrote:
| Back in 2017, many of us were frustrated with Apple's Mac
| offerings (price/performance/features). In other words, Apple
| seemed to be stagnating hard at the time, forcing us to move to
| Linux on better hardware.
|
| I also remember people throwing out lines at the time, such as
| "Apple needs to focus on not making things thinner" or "Price
| with Apple is only an issue in the absence of value".
|
| Since the introduction of the M1, Apple has regained all of that
| lost momentum in my opinion. And from judging Internet
| commentary, most others wholeheartedly agree. People wanted
| speed/performance/battery/ports rather than another millimeter of
| thinness. The only gripe I hear today with Macs surrounds the
| pace of innovation with macOS.
|
| I think this article would have been better received if it were
| released before the introduction of the M1.
|
| Moreover, the ending paragraph states "the designers say that
| they collaborate more with colleagues in engineering and
| operations and face more cost pressures than they did previously.
| Meanwhile, the products remain largely as they were when Mr. Ive
| left." I can't see how this engineering collaboration and cost
| accountability would be a negative thing for consumers or Apple,
| and the products are definitely a lot better (and faster!) than
| before Mr. Ive left.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| Unpopular and potentially downvoted to oblivion opinion, but have
| to say this - this kind of reverences to Ive make me physically
| ill. He's still to be accounted -alongside Apple- as one of the
| culprits of today's trend of irrepairability (and the consequent
| planned obsolescence) on devices for the sake of 'minimalism' and
| Dieter Rams wannabe designs.
| ribit wrote:
| Ive is to blame for customer wanting more compact, faster,
| energy efficient devices? What an influential guy :D
| raverbashing wrote:
| No, but he's responsible for building a phone so thin it
| bends easily
| ok123456 wrote:
| The Samsung S5 wasn't compact, fast, or energy efficient
| compared to iPhones at the time?
| ghaff wrote:
| IMO, you're giving Ive too much credit for both shaping
| consumer preference and forcing competitors to follow his lead.
| For the most part, people like thin and light and care much
| less about upgradability and repair.
| solenoidalslide wrote:
| To what ends? I don't think people care too much about
| diminishing returns. At that point it is a matter of _which_
| upgradability and repair tradeoffs. Was there a recent line
| of products that they offered featuring upgradability and
| repair we can compare to?
| ghaff wrote:
| Go back to about 2010 or so and MacBooks were reasonably
| repairable and upgradable by a fairly casual person.
| Batteries used to be routinely swappable in both phones and
| laptops.
| solenoidalslide wrote:
| The good ol iphone 3G days
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree but Ive was also a megaphone.
| Bud wrote:
| Can we stop this silliness. Computers do not become obsolete
| due to them being difficult to repair.
|
| They become obsolete because they become obsolete. Let's not
| just throw whatever we can find on the "right"-to-repair heap
| in an effort to desperately justify it. Justify it on its own
| terms. Or don't.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| When something breaks and you cannot repair it, it becomes
| obsolete in the most concrete sense: it's no longer usable
| for it's intended purpose.
|
| Maybe your intended messages is just unclear to me but your
| whole comment seems like pendantry without any substance.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| I have a 7 year old desktop that is not obsolete since I can
| keep replacing stuff in it and upgrading it.
| curious_cat_163 wrote:
| Ive seems to have left because he was no longer powerful enough.
| He was likely burned out. He got a good amount of money out of
| leaving as well.
|
| I don't know what any of that has anything to do with Apple being
| run by technocrats? I don't know if the person who wrote this
| truly understands how much creativity is needed to pull off the
| engineering feats that Apple seems to have been pulling off for
| better part of last two decades.
| jessriedel wrote:
| What were Ive's most notable accomplishment after Jobs died? The
| author suggests he would have produced amazing things if he had
| retained more power, but it's not clear to me why we should think
| this.
| Bud wrote:
| Apple Park and Apple Watch. I worked on Apple Park and was in
| meetings with Ive. He was amazing.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Take Apple Park off your list. Steve Jobs went to the city
| council to present it
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Downvote all you want..
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M The main
| designs were done already..
| teakettle42 wrote:
| Anyone who has worked _in_ Apple Park (as opposed to _on_ it)
| can comfortably state that the place is terrible and
| ridiculous.
|
| There wasn't enough room for the people Apple already
| employed at the time it was finished, much less now.
|
| The collaborative spaces that eat up huge square footage are
| never used, because (1) that's not how most people actually
| work, and (2) they're right outside people's offices, and
| conversations in those spaces are hugely disruptive.
|
| If you're fortunate enough to be afforded a private office,
| it's a glass fishbowl. You constantly feel the need to watch
| over your shoulder.
|
| Most people are in large shared desk spaces. They're noisy,
| distracting, and frustrating to be in, and they're also a
| fishbowl.
|
| Sure, Apple Park has tons of high-end mass market designer
| furniture. Looking like a DWR showroom doesn't make it a nice
| place to work.
|
| I genuinely believe Apple Park has had a measurable negative
| impact on the quality and value of the work being produced by
| people there.
| sylens wrote:
| Does this also play a role in many Apple employees wanting
| to continue remote work?
| jessriedel wrote:
| Thanks. Apple Park of course wasn't a consumer product, and
| Apple Watch has only been modestly successful (and isn't
| particularly beautiful or useful in my opinion). I read half
| the article and didn't see anything about the _design_ of the
| Apple Watch being compromised. It mostly discussed how Apple
| did not follow Ive's preferred marketing approach. of course,
| he could've been right that it would've been more popular if
| they had marketed it as he recommended.
|
| What did you find impressive about him?
| Bud wrote:
| Not only has Apple Watch been hugely successful by _any
| reasonable standard_ , it has wildly exceeded any standards
| of success that were even considered possible at the time
| of its introduction. And this is obvious. It has basically
| obsoleted the entire Swiss watch industry and has replaced
| it as a status symbol except for itinerant rich watch nerds
| who can afford Patek Philippe and Rolex collections. It has
| also created an entire new category of watches as a fitness
| and lifestyle device with capabilities that simply did not
| exist before.
|
| And of course in the smartwatch market, Apple Watch created
| that market as it exists today and dominates said market.
| (Yes, I am aware that a tiny, nascent version of this
| market existed before. That's now irrelevant.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What measure would have afforded Apple Watch a better
| rating than "modestly successful"?
| mmmpop wrote:
| > Apple Watch has only been modestly successful
|
| Oh come on, no need to be an edge-lord with this sort of
| comment. They're utterly ubiquitous and the next closest
| competitor is probably Garmin. I _never_ see Android
| watches outside of the Verizon store.
| tpush wrote:
| [...] and Apple Watch has only been modestly successful
| [...]
|
| It is literally the most popular _and_ most profitable
| watch (not just smart watch) in the whole world.
| armadsen wrote:
| Apple's Wearables business is a ~$8 billion _per quarter_
| business. That includes AirPods and a few other products,
| but Apple Watch is obviously a major part of it. To me, $8
| billion per quarter is far more than "modestly
| successful". Of course, comparing anything to the iPhone's
| success will make it look modest.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Apple Watch was an incredible achievement of hardware design
| given that it is essentially unchanged since launch.
|
| The shape has been slightly tweaked and there are some new
| bands and sensors. But they got the basics of the design
| right the first time. It's easy to overlook how rare and
| difficult that is.
| yalogin wrote:
| The article doesn't delve its title that technocrats thrive at
| apple. It only focuses on what it calls "accountants".
|
| However is it possible that Ive himself was just done? With
| artists , either composers or of the visual arts, they usually
| have a stock of good ones they churn out and after that the
| output is usually a repetition or a hodgepodge their previous
| work. It's possible Ive reached that point too as the iPhone kind
| of became an all in one computer that killed a lot of
| accessories, so any idea for a new kind of device is killed
| automatically. In that scenario, I don't know what else is there
| after a watch.
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