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Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

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Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#31

Post by idlewords »

jacobolus wrote: post #23
idlewords wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different people type in different ways.

Yes this is true, but many of those ways put considerable strain on their hands and wrists and commonly lead to serious injury. If the forearms are digging into the corners of the laptop, that almost certainly means that the wrists are extended (bent downward), which puts the tendons/joints used for typing into a weak and injury-prone part of their range of motion. People should do whatever works for them and listen…

Sometimes the pain is caused by a razor-sharp laptop edge, which is the point of the post. I type in two main positions–on my back like an otter, or lying face down on a mattress. I'm guessing some people here type suspended upside down from a gravity swing. The computer case design shouldn't punish us for our typing choices!

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#32

Post by _coveredInBees »

jacobolus wrote: post #13
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people I've talked to have never noticed the sharp edges of the mac pro. But they irritate the living crap out of me. After a few hours use, it starts to feel like I've been grinding my forearms with sandpaper.

Tangential public service announcement: Your forearms should not be digging into the edge of the laptop. If they are, you are positioning your hands and wrists in an uncomfortable and inefficient way which has a good chance of leading to RSI. Irrespective of the smoothness of the laptop corners, don’t do this! Ideally you shouldn‘t be putting any significant pressure on any surface with your forearms, palms, or wrist…

God forbid anyone who actually uses their laptop on their lap...

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#33

Post by tachyonbeam »

piinbinary wrote: post #3

I think it's good to draw a distinction between visual design and functional design. Design that focuses on function can sometimes (but definitely not always) result in designs that are also visually appealing, but design that focuses on the visual rarely produces a very functional result. I'd much rather look at a mac book pro than a thinkpad. Next to the minimalist design of the mac, a thinkpad looks like you rippe…

I've owned multiple Thinkpads, and have a MacBook Air at home. I'm a pragmatist, so I don't mind that my work Thinkpad is all black and looks like it's from the 1990s. I enjoy that it has a built-in Nvidia GPU (which I use for machine learning). What makes me sad that with a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 install, my work Thinkpad can't even do two hours of battery life.

My MacBook Air at home is 3 years old, but it's thin and light. I take it with me when I travel, and the battery will last through a whole trans-atlantic flight. I don't actually care about the visual design, but the 2016 MacBook Air's keyboard feels very comfortable to type on, and the battery life is awesome.

Unfortunately, when this MacBook Air dies, it will probably get replaced by a PC. I don't really want to shell an insane amount of money on a new Mac, especially in an era where you can't get one without a touchbar, and I won't get the convenience of a non-USB-C port.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#34

Post by jacobolus »

_coveredInBees wrote: post #32
jacobolus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential public service announcement: Your forearms should not be digging into the edge of the laptop. If they are, you are positioning your hands and wrists in an uncomfortable and inefficient way which has a good chance of leading to RSI. Irrespective of the smoothness of the laptop corners, don’t do this! Ideally you shouldn‘t be putting any significant pressure on any surface with your forearms, palms, or wrist…

God forbid anyone who actually uses their laptop on their lap...

Using a laptop on the lap is a fine idea. It does not involve forearms digging into the edge of the laptop.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#35

Post by paranoidrobot »

The article points out some very high visibility things that Ive was either responsible for, or at least signed off on. The author though misses what I think is the one that has had the most impact on people - Apple's insistence on removal of strain relief on cables.

Apple's cables have for generations now been fraying and cracking all because someone decided that strain relief was an unsightly and unnecessary thing.

It could be forgiven if it was on one era of products, and learned their lesson when people started getting electrical shocks, devices started dying, and things being set on fire - but no, they persist.

Even today they've only made the most minor of attempts at introducing strain relief.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#36

Post by jacobolus »

idlewords wrote: post #31
jacobolus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is true, but many of those ways put considerable strain on their hands and wrists and commonly lead to serious injury. If the forearms are digging into the corners of the laptop, that almost certainly means that the wrists are extended (bent downward), which puts the tendons/joints used for typing into a weak and injury-prone part of their range of motion. People should do whatever works for them and listen…

Sometimes the pain is caused by a razor-sharp laptop edge, which is the point of the post. I type in two main positions–on my back like an otter, or lying face down on a mattress. I'm guessing some people here type suspended upside down from a gravity swing. The computer case design shouldn't punish us for our typing choices!

Lying on your back or lying face down or suspended from a gravity swing are all fine (albeit perhaps not ideal for very long stretches).

In none of these cases should your forearms be digging into the edge of the laptop. If they are something else is wrong about the position.

I occasionally type sitting on a couch, lying on my back on a bed, sitting at crappy furniture at a coffeeshop, sitting on the floor, with one hand on a tall table while tending to toddlers, etc.

In any of those contexts, it is possible to find a way of typing with straight wrists.

This really has nothing to do with the computer case design; the previous poster should adjust his or her posture irrespective of laptop choice. RSI is no joke.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#37

Post by ctoll »

jacobolus wrote: post #13
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people I've talked to have never noticed the sharp edges of the mac pro. But they irritate the living crap out of me. After a few hours use, it starts to feel like I've been grinding my forearms with sandpaper.

Tangential public service announcement: Your forearms should not be digging into the edge of the laptop. If they are, you are positioning your hands and wrists in an uncomfortable and inefficient way which has a good chance of leading to RSI. Irrespective of the smoothness of the laptop corners, don’t do this! Ideally you shouldn‘t be putting any significant pressure on any surface with your forearms, palms, or wrist…

Would you say he's holding it wrong?

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#38

Post by milemi »

I don't understand how Apple TV remote ever came into being, let alone how it still exists. Even when you somehow break the symmetry, in my case by sticking an ugly address label on the bottom part, skating around the screen with the touch pad is a game of skill that you are forced to play when all you want to do is just select a damn thing on the screen. Not to mention having to undo whatever I've done by touching the touch pad every time I grab the thing.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#39

Post by masswerk »

minimaxir wrote: post #5

I'm surprised the article didn't mention the Lightning-charged Magic Mouse given the infamous memes. (IMO, it's not bad design; you're not supposed to be using it plugged-in 24/7, you're supposed it to plug it in for occasions when you aren't using the mouse anyways) EDIT: it was mentioned, I missed it

Actually, it's in the article:

"There was yet another mouse, with a bizarre charge-my-belly design. Everyone else would have put a Lightning port on the front or back, or even had a recessed horizontal port beneath so you could keep using the thing while it charged."

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#40

Post by darkpuma »

ct520 wrote: post #24
darkpuma wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's revisionist. People tend to forget that when the iphone was released it had no appstore and Apple was telling people to develop webapps. This was less functional than existing offerings on the market, but it sure looked and felt better.

I'm curious when you say less functional than existing offerings you mean .... exactly what? Those java apps you could download from your cell phone carrier that ran incredibly slow? Or the robust ecosystem windows mobile <6 had at the time?.. Because Android wasn't out... I agree with foolfoolz, iphone raised the bar both functionally and visually, regardless of having a app store at launch.

In an age before android or iphones, blackberry ruled the world. The iphone as it was released was a functional regression for blackberry power users. And it didn't catch on with that demographic until Apple iterated on the iphone to close the gap.
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