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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

#71

Post by leoc »

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…

The problem with the G3 iMac’s mouse was the cable. The low, round puck didn’t provide a good grip for fighting with the very stiff cable. If it had been wireless it would, I think, have been much more pleasant to hold. It’s not the case that a mouse has to be a blob-shaped fistful of plastic modeled after the MS Mouse 2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Mouse#/media/File:Mi... to be comfortable to hold. Think how you hold a pen, or how a professional holds a kitchen knife.

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

#72

Post by fiblye »

jacobolus wrote: post #27
proee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a terrible argument to justify a poor design. There are plenty of times you need to use a laptop in non-ideal situations, such as a car or plane. The laptop should not punish you for having to operate it outside perfect conditions.

There is no condition where you should have your forearm digging into the front edge of the laptop. If you come up with a body shape and context and I guarantee you we can come up with a more comfortable way to position the laptop than anything requiring wrists bent downward. This is not about the design of the Macbook: the same goes for any other laptop, however smooth and soft its front edge might be.

Maybe you shouldn’t do it. But it happens.

You also shouldn’t drive your car into other cars. But we still put seatbelts and bumpers on for those who do.

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

#73

Post by nextos »

jeswin wrote: post #55
tachyonbeam wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> What makes me sad that with a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 install, my work Thinkpad can't even do two hours of battery life. This has everything to do with the unresolved problems of Linux power management. I use Ubuntu on Thinkpads too, and battery life is decent after a bit of configuration. Windows meanwhile gives all day battery life on Thinkpads.

I have managed to achieve the same battery life, down minute differences in the single digit either side, between macOS and Linux on a MacBook Air (which is a simple all Intel machine).

I think the problem is that most distributions ship with no Powertop or udev rules, plus lots of unnecessary services and devices on by default.

One really nice thing Apple does is optimizing Safari for battery life. My comparison was Firefox on macOS vs Linux. With Safari, I'd get 20-30 min more.

I bet Firefox and other programs would benefit from some black-box GCC/LVM flag optimization to improve battery usage.

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

#74

Post by paranoidrobot »

ghostpepper wrote: post #46
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?

Good question.

Others have already helpfully provided pictures of the common stuff.

It's used where you have a flexible material in contact with a rigid material. Most commonly on electronics it's on cables - between connectors and either connectors (when removable) or into the case/device (when fixed).

The strain relief prevents all the stress (from bending, induced by movement or just gravity) being placed on one location and spreads it out.

Once you know what strain relief is, and you look around at all the cables/hoses/etc in your life - you start seeing them everywhere.

Headphones, Keyboards, Network cables, power cables, USB cables. Just sitting at my desk I can see a dozen or more of them.

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

#75

Post by samstave »

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.…

This was completely intentional.

As they make a fuck-ton on resale of these accessories. (planned obsolescence)

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #33
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 l…

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by ct520 »

julianz wrote: post #59
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.

The Palm/Treo app market was quite strong, I had several good and useful apps on my Treo 650 that integrated nicely with a desktop and made it a properly useful device. The app installation method was a bit primitive but there was absolutely a strong market for 3rd party apps.

hmmm - I have a blind spot for palm during that time, completely spaced them. I was a windows mobile power user 2003 thru version 5/6. I will take your word for it.

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

#79

Post by acdha »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #30
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

A Blackberry was probably more functional at that time but wasn't as nice as to use and look at.

Whether you believe that to be true probably depends on whether you more frequently used email or the web. The Blackberry was great for messaging but the browser & other non-core apps were a bad joke.

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

#80

Post by js2 »

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 don't think strain reliefs is the issue as much as the thinness of the cables. The magsafe power supplies do have minimal strain reliefs[1] but the insulation cracks at the end of the relief. If you tape up or reinforce the ends with tape, as I've done on numerous cables, they'll eventually crack and fray at the end of the tape. I've learned to just be very careful winding and unwinding mine and have them last for years. My kids aren't as careful so I just keep adding tape to theirs.

1. https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4974/as-images.apple...

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