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Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

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Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#21
post #11

Maybe Steve Jobs' greatest accomplishment was getting titans like Jony Ive and Steve Forstall, who could each run their own successful design and/or tech companies, to put aside ego and work together under one roof.

Yup. “My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people.”

The Beatles exploded into rancour, hate, and bitterness, so they're maybe not the ideal role model.

Bands are hard. People in bands are passionate, often drunk and/or on drugs, almost guaranteed to be egotistical, and fiercely competitive - not at all team players by default, more like literal 10X music rock stars. (It doesn't help if they are.)

There's almost never a supervising manager to keep it all together. (Producers are temporary, and band managers are more like salespeople and hired negotiators than corporate managers.)

It's interesting to wonder what would happen if you took difficult but talented musicians and somehow managed them into smooth cooperation. Maybe Jobs did indeed do the software and design talent equivalent - but even he would have struggled with getting to happen in the music business.

Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#22
post #7
post #3

>In their separate interviews with the FT this week, Mr Cook and Sir Jonathan insisted that no single person at Apple decides which innovations graduate from its R&D labs and which are sent back to the drawing board. “The company runs very much horizontally,” said Mr Cook. “The reason it’s probably not so clear about who [sets product strategy] is that the most important decisions, there are several people involved i…

To me, the statement reads more like several people having veto power, than several people having approval power. Which seems sensible, even under a benevolent dictator: if the COO says the logistics are impossible, well, you'd better go back to the drawing board, even if the design is perfect.

I strongly suspect that Ive's work was as much about industrial implementation as aesthetics. It's a huge part of what designers actually do, vs what many people think they do - which is make sketches of shiny things all day, some of which get built by other people.

We'll see if there's a move to more repairability now that he's moving on.

I suspect there won't be, but I'd love to be proved wrong.

Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#23
I hope Apple goes back to Frog Design, I think those designs had much more character.

Also, if you make a design slimmer and slimmer, you're bound to end up with something flat and uninteresting.

I also don't like the sharpness of the aluminum at the edges. The plastic designs were much more friendly, imho.

Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#24
post #19

I liked iOS' "skeuomorphic" design and despise the flatness that Mr Ive introduced, i think 5 years back. The first iPhone was mind blowing because it seemed to make apps pop out of the screen and invited you to tap on them. Flatness is two steps back and made iOS Androidish, not a great design inspiration. Also the ridiculous obsession with thinness of macs and iPhones probably at the cost of making them do somethin…

I also really loved the skeuomorphic design that came with my iPhone 4s. Buttons looked like buttons, leather and denim accents made the phone feel like a luxury device even though it was just digital fabrication. Even the notes application looked like a sketch pad with a special “handwriting” font. I was sad when it went but now I’m in full nostalgia mode. I wonder why they decided to kill it. There must have been a…

> I wonder why they decided to kill it. There must have been a good reason.

Because anyone can copy it. Skeuomorphic is basically a copy in itself, of real-life objects, so there is no design-patent possible.

Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#25
post #19

I liked iOS' "skeuomorphic" design and despise the flatness that Mr Ive introduced, i think 5 years back. The first iPhone was mind blowing because it seemed to make apps pop out of the screen and invited you to tap on them. Flatness is two steps back and made iOS Androidish, not a great design inspiration. Also the ridiculous obsession with thinness of macs and iPhones probably at the cost of making them do somethin…

I also really loved the skeuomorphic design that came with my iPhone 4s. Buttons looked like buttons, leather and denim accents made the phone feel like a luxury device even though it was just digital fabrication. Even the notes application looked like a sketch pad with a special “handwriting” font. I was sad when it went but now I’m in full nostalgia mode. I wonder why they decided to kill it. There must have been a…

I think it was killed because fashion. A lot of modernist typography and design are flat and minimal, and textures-as-signifiers are considered a wild decorative extravagance.

IMO the glass highlights and reflections everywhere were beautiful.

The flat look is just meh in comparison. It does the job, but discoverability for buttons is poor, and it's just boring.

CPU certainly isn't an excuse today. Nor is "It's dated". IMO flat with gradients looked dated as soon as it appeared.

Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#26
post #23

I hope Apple goes back to Frog Design, I think those designs had much more character. Also, if you make a design slimmer and slimmer, you're bound to end up with something flat and uninteresting. I also don't like the sharpness of the aluminum at the edges. The plastic designs were much more friendly, imho.

> you're bound to end up with something flat and uninteresting

That's the ideal: a computer that gets out of the way. They've been wanting that since long before Steve died, too.

Hence the iPad, literally just a screen. Or last year's iPad Pro, where they took the bezel away and there's even less screen, same for the MacBooks. The iMac must be the poster child: literally just a screen.

The less device you see, and the more content (ergo screen), the better.

> The plastic designs were much more friendly, imho

But plastic also chips and breaks. Of all the plastic MacBooks I had, none of them finished life without a few chips of plastic missing. The plastic also didn't vent the computers' heat very well.

I agree that the sharp edges aren't fantastic but, strictly speaking, you're supposed to keep your wrists raised above the keyboard to avoid developing RSI so the edges shouldn't come into it anyway.

I miss the PowerBook G4 design. That was aluminium but had round edges. That design but with modern thinness, that would be nice to have back.

Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#27
post #19

I liked iOS' "skeuomorphic" design and despise the flatness that Mr Ive introduced, i think 5 years back. The first iPhone was mind blowing because it seemed to make apps pop out of the screen and invited you to tap on them. Flatness is two steps back and made iOS Androidish, not a great design inspiration. Also the ridiculous obsession with thinness of macs and iPhones probably at the cost of making them do somethin…

I also really loved the skeuomorphic design that came with my iPhone 4s. Buttons looked like buttons, leather and denim accents made the phone feel like a luxury device even though it was just digital fabrication. Even the notes application looked like a sketch pad with a special “handwriting” font. I was sad when it went but now I’m in full nostalgia mode. I wonder why they decided to kill it. There must have been a…

> Buttons looked like buttons

That's an odd one to focus on. Buttons only ever showed in the navigation bar at the top; one rarely, if ever, saw buttons other than to go back and to edit, and since the newer design, the focus has been on swipe gestures for navigation.

iOS 7 did go too far. I think people forget how much the design has improved since then, though.

> There must have been a good reason

All those designs looked hideous, hokey, and everybody hated them? That was made all too clear when those designs made the leap to OS X Lion.

Even back in the iOS 6 days, I thought iOS was beginning to look old and tired.

I think the extensive use of textures and animations (like Passbook's card shredder when deleting a pass) also limited to what extent iOS could be made to dynamically scale up between iPhone and iPad. I'm fairly certain that iOS 7 is when the foundations for this started, with a cleaner design that could more easily adapt to larger devices and different orientations.

I feel like I'm making it up when I say Autolayout started with the new design, but I'm sure the new design was initially made with Autolayout in mind. It wasn't long after the new design that the first iPhone with a different-sized screen came out. Since developers started adopting Autolayout and the new sizing system (well, newer than springs and struts from before) that iPad software can now easily adjust for four display sizes and adapt to macOS in Catalina.

Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#28
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also really loved the skeuomorphic design that came with my iPhone 4s. Buttons looked like buttons, leather and denim accents made the phone feel like a luxury device even though it was just digital fabrication. Even the notes application looked like a sketch pad with a special “handwriting” font. I was sad when it went but now I’m in full nostalgia mode. I wonder why they decided to kill it. There must have been a…

> I wonder why they decided to kill it. There must have been a good reason. Because it is tacky and it didn't age well I'd say the initial use of it was maybe in discoverability, but I suppose when smartphones became more popular that lost its main function. I think it gets distracting sometimes and it is needlessly design heavy (think how much images you need to do that).

You got distracted by the Rose Tinted Glasses Brigade, but I think you're absolutely right.

On top of that, I think there were other design considerations — how to make iOS' scale up to iPad more easily (remember when Siri was in a little box in the middle of the screen?) to the point where iPad apps can now be adapted with a checkbox to run on macOS. I think the groundwork started in iOS 7.

Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#29
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. “My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people.”

The Beatles exploded into rancour, hate, and bitterness, so they're maybe not the ideal role model. Bands are hard. People in bands are passionate, often drunk and/or on drugs, almost guaranteed to be egotistical, and fiercely competitive - not at all team players by default, more like literal 10X music rock stars. (It doesn't help if they are.) There's almost never a supervising manager to keep it all together. (Pro…

You could end up with K-pop: South Korean Pop, something that is too smooth and too focused on the market.

Re: Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

#30
post #14
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s incredible that Apple have pushed so hard on a misguided design aesthetic at the expense of practicality in recent years. I’m temporarily using shiny slim new MacBook...with a third party Franken-dongle-appendage hanging off the side so I can actually plug it in to anything. Not to mention the insanely loud and clumsy keyboard. Definitely looking forward to my old MacBook getting back from the apple repair shop.

> misguided design aesthetic at the expense of practicality in recent years That is not at all a recent thing. Example: the first iMac mouse in 1998 was round. A casual observer might not realize how misguided this is until they try to use one for 5 seconds and can't keep it in the correct orientation. Another example: dreadful charger cables that predictably break. It's been this way for at least a decade now.[2] [1…

The hockey puck mice were actually better if you popped the colored panels off, so that there was a bit of shape to them
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