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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

#61

Post by sulam »

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.

People also tend to forget that it was incredibly refined already in v1. I remember hooking it up to my car and being super impressed that I could pick whether I wanted sound to go to the car, my phone, or my headphones. Each makes sense in a different context, but other products at the time assumed that as long as there was a BT connection available it should use that. They also clearly did some great usability work on touch targets. I could tap on links in web pages and it would do the right thing. Other phones, even if they had a decent browser (they didn’t), forced me to hunt for the magic touch target.

Blackberries were good at email, but otherwise they lost to Apple badly.

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

#62

Post by darkpuma »

inlined wrote: post #44
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.

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 voi…

No doubt, I was amazed when I first got my hands on one. The iphone got things right that had never been gotten before. But the fact remains that on the day it launched, there were other smartphones on the market that had more features. When the feature-sets overlapped, iphone was generally the clear winner, but if you tallied it all up, the iphone was clearly lacking a few obvious features that others had, such as the aforementioned third-party software, or even just the simple ability to copy-paste text (which didn't come to iphones until several iterations later as I recall.)

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

#63

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

All the designers I've worked with have all put beauty over function. That's just who they are. I suspect that if they emphasized function their career would have been greatly impacted towards the negative.

One big project that comes to mind is The Getty Museum in Los Angeles -at a billion dollar cost. The architecture is beautiful but it lacks function. Getting around the museum as a visitor is like entering a mase. I'm sure you could not convince the architect that he should have changed it. I don't have the know how to know if it could have been designed with an emphasis towards function. But I do know that it's beautiful so in my mind, the architect was a genius.

Ives should get the same consideration.

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

#64

Post by mrandish »

I think the best observation in the article is the one about "as simple as possible, but no simpler", but Apple under Ives too often forgetting the second part.

I've come to dislike the copycat trends that Apple's stringent design ethos has unleashed. Sure, it's occasionally been brilliant but the article does a good job outlining the significant errors - and other posters here fill in the blanks.

I'm glad the end of the Ives era seems to be sparking some healthy reassessment and introspection in the industry.

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

#65

Post by baggy_trough »

pier25 wrote: post #42

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 cam…

It's true. They really have unusable mice. It's strange to have to resort to using Microsoft and Amazon basic mice to get anything done.

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

#66

Post by mhh__ »

milemi wrote: post #38

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 t…

I don't have one personally but every time I use one at a friend house it just feels crap in a way that I've never felt with an apple product before.

It's obviously well made but it just feels pretentious compared to a phone or remote than you can actually type with.

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

#67

Post by baggy_trough »

milemi wrote: post #38

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 t…

If you buy a $6 case for the remote, it becomes quite usable.

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

#68

Post by ct520 »

darkpuma wrote: post #40
ct520 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are correct - I totally spaced the blackberry. I was focused on the app store comment. LOL them blackberry power users hung on for awhile huh?

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

#69

Post by pkamb »

I for one quite like the Apple TV 4 remote.

It has one major issue in that it's symmetrical and you sometimes pick it up the wrong way.

But other than that I love it. The touchpad is great with the Apple TV, especially once you figure out that you can single-tap the edges like a D-Pad for precision.

It lays flat, so you can tap the play/pause button on your coffee table rather than picking up the remote.

There are just enough buttons for the Apple TV functions, all of which are big and easy to press and work with a satisfying click. No mushy rubber.

I wouldn't want a game controller designed with the same sensibilities. That's something you're holding for hours at a time and needs to be designed for your hand.

But I don't need a "comfortable" cable remote. I'll take the nice objet d'art.

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