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Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

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Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#211
post #16

Nothing in this post says Ive's new company will only work with Apple. Maybe he'll land Dell as a client..

If Apple is his client he's probably not going to take any clients that competes with them.

I don't think that's an issue.

Few, if any of Apple's competitors are willing to invest in the high manufacturing costs it takes to produce something like a Macbook Pro, or a 2019 Mac Pro. Apple isn't one to cut corners, unlike a lot of its competitors.

Any Ive design produced by a competitor is unlikely be at the level of anything Apple produces.

Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#212

I haven’t forgiven this guy for the latest “thin at any cost” 4th gen MacBook Pro we’ve had since 2016. He ruined the best programer’s laptop on the market. Maybe with him and his ego gone, they can fix the next generation and salvage the product line.

Thin laptops are so cool from design standpoint. Though I wish they still kept all the necessary ports to support ecosystem outside Apple. Coming to Ive - I appreciated him for the cool Unibody design of MBPs. They beat all other competition - just by looks & sturdiness.

Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#213
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thin is fine, but Apple has shipped nearly 5 years worth of fundamentally defective laptops. This is the reckoning. I’m glad they had the courage to hold the leader responsible.

Well, my point is that design is opinionated and my opinion is clearly contrary to yours – in the past five years (and more) Apple has set the standard for what laptops should be. Thanks for proving my point! :o)

> in the past five years (and more) Apple has set the standard for what laptops should be.

Setting the standard for laptops implies that other manufacturers are racing to keep pace with their changes. Fortunately (in my opinion), there has not been a giant uptick in other laptop manufacturers removing standard keyboard keys, making devices thin to the point of fragility, and requiring a myriad of dongles to perform many basic tasks.

Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#214
post #176
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I travel frequently for work. I like having a pro machine that is light and thin. I am okay with compromises, but understand that the target audience feels differently. I believe my Macbook Pro goes more places than before due to the compactness. That includes using python, photo, design, and general office work.

Do you actually need the thin part or just the light part? I used to amuse people by demonstrating that my not-at-all-sexy ThinkPad weighed less than the original MacBook Air despite being a lot thicker and more powerful. The recent iPhones in particular bother me. What’s the point of being mostly thin if the camera lens sticks out and snags on things?

Yes, I find the thinner the device the easier it is to pack. I should say overall volume. If I can travel for 1-2 days with a simple backpack, that is best case scenario. I keep trying to go 100% iPad Pro but its not quite there yet. I have taken plenty of day trips with just my macbook pro, no case or sleeve.

Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#215
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I travel frequently for work. I like having a pro machine that is light and thin. I am okay with compromises, but understand that the target audience feels differently. I believe my Macbook Pro goes more places than before due to the compactness. That includes using python, photo, design, and general office work.

That's why we were given the Air and 13" Pro.

>Air

Weak specs and small screen.

>13" pro

Weaker specs and smaller screen than 15" Pro.

I, for one, like my light and thin 15" Pro, though I understand not everyone will feel this way.

Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#216

Apple used to be known for their amazing designs. That was when Steve was running the company. Since his death Apple has been in a free fall in the design space. Most of the comments here seem to be about their awful hardware design. Yes, the thin macbook is not very usable, and the Homepod which is shaped like an amorphous blob is uglier than any Bose speaker. But what about their software? Their UI design is super…

Is the UI super unusable, or does it have some flaws?

I switched to Android from iOS about 18 months ago and badly miss the iOS UX. iOS is flawed, but less flawed than the competition.

I don't feel that OsX is the leader in the desktop space anymore.

Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with USB-C and the big trackpad is fine too, and I would love to have touchID on my 2015MBP. But getting rid of mag power and the USB-A ports, HDMI port, and SD card slot was a big step back. Maybe you don't ever need to present anything from your laptop, but if you talk to anyone who does, they will tell you how awful it is to not have an HDMI port. The USB-C to HDMI is the worst adapter I've ever seen…

> Maybe you don't ever need to present anything from your laptop I present all the time, but I can't remember the last time I had to plug in. The problem with trying to plug in is that the other side could be anything from VGA to DP. Should VGA ports be stuck back onto the MBP? > And if you're a semi-pro photographer, the lack of an SD card slot is terrible. What about the CF, XQD, or mini-SD slot? I'm an enthusiast…

Get a USB-C Lightning cable. One brick, two cables, and you can charge the iPhone on the other devices. Yes it’d be better if the iPhone was USB-C too but that basically has been my strategy: get a set of USB-C to A/B/Mini/Micro/Micro3/HDMI/Lightning cables (not that I lug all of them around, they’re merely plugged into my accessories). There exist USB-C magnet thingies too.

Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with USB-C and the big trackpad is fine too, and I would love to have touchID on my 2015MBP. But getting rid of mag power and the USB-A ports, HDMI port, and SD card slot was a big step back. Maybe you don't ever need to present anything from your laptop, but if you talk to anyone who does, they will tell you how awful it is to not have an HDMI port. The USB-C to HDMI is the worst adapter I've ever seen…

> Maybe you don't ever need to present anything from your laptop I present all the time, but I can't remember the last time I had to plug in. The problem with trying to plug in is that the other side could be anything from VGA to DP. Should VGA ports be stuck back onto the MBP? > And if you're a semi-pro photographer, the lack of an SD card slot is terrible. What about the CF, XQD, or mini-SD slot? I'm an enthusiast…

Agreed. I'm an enthusiast photographer and previously semi prod. The SD card slot is nice to have some times, but most of the time I use a dedicated card reader for CF, SD, and micro-SD cards.

Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#219
post #70

Hopefully this signals the end of the designers tyranny at Apple. While physical design has been of paramount importance in Apple's rise to the top, it has been more and more detrimental as Jony and his group wandered into worshipping at the altar of luxury and Platonic idealism. When combined with /not/ ignoring other than luxury market segments and usability that was fine. But when Jony's star was completely ascend…

I don't like that phrase, "tyranny of design". It implies design is just one side of a product. But design is everything. It is both form and function. A product that has great visual design is still a failure if the functional design is bad. A great designer is holistic and will be able to bring form and function into harmony..

While I don't have the inside scoop on how Jonathan Ive works, my impression is that he's good taste and excels at pushing the edge in materials and manufacturing processes -- he pioneered the aluminium unibody, for example -- and is probably a good leader. But he is not a great or original designer. Apple's recent history is littered with mistakes and poor design decisions, functional and aesthetic both, as well as a lot of unoriginal, boring visual design. There's obviously a lot of pressure at Apple, and they don't make anything easy for themselves, but that's not enough of an excuse to explain everything.

To me, the most audacious design decision in recent years was the iPhone X's removal of the home button in favour of a purely gesture-based UI combined with Face ID. That's great design that just worked.

Re: Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USB-C to HDMI is the worst adapter I've ever seen. Just curious why? I use mine almost every day and have never had issues. It's not an Apple-branded one though, it's "Cable Matters"... but if anything Apple adapters tend to be higher quality than third-party ones? (I also use a Cable Matters SD adapter more than once a week to transfer video and it's been working flawlessly for over a year too.)

This link should give you some clues, is one of the worst reviewed products on Apple.com https://www.apple.com/shop/reviews/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital-a...

I'm not sure I'd put a lot of credibility in the reviews on apple.com. Especially for a device like a display adapter which is frequently connected to a finicky and/or cheap device like a projector or display.
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