[HN Gopher] The dissolution of Apple's legacy design team
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The dissolution of Apple's legacy design team
Author : Pulcinella
Score : 165 points
Date : 2022-06-18 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
| runjake wrote:
| I respect Ive's design skills but I think that Ive leaving is one
| of the best things to happen to Apple in decades.
|
| They're slowly going from Ive's minimalist artistic designs back
| to useful computing devices and user interfaces.
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder how exactly Steve managed Ive, getting his best out of
| him without ... going full Ive ;)
| rmk wrote:
| Larry Ellison was prescient when he said that Jony Ive would
| run amok without an editor in Steve Jobs, in an interview after
| Jobs' death (Ellison was good friends with Jobs). Perhaps the
| utter lack of design innovation and frankly, new consumer
| products led Jony Ive to obsess over the ring campus, going to
| ridiculous lengths to make things just so. All that money and
| creative energy could have been put into groundbreaking
| product, but with Steve Jobs gone, I doubt there was anyone
| else who could do what he did.
| musicale wrote:
| > and frankly, new consumer products
|
| I already have a half-dozen Apple devices that I use every
| day. I don't really need more of them.
| oreilles wrote:
| I can't tell for iOS, but for macOS the UI has only gone
| downhill since Ive's departure. Broken navigation gestures and
| shortcuts, UI inconsistencies, indistinguishable toolbar icons,
| wasted space everywhere... Since Big Sur I feel like I'm using
| a bad Linux clone of macOS.
| moistly wrote:
| They desperately need someone running the show who is
| obsessive about consistency, will QA the UI obsessively, and
| will terrorize the UI designers into compliance. Jobs'
| biggest role was to demand conformance to his design tastes.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Yeah, I've always thought he would sell out on functionality to
| get some meaningless design feature included for the aesthetic.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Another point of the article that's compatible with what you're
| saying but still a concern - anything under Tim's $10b
| potential threshold gets more excluded from cross-team
| collaboration and attention and resources than they did
| previously
| ajaimk wrote:
| I agree. Jon Ive was a genius with design when he had to work
| under constrained scenarios. But the moment he had
| unconstrained power, form was able to win over functionality.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Jonathan Ive got rich and started designing luxury products
| for himself. Stuff like gold Apple Watches that were soon
| obsolete or ridiculous luxury bands for them. Even a regular
| leather Apple Watch strap ended costing hundreds of dollars.
| At one point I needed a new leather band for mine and I
| bought a perfectly nice third party band for the same price
| as the sales tax on the equivalent Apple one.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I think part of the reason they sold insanely expensive
| Apple Watches is that they wanted to compete with luxury
| watches. Of course, the functionality is very different;
| the similarity is that both are methods of conspicuous
| consumption.
|
| I'm not an Apple Watch fan myself (still clutching my
| Pebble for dear life), but I can understand why the uber-
| expensive Apple Watches would appeal to a certain audience.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > I can understand why the uber-expensive Apple Watches
| would appeal to a certain audience.
|
| I never could understand why Apple (or anyone else) this
| would be a possibility. Luxury watches are almost
| synonymous with heirloom; there is no way anyone will be
| wearing a functional Gold Apple watch in 2085 with the
| anecdote "This was my dad's watch" - it would be
| hopelessly outdated, and likely non-functional by then.
| This is not the case with other luxury watches. This has
| little to do with branding, but everything to do with
| expected longevity and utility.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I agree that they won't be heirlooms, and old money folks
| would never be fooled into thinking they would.
|
| But a lot of people wear luxury watches simply to show
| off how much disposable income they have. To these
| people, having a watch that is recognizably expensive is
| the only requirement.
| foobiekr wrote:
| That heirloom stuff is purely marketing the fantasy of
| rich parents handing down a bauble (instead of, say, a
| business or real assets) aimed entirely at middle class
| and upper middle class people. It's not real.
| peyton wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > nonrecurring engineering costs led Apple's business
| division to suspend the iPad [redesign]
|
| That doesn't sound like Ive had unconstrained power?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Imagine a design change costing $1 billion. There are very
| few people with that much power.
| jolux wrote:
| That was after he left.
| hbosch wrote:
| I think Ive was a fantastic and visionary industrial
| designer, but when he debuted as the design czar over
| software as well I think Apple's UX kinda entered a nosedive.
| The actual designers "on the ground" there really pulled iOS
| through those times and I agree with other commenter that
| nowadays Apple is really so much better.
| blackhaz wrote:
| Interesting, and I have a completely opposite view.
|
| Every release after Jobs' death, people are tearing Apple
| apart. As if the team has lost all the cohesion and the
| Apple idea of making things as simple as possible. You can
| really feel a horde of designers trying to inject their
| little ideas everywhere, with Apple products becoming a
| bazaar of thousand of useless things. Apple UX is now
| borderline usable for me. It's not a pleasant experience
| anymore. The last iOS just killed my iPhone experience, and
| I am talking about stuff like (accumulated through various
| few iOS releases):
|
| - Overload of functionality - buttons, gestures for
| irrelevant things, all getting in the way, too many scroll
| directions, accidental page-up, home scrolls, unexpected
| buttons because I accidentally let my fingers rest
| somewhere, accidental screenshots, etc - they are trying to
| pack too much stuff in while getting rid of buttons for it
|
| - iPhone suddenly overheating and shutting down (no problem
| at iOS 14 at all)
|
| - Software doesn't play nice together, almost as if
| somebody is trying to shut competitors off; e.g. unable to
| open Teams invite link inside a chat, have to copy-paste
| invite link to Safari - that's the only way to get the app
| to open to join the meeting, otherwise the "Join Meeting"
| button isn't leading anywhere - no reaction
|
| - Copy-paste has disappeared, cannot copy-paste images or
| links anymore in various places, like YouTube
|
| - Animation slowing things down - iPhone 4 had an OK
| animation, then sometimes starting from the 7 era it got
| more and more irritating with every update, now with iOS 15
| it's so slow and intrusive you can literally feel your
| battery and attention are being wasted on it - as if
| someone has no job to do there at all
|
| - Stuff unexpectedly moving around, e.g. URL bar in Safari
| now at the bottom (standing ovation, Apple)
|
| - Maps app sometimes not giving voice commands when it
| should - frustrating!
|
| - Phone sometimes locks screen and requires to show face to
| unlock it - while navigating a car - should never happen.
| Dangerous!
|
| - Cannot delete the U2 album, it plays every time I get
| into the car. My car displays gay U2 album artwork on
| central console every time the iPhone is connected, and
| that album is not deletable
|
| - Accidentally turn the car's volume knob, get the U2
| playing and hugging fellas shown - what the flying fuck? No
| settings help
|
| - Siri is still pretty stupid after all those years, lacks
| lots of commands that should be intuitive - I wish all
| those design brain cycles went into expanding its
| "intelligence" instead, could've been a good product
|
| - Some apps like Skype just drain the battery like crazy (a
| few tens % in a few minutes), iOS doing nothing - there
| should be a watchdog or something
|
| - Extreme amount of suggestions, pop-ups and random ads in
| the middle of everything and the Notification Center; too
| many "GTFOMF situations" when trying to place a call, read
| the SMS or just do your normal stuff. Was NEVER an issue
| when Jobs was alive.
|
| - Google Maps, although this is not an Apple issue, is just
| an overload of garbage, suggestions, map modes and overlays
| - very distracting while driving, sometimes blocking
| navigation and requiring to find and press a touchscreen
| button to continue navigating at speed; all while sometimes
| it has its UI freezing (no response on button presses)
|
| - Overall slowdown of things. The last iOS 15 update is
| noticeably slower, immediately downgrading iPhone X from
| "pretty cool" to "argh" rating - all while adding nothing
| new - ZERO new practical functionality.
|
| I am beginning to hate Apple. I've already got rid of MacOS
| a few years ago. Now it's time to get rid of the iPhone.
| All those "designers" killed it for me.
|
| Sorry.
|
| P.S. Oh and don't get me started on Apple TV. Was a good
| product. Now with this new touchpad-enabled remote, even my
| kid is laughing at how pathetic the whole thing is. It's a
| UX disaster.
| rafram wrote:
| > gay U2 album artwork
|
| ...
|
| (Your car playing music from your phone every time it
| connects is a problem with your car's UX, not your
| phone's.)
| etempleton wrote:
| Yes, it felt like Ive had too much unilateral decision
| making power. Steve loved the push and pull of constructive
| arguments and disagreements and famously lamented that even
| he didn't always get his way if others had compelling
| arguments. Ive is and was a designer. Design and--more
| specifically, his design asthetic--always came first under
| his tenure post Steve.
| alexsereno wrote:
| He needed to have Fadell around to argue with, but Tim
| prefers an office style with less tension. Which has been
| great for shareholders, bad for consumer design tho. It's
| hard to know what is more "right" since more people have
| apple products than ever before, but wow I love my post-
| Ive Mac a lot more, and design across the board has
| focused a bit on function w/ Craig getting a bigger role
| etempleton wrote:
| From what I have read Fadell didn't seem to have a lot of
| internal fans, and there were some major software issues
| under his leadership, but there is no doubt he has clout
| with Jobs and provided a different perspective. Jobs was
| always willing to play the role of tie breaker that I am
| not sure Cook is comfortable in, so it makes sense to
| have a more harmonious leadership team that can come to a
| consensus more often than not without an intermediator.
|
| There does seem to be more collaboration and sensible
| compromises from all internal stakeholders than at any
| time at Apple, at least that is how it feels as an end
| user. Apple products of the last few years have less head
| scratching omissions and/or design/engineering decision.
|
| The MacBook Pro from 2016 to 2021 is the embodiment of
| that weirdness.
| lupire wrote:
| Apple's post-Jobs success has been the snowball effect of
| iPhone capturing more of the market.
|
| Mac suffered a lot under Jobsless Ive (Cook doesn't care
| about product one way or the other), surviving the
| butterfly / touchbar winter because customers were able
| to keep their old Retina laptops, customers groaned and
| beared with lemon laptops for a few years, and desktop
| declined in overall relevance (except gaming where Apple
| never had a presence anyway), and started to recover in
| the post-butterfly/post-touchbar/M1 era.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes, he's a great _physical product_ designer. But to bring
| that, and apply the same principles into SW just doesn 't
| make sense
| ben_w wrote:
| I'm not so sure he's even that, I think the hockey puck
| iMac mouse was his?
| lupire wrote:
| He's a great physical _aesthetic_ designer. He 's
| terrible at human interfaces, hardware or software.
| azemetre wrote:
| I feel like you can't be a great designer if you neglect
| human interfaces, at that point you're just an artist.
| Nothing wrong with that, but good design it is not.
| tchalla wrote:
| I'm not sure if having some badly designed products
| doesn't make one a great physical product designer. It's
| completely possible to be a great product designer with
| few bad products.
|
| I'm not arguing that Ive is a great designer. Ok just
| saying that the iMac hockey puck mouse doesn't invalidate
| that claim.
| ben_w wrote:
| Fair. I use it as an example of uncontroversially bad
| design, and his most infamous mistake being ages ago does
| count in his favour (even if the dead cockroach charging
| mechanism of the modern mouse is also his), even though I
| chose that example in part because people argue both ways
| about his more recent design choices. Myself, I do not
| like any design choice I've heard attributed to him, but
| that's not enough by itself either.
| dubswithus wrote:
| > They're slowly going from Ive's minimalist artistic designs
| back to useful computing devices and user interfaces.
|
| Is this a subtle attack on USB-C?
| wmf wrote:
| It's an attack on the butterfly keyboard, removing MagSafe,
| removing HDMI, removing the headphone jack, reducing battery
| capacity, the unreadable iOS 7 UI, the trash can, etc.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| USB-C itself is great. Love the fact that I can plug a single
| cable into my MacBook for all docking purposes (charging,
| display, peripherals).
|
| The annoying thing was the lack of everything else except
| usb-c. Especially in 2017 when it was uncommon and for
| devices featuring only 2 ports. ,,Dongle life" was a serious
| step backwards.
| barkingcat wrote:
| Nothing "subtle" about the attack. The butterfly keyboard is
| a very obvious and outright failure.
|
| This failure resulted in a support program that covered the
| entire output of the Apple MacBook Pro product line for half
| a decade.
|
| Nothing subtle about that at all.
| ratww wrote:
| I wonder if we're being too quick to blame him for the
| Butterfly keyboard. Sure it was his design, but there were
| engineering issue. Was Ive powerful enough to overrule Tim
| Cook and everyone else and keep a faulty keyboard for that
| long? So far I've only seen a lot of speculation from tech
| websites, but maybe someone has some proper source, I might
| be totally wrong.
|
| It could also be a widespread cultural issue where Apple is
| unable to admit fault. Sure, Apple removed the butterfly
| after he left, but they're still quite stubborn about not
| putting USB-C on iPhones, for example.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| usbc is the one good thing about the ive years. everything
| else was a step away from usability for power users.
| gnicholas wrote:
| One thing I wonder about is whether Apple could have ever built
| the current crop of laptops if it hadn't gone through the
| terrible design that over-emphasized minification. That is,
| were there gains in space-saving that were only possible
| because of the single-minded focus on making small laptops,
| which we now enjoy in our more-sensibly sized MBPs?
|
| As an outsider, I have no idea whether this is the case. But I
| could imaging that if they had stayed on a more evolutionary
| design path, their current laptops might not be quite so
| amazing.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I saw a woman using one of the new Macbook Pros in an airport a
| few weeks ago, and I was confused, because it looked exactly
| like my beloved silver Macbook Pro from 2007. It even had lots
| of ports!
|
| With the speed of the M-series processors, and the fact that I
| can get one with ports and without an idiotic touchbar, I've
| started considering an Apple laptop for the first time in
| years.
|
| I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the pendulum swings
| back again, alas.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro and it's quite nice. Wish they
| could have squeezed a USB-A in there for travel but otherwise
| it's pretty perfect. And the recently announced MacBook Air I
| assume is nice if you want something a bit lighter--although
| the MacBook Pro is still a pretty light and svelte laptop by
| historical standards.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| It's only begun to swing towards usefulness.
|
| We got a decade or more to enjoy this time of "doing things
| right"
| sephamorr wrote:
| Maybe by next decade, all the MacBook "pro" models will
| support more than one external display.
| tmh88j wrote:
| What do you mean by that? Multiple monitors without an
| adapter? I have 2017 and 2019 Macbook Pro's and I use 2
| 27" monitors with a thunderbolt -> 2 HDMI out adapter. I
| don't think I'd use it without an adapter even if I
| could, no need to take up extra ports.
| duped wrote:
| AFAUI that setup is not possible with an M1 Mac today.
| You can only use one external display.
| indemnity wrote:
| I must be dreaming then, using my M1 Mac with two
| external 4K displays and the internal display.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Is it a 13" MBP? If not it's not relevant to this
| discussion
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Except all the parent comments of the discussion just
| said "Pro" and/or "M1 Mac", yours is the first that
| specified 13" MBP. So there seems to be some confusion
| and/or disagreement about what is being discussed.
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| That is true only of the 13" m1 Pro, and the 13" m1
| macbook air. The 14" m1 mbp, 16" m1 mbp, the m1 mac mini,
| and m1 studio all support more than 1 external display.
| matwood wrote:
| Yeah, the 13" 'pro' is simply a bad name. No idea why
| they kept it around. All the other pros support 2 or more
| monitors depending on model.
| sprite wrote:
| I'm using 2 of the LG 5k monitors with my MacBook Pro
| [16-inch 2021 M1 Max]. Complete game changer compared to
| the past few iterations.
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Whoa, whoa, don't get ahead of yourself there
| jb1991 wrote:
| The MacBook Pro can support several external displays
| simultaneously:
|
| Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at
| 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Pro) or up to three
| external displays with up to 6K resolution and one
| external display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz at over
| a billion colors (M1 Max)
| gnicholas wrote:
| The just-updated base MBP still can't do this. But surely
| it will be updated before next decade, as GP suggested
| (perhaps exaggerating). I assume the base model will be
| updated with 2 years, or retired. I can't imagine they'll
| sell many units, considering how the MBAs are less
| expensive, sleeker, and have better camera/IO.
| infinityio wrote:
| The old-chassis pros (incl. the new m2 13") can only do
| one monitor, if I remember correctly?
| moooo99 wrote:
| I think you remember right, this is the same issue as
| with the M1. The continued existence of this specific
| model (M2 13" Pro) is by far the most confusing aspect of
| the current Mac lineup
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| If you know what signs to look for the swing has already
| begun.
| [deleted]
| chevman wrote:
| Pro tip - always wait until the money is in your bank account!
| thomond wrote:
| Is it me or does the article too end suddenly?
| gumby wrote:
| The cliffhanger is to get you to buy the book. That "article"
| is just an ad.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| That bit about the firing of the designer who used the river
| metaphor in that email is such a good lesson for anyone:
|
| Never ever ever ever announce moves like this if there is still
| money on the table that can still be taken away from you.
|
| No matter how awesome your company is, how great the team,
| product or how wonderful the atmosphere is. This guy thought he
| wrote a heartfelt goodbye to his beloved team and was instead
| brutally punished for it.
|
| That made me lose a whole lot of respect for Ive.
| capableweb wrote:
| > That made me lose a whole lot of respect for Ive.
|
| You mean you lost respect for Alan Dye? Seems to have been the
| one who fired Imran Chaudhri.
|
| > Shortly after the email, Dye fired Chaudhri.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| No, they mean Ive.
|
| > The email alarmed Ive and Dye. They feared that the message
| Chaudhri sent could be interpreted to mean that Apple's best
| days had passed.
|
| It's clear from the article that both Ive and Dye were
| directly involved in the firing.
| smugma wrote:
| It's hearsay, as even the article says it was Dye who did
| the firing.
|
| I've read many articles/interviews where Jony talks about
| being "hurt" by something. As in, he puts everything he has
| into these creations and certain things he takes very
| personally, as if someone is trying to stomp on a rose in
| his garden.
|
| Chaudhri is known to have a big personality himself and
| went to start a company that has hired a lot from Apple
| (not exclusively but sometimes browsing LinkedIn it looks
| that way). So he sends an email while resting and vesting
| (and also planning his next big thing), and they decide to
| cut ties, as he's now seen as a potential liability. It
| doesn't need to be petty or vindictive, but a decision
| based on bad vibes they got. Chaudhri could have given his
| notice two months in advance and cruised and sent the email
| on his last day, but he didn't.
| kumarmanket wrote:
| ballenf wrote:
| I just don't buy that the river metaphor wasn't about Apple. It
| just doesn't make sense unless he was retiring or leaving
| design entirely. Otherwise the lack of water is clearly related
| to Apple.
|
| If it really was solely about himself it's a really poor
| metaphor. So the river is moving to a new mountain? And the
| river's lack of water has nothing to do with the current one?
| Or, the mountain (Apple) has plenty of water but somehow this
| river (employee) can't receive any of it?
|
| The non-critical-of-Apple reading is convoluted and tortured,
| imo.
| zarzavat wrote:
| " When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving
| in you, a joy. Sadly rivers run dry.."
|
| It seems obvious that he is talking about his personal joy
| running out. Because that's what he said.
| [deleted]
| ballenf wrote:
| I see that take on it.
|
| Maybe the lesson is that for employees who happen to
| believe that Apple's river had run dry, the message would
| be hard to interpret as personal to the author.
|
| Or that the river running dry personally is potentially
| contagious.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| That's the other lesson - don't use poetry or metaphors
| to express your self because they will inevitably be
| twisted to suit the corporate interests and not yours.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's not so far from that to, "don't show your human side
| to the soulless corporation." And why even work for them,
| then?
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Don't really see how it could have been interpreted any
| other way.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| This whole story highlights how top-of-mind this fear
| that the "river" of innovation at Apple might be running
| dry really was for the leadership of this design team.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Well, it's not his own poetry - it's some Persian classic
| he's quoting so you could probably look into it and find a
| whole well-spring of deep knowledge explaining _exactly_ what
| he meant by it.
|
| In the letter he talks about his own soul, and the experience
| of deep work being like that of a river. So it's pretty clear
| he's talking about what's on his interior spiritually. From a
| designer "I am barren and in a creative rut" pretty much
| means "I can't come up with good stuff and I'm of no use to
| all of you here".
|
| However, regardless of what he actually said, he was on his
| way out from a tight-knit and emotionally connected team in
| which expressing your feelings and being sensitive is sort of
| expected, only the guys running that team were so paranoid
| that they decided to burn him and smear shit all over his
| beautiful farewell letter. That's a dark thing to do to
| someone's career/reputation etc.
|
| Getting that glimpse, I do wonder to what extent Ive and his
| buddies have other ugly deeds on their accounts. Perhaps Ive
| running that separate company of his is really only a way of
| gracefully pushing this kind of toxicity away from the house
| just in case.
| preseinger wrote:
| It reads to me as obviously about the author, and the
| critical-of-Apple reading the convoluted and tortured
| version, only making sense if your model of humans is
| fundamentally... I dunno, manipulative, or Machiavellian.
| (shrug)
| ajross wrote:
| > If it really was solely about himself it's a really poor
| metaphor.
|
| The point of the story was that he was fired for what very
| well might have been a poor metaphor. I mean, even taking
| your point as a prior and _assuming_ that the guy was clearly
| saying that Apple 's design primacy was fading as he
| announced his retirement... why is that a termination-worthy
| act?
|
| I mean, yeah, he was firing some mildly poetic shots at his
| employer. Who among us, as it were. That quote was a little
| bit of passive aggression. Firing him was an act of
| deliberate malice.
| protastus wrote:
| Anyone in a leadership position has a responsibility to measure
| their words carefully, especially in a farewell email.
|
| "Sadly, rivers dry out, and when they do, you look for a new
| one." broadcasts extreme negativity to the people who remain.
| It almost reads like a cautionary warning followed by advice.
|
| One can write a heartfelt goodbye without ambiguity. Assuming
| the ambiguity was unintentional, the author was careless and
| paid the price. He could've gotten away with it in other places
| (large companies are generally too bureaucratic to fire someone
| who's already leaving) but obviously not in this case.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >broadcasts extreme negativity to the people who remain
|
| ...which was immediately proven right by execs who fired him.
| laserlight wrote:
| Firing is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It
| signaled that misinterpretation is the right
| interpretation.
| arrrg wrote:
| I also don't quite get it. Firing that designer would not
| increase my trust in the design leadership.
|
| It would seem thin skinned, skittish, cruel, deeply immoral and
| evil, leading me to lose a lot of trust, feeling as though
| creating a culture of fear is the goal. That behavior seems
| completely incomprehensible to me, especially since you need to
| have an extremely tortured reading of that e-mail to read it as
| an attack on Apple. It's simply so extremely weird and wrong to
| do that. It also seems completely ineffective. What's the
| intended effect here?
|
| I'm not sure what the general vibe here's on that, but it seems
| abhorrent to treat people that way.
| lupire wrote:
| Artists are a petty and vindictive culture, since value is
| subjective and there's no profit for being pretty good but
| not the annointed winner.
| arrrg wrote:
| All the designers I know are awesome at being open and
| responding to outside inputs.
|
| I work as a user researcher and in general designers tend
| to be the very best, both at showing a real interest and
| investing themselves into the research and also at
| incorporating the results.
|
| Designers tend to have a real interest in improving their
| designs and getting clarity on things they themselves may
| be uncertain about.
|
| However, I'm not working in the context those people talked
| about there work in. (Also, UI design, not hardware design.
| So not very comparable.)
| mikeryan wrote:
| Art may be subjective but product design is not. We have a
| whole host of ways to measure success at it.
|
| I feel it's a mistake to conflate art with design. While
| related they are separate disciplines.
| dbspin wrote:
| Genuine question, do you know any artists? This isn't the
| case generally; certainly amongst ordinary working visual
| artists - who are demonstrably open minded, centred, and
| interpersonally engaged. I can't speak to Damien Hirst
| level centimillionaires, who represent an invisibly small
| fraction of working artists.
| [deleted]
| chongli wrote:
| Apologies for nitpicking but the prefix you're looking
| for is hecto-. The prefix centi- means 1/100 [1],
| implying that Damien Hirst has only $10,000 to his name,
| starving artist level wealth!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix#List_of_S
| I_prefi...
| kerlgos wrote:
| https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/centimillionaire
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Vindictive? Artists? BS. You're clearly extrapolating on an
| unfounded assumption. I'm an adult art student getting a
| BFA as part of a career change and have known hundreds of
| artists and designers over the years. Firstly, there is no
| unifying culture among even large subsets of artists, let
| alone artists in general. Secondly, claiming that artists
| in general are vindictive is flat-out absurd.
| illwrks wrote:
| I took it to mean artists/designers in a corporate
| setting where it's a bit more cutthroat.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Beyond never having heard anyone conflate the terms
| 'artist' and 'corporate designer,' the sentiment would
| still be wrong. I've worked in corporate software
| projects as a developer, designer, support person,
| project manager, QA engineer, and even IT/Ops guy and
| would rank designers, on a whole, somewhere near last in
| terms of likeliness to be vindictive. Sales? Management?
| Even support? Sure.
|
| You can have vindictive jerks in any job, but considering
| that design's fundamental purpose is to empathize with
| people and manifest that it some medium, vindictive
| people tend to filter themselves out.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| More likely to be the corporate setting than the
| designers.
|
| I had no idea the originator of the Bondi Blue iMac was
| Danny Coster. I'd always assumed it wss Ive.
|
| Interesting he managed to take all of the credit for it.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| I read the book, and it says a few things that contradict other
| stories I've read about Apple, by people who were there. After
| a while I started taking things with a grain of salt.
|
| Considering how awful the story is, I think it's likely that
| there was more to the guy who got fired than the book let on.
| They were worried about an exodus so they treated a guy like
| shit? And why did he announce his departure before his benefits
| were locked in? The whole story is sus.
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _That made me lose a whole lot of respect for Ive._
|
| I dunno... It sounds like they let him rest and vest for a few
| months as a courtesy even though he was already checked out.
|
| And then, during that time, he sent an email to the entire team
| that implied (either intentionally or through carelessness)
| that Apple's river of ideas had run dry.
|
| It seems pretty reasonable to ask him to leave immediately
| after doing that.
| mathattack wrote:
| Wait until the check clears if that much is at stake,
| especially if you don't plan on showing up for work the last
| bit.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| People are great until they aren't.
| coldtea wrote:
| I prefer the current balance of Ive-inspired-designs WITHOUT
| Ive's obsessions.
|
| But something also not frequently said: Apple had amazing designs
| (compared to the rest of the industry), for 2 decades before Ive
| started his thing. Heck, NeXT too.
|
| Also, if I had to suffer yet another cookie-cutter Ive post-
| release video about a product, I'd kill myself...
| mickelsen wrote:
| Oh man, those trailers with him speaking are the stuff I MISS
| the most, it was the last reminder of that old Apple now that
| keynotes and product launch commercials are so bland and boring
| I don't even bother to watch them anymore.
| thoms_a wrote:
| As a counterpoint, I bought my first iPhone (first ever Apple
| product) this week, and it was specifically because it seems
| like Apple is finally designing products with usability and
| functionality as their top priority.
|
| Ive was great, but he was way too much of an artist to
| understand that computers are mostly tools. Ive was more
| interested in folding katanas and the process of creation
| than the mundane design of a productivity tool.
|
| As an example, I remember being utterly bemused by the
| relentless port-pruning on the Macbook Pro. It just didn't
| make sense to me to remove ports on a machine designed
| primarily for productivity. But Ive didn't like ports,
| because katanas don't have ports. So the MBP didn't have
| ports.
| SllX wrote:
| I think he understood perfectly that computers were tools.
|
| The PowerBook/MacBook Pro designs up through 2016, the
| MacBook Air from 2010 onwards, the Power Macs G3-G5/Macs
| Pro through 2013 and the 2019 Mac Pro, the iBook/MacBook
| line through 2011, and the entirety of the iMac's history
| all reflect a recognition that computers are fundamentally
| tools. They just held the conceit that tools can also be
| beautiful.
|
| But yes, sometime between Job's death and 2017, the wheels
| just completely fell off when they introduced new Mac
| designs, and they spent the better part of the last 5 years
| putting them back on after Ive was promoted into the sky
| and left the company.
| ballenf wrote:
| At work, the new MacBooks with HDMI are trickling in and I've
| never seen so much excitement around a laptop. People (mostly
| Product people) just giddy they don't need a dongle to connect to
| screens.
|
| I didn't realize how much people hate dongles.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I just wish MacBooks had something like HPs half height
| expanding Ethernet jacks.
| floydnoel wrote:
| That would be fantastic. I'll never use HDMI, but I would
| love to have an Ethernet port!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The old laptops had mini display port - you didn't need a
| dongle to connect to a screen.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| Because every TV in every space in your office has a mini
| display port cable hanging out of it for you to plug into?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| We use WiFi to stream the signal, which is far more
| convenient. But yeah, all the monitors have display port as
| well if you want to plug in.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I actually like that I can connect everything - keyboard,
| mouse, two monitors, headphones, power, ethernet via one
| thunderbolt cable.
|
| What I'd hate is the fact that I'd have to unplug everything
| and take this dock with me if I wanted to connect in the
| conference room.
| burnished wrote:
| Wait what? How are you doing that? I want this thing so my
| laptop can be more easily unplugged and stop being a stylish
| desktop pc
| jen20 wrote:
| You can still do that with the newer MacBook Pro with extra
| ports.
| wincy wrote:
| I mean, I buy a dongle and maybe it'll support 1080p, maybe
| 1440p, maybe 4K? Who knows! The Amazon review certainly won't
| tell you, the company selling it to you will lie through their
| teeth. You won't find out until you're plugging it in (probably
| during a presentation) It's just so much fun playing dongle
| roulette.
| majjam wrote:
| The list of trackers on that website is the largest Ive ever seen
| Sebb767 wrote:
| On mobile, you also get that stupid video on the middle of the
| page attached at the top once scrolling by. _And you can 't tap
| it away_. Just, why?
| drakonka wrote:
| There is a tiny, barely visible close button above it on the
| right.
| dubswithus wrote:
| 44 trackers and ads blocked by Brave.
| pronoiac wrote:
| Huh, Mobile Safari reported 54.
| can16358p wrote:
| For a few seconds I interpreted "Ive" as Jony Ive and tried to
| make sense of it.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Hmm, I think top 10 US banks easily beat those.
| naet wrote:
| Banks obviously have a lot of financial data at their
| disposal to use how they see fit. But out of curiosity I
| checked my bank website which falls under this category and
| there were only 2-3 trackers picked up by my browser and
| extensions.
| [deleted]
| caycep wrote:
| The one thing about all this press from "After Steve" - the
| author is one of those reporters who tend to make speculative
| guesses about Apple that have not borne out. Granted, perhaps he
| took extra effort to get sources/research material for the book
| but I'd take it with a grain of salt.
| mdmglr wrote:
| Today, none of Apple's products spark my excitement and joy like
| they did from 1999-2011. Everything today is predictable, safe
| and iterative. I look forward to reading this book. Maybe it can
| provide some insight. I hope Apple's design team can recover.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| After reading that, Ive is a piece of shit. That guy went out of
| His way to be cool. Instead of clarifying the misunderstanding,
| they just nuked him from orbit.
| [deleted]
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Getting fired for that river analogy...that must've stung holy
| cow
| can16358p wrote:
| I really loved the design of the Touch Bar/Butterfly keyboard
| visually.
|
| It would have been great if:
|
| - They kept the butterfly but completely solved the failure
| problem.
|
| - Supported Touch Bar with actual haptic feedback that could
| really be used "professionally" as in a Pro device. It could at
| best become a gimmick, but if played right, had great potential.
|
| - Had a simplified thin chassis with less ports. I really don't
| wanna pay for an HDMI port, SD reader, and a headphone jack that
| I'll never use in my entire life. I still believe after all the
| years, unification of everything to a single port (USB-C) was
| right. The industry should have forward to, say, support HDMI
| over USB-C on ubiqutiously, and really should have adopted a
| single card type: now we practically have 3: SD, microSD, and CF.
| My camera has a CF card, my drone has a microSD, and ironically
| regular SD is the only one that don't use so I still carry a
| dongle anyway (microSD adapter in this sense can be considered a
| passive dongle). Instead of the headphone jack it could stream
| raw audio over USB-C and offload DAC to the connected device. I
| also get that without a single standard, Apple also couldn't make
| everyone happy at the same time, but if there was a single
| standard port, or even a wireless standard that provided Gigabit
| speeds in around less than a meter, that would have been a great
| device with much less ports.
|
| Of course, this is not reality, and I of course also get why
| Apple added all those back, and I love my M1 MacBook Pro
| regardless. I just wanted to share a vision.
| rubatuga wrote:
| > I really don't wanna pay for an HDMI port, SD reader, and a
| headphone jack tha
|
| You don't want to pay for $20 worth of components? Like what
| another comment stated, you're getting components that have
| been tested by Apple and will have documented specifications.
| lupire wrote:
| > loved the design of the [product] visually [but it was a
| functional failure]
|
| Is Ive's trademark.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I used the old Touch Bar in my profession daily - used it for
| debugging command shortcuts.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > Stringer found the HomePod dissatisfying because Apple treated
| it as a hobby, depriving it of the cross-division focus it
| lavished on core products, such as the iPhone and iPad.
|
| I mean...yeah? iPod, iPhone and iPad are Apple's whole 21st
| century legacy. And most recently, arguably Apple Watch and
| EarPods.
|
| They all have the same thing in common - they're wearables that
| you see on the person on the street.
|
| Apple is a trillion dollar company (and not a skeleton in a
| graveyard of companies crushed by Microsoft in the 1990's that it
| almost was) because of iPhone and iPad.
|
| Every other Apple product is a "hobby" by comparison, and that
| includes iMacs, and Macbook Pros.
|
| You have to have your eyes open about the product you work on,
| and where it sits in the company hierarchy. Not everything is a
| core product, but that doesn't mean it's not important.
| ghaff wrote:
| I partly agree. But what makes the iPhone so sticky is
| ecosystem--and that includes a bunch of other products that
| might be a lot less interesting in isolation.
| ejj28 wrote:
| Indeed. I'm a staunch Android user, but I seriously envy
| iPhone users for the Apple Watch. Nobody else has put the
| same level of care and resources into their smartwatch and if
| it wasn't for a myriad of personal dealbreakers I have with
| Apple products, I'd be tempted to switch to iPhone to be able
| to have an Apple Watch.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| In my opinion, the work Ive did at Apple is greatly over rated.
|
| Yes it is clean and minimalist, and some devices like the iPhone
| 4 were truly innovative, bold and impressive designs.
|
| But overall, this is mostly bland, generic, boring.
|
| In the same minimalist style, I prefer the work of Dieter Rams.
|
| Some Sony products have really good design, including devices
| that were released a few years before the iPhone, but that were
| unfortunately built around a weak and already dying software
| stack (PalmOS). The Sony Clie are, in my opinion, less boring and
| better designed than most Apple products.
|
| IBM comes also to mind, the ThinkPad was a stylish and sturdy
| computer.
|
| There is a world outside of Apple headquarter, and I feel that
| they reached a dead-end, design wise.
| [deleted]
| newsclues wrote:
| Sony worked with apple on early PowerBooks
| stevebmark wrote:
| From the outside, it seems like the poison of flat design only
| flourished when Jobs died. The beautiful, thoughtful, intuitive,
| accessible skeuomorphism was replaced with flat design only after
| Jobs wasn't there. Was Jony only able to wrench away the beauty
| then? It seems like it. Humans live in a 3D world and take visual
| cues from things like lighting, gradients, shadows, materials and
| textures. Flat design strips that all away.
| [deleted]
| bogwog wrote:
| I agree, I love skeuomorphic designs even though the common
| consensus seems to be that it's obsolete/outdated. I guess it's
| a consequence of the unusually high influence Apple has on the
| design world. It seems like no matter what Apple decides to do,
| every single designer will blindly follow them.
| timeon wrote:
| > It seems like no matter what Apple decides to do, every
| single designer will blindly follow them.
|
| While iOS was still skeuomorphic - first app I had that was
| flat was made by Microsoft. (Photosynth app)
| bluk wrote:
| I don't know if most people consider skeuomorphic designs
| obsolete/outdated, but the costs would be far greater today
| compared to when iOS was only for a handful of different
| resolutions for the iPhone and iPad. Not only do you have to
| consider the physical screen size differences with possibly
| different PPI, but all of the sidebar/split-screen/multi-
| window modes would require additional work.
|
| It's kind of like when most websites started to switch to
| responsive designs where image heavy layouts and other fun
| animations kinda dropped off. It was just too costly to make
| things work well.
| musesum wrote:
| > when most websites started to switch to responsive
| designs where image heavy layouts and other fun animations
| kinda dropped off
|
| Yep, things got harder with AutoRotate on the iPad.
|
| It took a while to get used to SwiftUI. But the pay off is
| immediate when switching from Portrait to Landscape mode.
| Now, everything flows perfectly.
|
| Imagine designing for every single kind of device: be it
| watch, phone, pad, desktop, and TV. It kinda forces you to
| think differently.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think it depends on the level of skeumorphism -- a
| button doesn't need to be a bitmap a-la Bryce or Kai's
| Power Tools or Poser to be skeumorphic, it can be a
| bevelled rounded rectangle like MacOS 8 or a more complex
| but still procedurally generated 3D effect of the Aqua
| UI.
| musesum wrote:
| > it can be a bevelled rounded rectangle
|
| ok, yeah. Was thinking of the original Notepad, where the
| frayed yellow tear-off sheet border drove me nuts!
| Anything tied to the "desktop metaphor" - bits are not
| atoms
| DRW_ wrote:
| I tend to prefer some of the more 'flat' modern designs in many
| ways, but I do think people are too binary about the
| skeuomorphic stuff. They could have modernised the design and
| still kept some of the useful skeuomorphic cues.
|
| I think what pushed people away from the skeuomorphic stuff is
| that it feels like the aesthetics can become to feel dated
| quicker? But I don't think that necessarily needs to be the
| case.
|
| Like skeuomorphic design in itself isn't 'dated', but the
| aesthetics chosen can be.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think if you went back and looked at some of the OS X and,
| especially, iOS design elements of a decade or so ago you'd
| probably find some of them pretty dated.
|
| Another thing worth observing is that Apple exists as part of
| essentially the fashion industry which is design. And I don't
| necessarily wholly blame Apple for all the thin, grey,
| minimalist design that we see everywhere these days.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Nonsense given we are still in flat design territory (a several
| years refined version of it) unless you really consider the
| current state remains poison
| [deleted]
| fortran77 wrote:
| The full title of the book this is excerpted from is:
|
| > After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and
| Lost Its Soul
|
| Having worked for Apple during the Steve days, I'm not sure there
| was a soul to be lost.
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(page generated 2022-06-18 23:00 UTC)