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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

#101

Post by ysavir »

proee wrote: post #22
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…

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.

It isn't justifying it. This is not an either/or situation. We can both have smoother laptop edges and be mindful of our typing posture.

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

#102

Post by jacobolus »

nomel wrote: post #96
jacobolus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some people use their laptops in wider situations than others. Having had creases pressed into my forearms by the edge of my MacBook while using it in various non-ideal and uncomfortable seating situation, usually on the go, I can easily say you are not one of them. Implying that we’re being dishonest or somehow incapable of using a keyboard is a bit insulting.

Huh? I don’t think anyone here is dishonest or incapable of using a keyboard. (Indeed, I’m convinced that idlewords is one of the most honest and generally capable people around.)

I said people who are digging their forearms into their laptop edges are probably bending their wrists down in a way that puts strain on the tendons used for typing (not to mention putting direct pressure on the tendon sheaths for the finger flexors), so they should be careful about RSI.

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

#103

Post by justsee »

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.…

All because they optimise for short-term design over long-term function, because there's no decent negative feedback loop into consumer decision making at point-of-purchase for many minor defects (and even major ones such as the Apple butterfly keyboard disaster).

If there was a requirement for manufacturers-at-scale to display visual overviews of potential defects over time due to normal use - and with the same prominence as the marketing material:

* a laptop with stressed / broken cables

* a defective keyboard

* inputs in iPhones that appear to fail due to microscopic dust / debris accumulation

then you'd have a forcing function which addresses the information asymmetry in consumer transactions and perhaps you'd quickly see a lot more attention directed at these kind of product defects.

Of course this kind of thought-bubble regulation might be totally unworkable: how do you determine thresholds of wear and tear considering 'correct use' as considered by manufacturer vs 'real-world' use by user base. But then again doesn't good design consider the practical over the theoretical reality wrt product usage?

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

#104

Post by sjwright »

idlewords wrote: post #100
thomasjudge wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Jobs had plenty of design failures on his conscience, like the G3 cube, the skeuomorphism fad, and the hockey puck mouse. We should not pretend the guy had irreplaceable design sense.

The misses are noteworthy for their relative rarity.

The G3 cube was a good idea but was overpriced, as it was inferior to the regular G4 in every aspect other than size. It was priced to be a 2000’s-era executive desk ornament, a relatively tiny market segment. A few years later a substantially similar product was released to massive success—the Mac mini.

The puck mouse was stupid, but it wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be. It was eminently useable once you got used to it.

Jobs’ biggest design failure has always been his refusal to acknowledge the importance of cable strain relief.

Also the third generation iPod. Yeesh.

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

#105

Post by JaggedNZ »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #52
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…

I honestly don't know how the Magic Mouse is meant to be used for extended lengths of time. The touch surface means that not only do your index and middle fingers need to be held hovering above it, but the rest of your fingers also need to claw in from the sides to keep overhangs of skin from triggering stray cursor movements. It is truly painful to use.

Maybe you used one with older firmware or an older model?

Currently using one as I type, the stray / static finger rejection is near perfect and I can easily scroll with my index finger with my middle finger and edge of my palm resting on the surface.

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

#106

Post by organsnyder »

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…

Before I began to type this, I was resting my hands on the (thankfully hand-friendly) edge of my laptop, one finger on the page-down key. I probably do as much reading on my laptop as I do typing.

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

#107

Post by pkamb »

nathantotten wrote: post #88
pkamb wrote: post #69

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 ju…

Completely agree. With HDMI-CEC and moving off of old Campos it is the only remote used in our house and nobody ever asks me how to do X. They click it, everything turns on and the navigate to the thing they want. A bit of rubber on the lower half so could feel up from down would be my only change.

Yeah I use HDMI-CEC to turn on and off my TV from the Apple remote.

I use an HD HomeRun and the app Channels to watch local antenna TV via the Apple TV, so no need for channel buttons.

I do wish that the Apple TV volume buttons worked without HDMI-CEC so I could use those to control the volume when playing games. That and the occasional need for the Input button are the only reasons I keep the TV remote handy.

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

#108

Post by meddlepal »

idlewords wrote: post #100
thomasjudge wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Jobs had plenty of design failures on his conscience, like the G3 cube, the skeuomorphism fad, and the hockey puck mouse. We should not pretend the guy had irreplaceable design sense.

It's not that Jobs had irreplaceable design sense that makes Job's very hard to replace, but his ability to check egos and call out a bad design when he spotted it.

Everything I read makes it seem like Jony Ive is full of himself. Jobs was the only one that could tell him that.

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

#109

Post by organsnyder »

WalterBright wrote: post #58
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…

> but they added the charging port at the bottom of the mouse (facepalm) Reminds me of the 1968 VW Camper Bus. (My dad had one.) You can always tell the 68's because the gas filler was located on the right rear quarter panel. When you were filling up, and opened the sliding door, it would shear off the gas pump. In '69 they moved it to the other side.

Then, when minivans started having sliding doors on both sides, the problem returned. Pretty sure our minivan won't let us open the driver-side door if the gas door is open.

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

#110

Post by m463 »

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…

So in talking to people who knew Jobs well, he was the great integrator. He got people to work together and ideas to work together.
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