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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

#111

Post by scarface74 »

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.

Skeuomorphism wasn’t a failure. The iPhone and the touch interface were new to the market. Making the interface look familiar was important at the time even though it went too far. The iPhone did well from iOS 1 - iOS 6 and I don’t remember too many complaints until iOS 6.

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

#112

Post by meddlepal »

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.

The colorful iMac and iBook were a fun for the times reaction to the banality of mostly beige and sometimes black boxes most 90's computer users were used to seeing.

You have to kind of look at and consider them in the context of their time.

I do kind of miss fun colored devices. We're in a new era of beige with all this brushed aluminum and glass. I really would love some funky colored electronics again.

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

#113

Post by em-bee »

sverige wrote: post #25
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…

From the article: >In the first interview, he also admitted to admiring people who work on satellites, where you have to justify every iota of space consumed, every gram of weight, because they’re expensive and you only get one chance to get them right. The thing is, laptops aren't satellites. I've never understood the obsession with saving even a pound of weight for a laptop. (OK, maybe if you're one of those people…

uh, even when just commuting to work every day, every gram saved makes a difference. when buying a new laptop, weight is my primary selection criteria, next is size and price, and only then any features. (although features factor into price)

the only time when weight is not a consideration is when getting a machine that i don't intend to move but just keep at home/work. but even then, i get annoyed when i occasionally have to carry around, or decide to change the purpose of the device.

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

#114

Post by samstave »

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…

Super ironic that apple stole the idea of the Mouse from parc and managed to completely fuck it up.

I blame jobs for this.

He basically tried to force an opposing idea for its sake on something that would be an FU to MS.

But the physical design of these mice with the recharge port on the bottom was an utter retard.

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

#115

Post by em-bee »

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 literally have both a macbook pro and a thinkpad x230 right now on my desk side by side, and i concur. the thinkpad keyboard is just so much more comfortable. it pains me to see how the newer thinkpads don't have that keyboard anymore.

if only i could find a more lightweight version the same size as the x230, then i'd probably stop using the mac.

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

#116

Post by morpheuskafka »

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 just bought a new Mac and spent all of ten seconds looking at the "well-designed" Apple keyboard and mouse before buying the best third-party input devices I've ever had for less than half the cost. The Magic Mouse looks like it was build by someone who has never used a mouse in their life. The stupid little ball is so small it's basically impossible to scroll to boot.

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

#117

Post by leoc »

idlewords wrote: post #17
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

Gratuitously making a mouse unusable during charging, where there was an easy and obvious way to make it usable during charging, is bad design.

But there's no easy and obvious way to make a good cable connector that will make the mouse usable during charging. You could add a connector that works somewhat poorly, on the theory that those shortcomings don't matter since the mouse will only be plugged in occasionally and briefly. But if you do that then many users will in fact leave the mouse plugged in permanently, "just in case", effectively transforming it, in their experience, from a nice wireless mouse to a dodgy wired mouse. (It's much the same story if you add a connector which is mechanically robust and doesn't make the mouse feel horrible to use while in use, but makes it laborious to plug and unplug the cable.) Now you could argue that the decision to avoid that is patronising design, or manipulative design, or design that doesn't respect the user's authority. But it's not an obvious mistake, at least.

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

#118

Post by WalterBright »

organsnyder wrote: post #109
WalterBright wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Pretty sure our minivan won't let us open the driver-side door if the gas door is open.

My dad's low tech solution was to yell at me to not open the door when he was pumping gas.

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

#119

Post by nine_k »

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…

The problem is that a lot of people buy for the look, so the design sells. Apple made a significant effort to cast iPhone as a fashion accessory.

And once you bought it for a significant sum, the sunk cost will force you to learn and adapt, even through suffering, and look for justifications to comfort yourself and kill any doubts.

To quote from memory, "Steve Jobs cared greatly about the experience of the user from the moment of walking into an Apple store and all the way until the free return period ends".

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

#120

Post by scarface74 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #49
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.

> 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.

Why do you say parenthetically pre .Net? I programmed ruggedized Windows Mobile devices around 2008 using both C++/MFC and .Net Compact Framework/Windows Forms and they were both just like programming on Windows.
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