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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

#41

Post by treve »

There's lot of focus in this article on failure. I enjoy Apple bashing as much as the next guy, but one has to assume in the same 20 years Apple's head of design would have had as many, if not more successes?

I've seen a bunch of anti-Ive comments and articles here recently. Is everyone just picking out all failures and attributing them to him and design successes to Jobs? Is that really representative and based in truth? The article reads as conjecture which makes me wonder about the authors motivation.

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

#42

Post by pier25 »

I don't know why, but Apple has constantly had bad mice.

The hockey puck is mentioned in the article which is probably the worst mouse Apple has made.

Then came the Apple Pro Mouse (the transparent one) which didn't have a scroll wheel and IIRC didn't have a right click either. In the early 00s those features were super common. I remember having a Microsoft's Intellimouse with a scroll wheel in the late 90s.

Then came the Mighty Mouse. Apple added the scroll ball and right click but the scroll ball was prone to failure. Mine died after 6 months of use because the ball got a bit of dirt. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to open the mouse to clean the ball without breaking it.

Then came the Magic Mouse 1. Apple added the touch functionality but the mouse was pretty heavy including the weight of the batteries and IMO the noise of the click was quite annoying. Apple worked on the weight problem with v2 by adding their own battery, but they added the charging port at the bottom of the mouse (facepalm). Not sure if the noise of the click was solved, I didn't personally try v2.

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

#43

Post by sk5t »

Glyptodon wrote: post #7

In my opinion the hated puck mouse is far and away better than the current Magic Mouse, which will will pretty much destroy your hands and give you carpal tunnel guaranteed. The puck mouse had an orientation trough on the button that was easy enough to get used to and, more importantly, was huge enough to be substantive and supportive under a hand. As far as I'm concerned the magic mouse is a class action lawsuit in…

A 3-button round DEC mouse from 1992 outclasses the Magic Mouse. Thing is an abomination.

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

#44

Post by inlined »

darkpuma wrote: post #11
foolfoolz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iphone is the best counter argument to this. when released it was 1000x more functional and 1000x better looking than any phone available

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.

The original iPhone was revealed as three things: a phone, an iPod, and a revolutionary new browser. All three were true. I remember when I bought the first iPhone I was giddy how delightful Safari was, and it was the first smart phone to pass my “xkcd test” (could I figure out how to open a browser and type xkcd.com without getting forcibly corrected). It was also the best iPod and the first to introduce “visual voicemail”. It truly was revolutionary in visual and functional design.

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

#46

Post by ghostpepper »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #35

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.…

I'm afraid I can't picture what a cable with strain relief would look like. Can you post an example photo?

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

#47

Post by [deleted] »

Glyptodon wrote: post #7

In my opinion the hated puck mouse is far and away better than the current Magic Mouse, which will will pretty much destroy your hands and give you carpal tunnel guaranteed. The puck mouse had an orientation trough on the button that was easy enough to get used to and, more importantly, was huge enough to be substantive and supportive under a hand. As far as I'm concerned the magic mouse is a class action lawsuit in…

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by perl4ever »

jdofaz wrote: post #21

In my opinion the fruit flavor iMacs and the clamshell iBooks were incredibly ugly. Same feeling towards the original versions of MacOSX with the “lickable” candy color theme.

Well, I felt that the original theme was far more attractive than trying to imitate grey brushed metal. However, it also seemed gratuitously hostile to the color blind. I never understood why the window controls eliminated the symbols that the original Mac OS and Windows used.

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

#49

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

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.

> Or the robust ecosystem windows mobile

Huh? Windows CE and, later, Windows Mobile had quite a large number of apps for its era since the programming model was similar to desktop Windows (pre .NET) meaning that there was a ready-made base of developers for it. They weren't necessarily easy to find since the idea of an app store (and Apple/Google eating 30% of your revenue) didn't exist yet but they were there.

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

#50

Post by thomasjudge »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #26

"That vague hostility towards humans keeps peeping through." A story recounted here last year [0]: During the development of the first iPhone, Ive and his team became enamored with the look of an extruded aluminum prototype. Even though it was immediately apparent that the model's sharp edges made it physically painful to use as a phone, they persisted in trying to push the design and paper over its principal practic…

This. As CEO, one of Steve’s key functions was to serve as chief product officer. Design is an element of great products, and at Apple it has been a key element and key differentiator. As has been oft-noted, Tim is in no way a product person, and so without Steve we have seen design imperatives (thinness) unchecked
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