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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

#121

Post by scarface74 »

samstave wrote: post #114
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.

If by “stole” you meant Jobs made a deal with Xerox Parc to let it buy shares during the IPO....

https://zurb.com/blog/steve-jobs-and-xerox-the-truth-about-i...

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

#122

Post by scarface74 »

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…

15 second skip forward and back are completely undiscoverable.

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

#124

Post by scarface74 »

js2 wrote: post #94

The thing that drives me crazy on the remote is that the buttons aren't backlit. I can't think of a better use of backlit keys. A $5 rubber case fixes the ergonomic issues, but in a dark room, not being able to see the buttons, which are impossible for me to memorize, pisses me off.

I use the remote app exclusively for both my AppleTVs and the Roku app to control my Roku TVs for that reason.

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

#125

Post by Ididntdothis »

acdha wrote: post #79
Ididntdothis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True. back then a mobile phone was mainly a messaging device.

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

#126

Post by killjoywashere »

treve wrote: post #41

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 t…

Jobs made Ive, very publicly, which made Ive untouchable. I think what you're hearing is a mix of catharsis and a hope that someone in Cupertino will actually take note of some of it. The 2012 retina MacBook an the various iPhones were probably the high water mark for the Jobs-Ive collaboration. It is well known that Ives proposed and Jobs disposed. Lacking the disposer, the increased rate of fails was just half a notch higher, but that was the half notch that sent a lot of folks over the edge.

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

#127

Post by Retric »

akrulino wrote: post #54
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

I had a Nokia N95 when the iPhone was released. The N95 was far more functional: * Multitasking was allowed * Good maps app for navigating * Rhapsody subscription service for all your music needs * 3G support * Built-in SIP client The iPhone had none of this, but it had the superior UI. It took years for Apple to catch up to the technology of the klunky N95.

The N95 sold well and was a solid great phone for the time.

However, the Nokia N95 suffered from a small screen 2.6 inches relative to the iPhone’s 3.5 inch display. It mostly sucked for web browsing, which seemed less import because all phones sucked for web browsing.

What separated the iPhone was a useful touch screen enabling large screens, an acceptable web browser even if it lacked flash etc, and an unlimited bandwidth option. If anything it was really bandwidth that changed how people used their phone.

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

#128

Post by bangonkeyboard »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #116
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.

> The stupid little ball is so small it's basically impossible to scroll to boot.

Are you claiming to have just bought a new Mac with a Mighty Mouse?

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

#129

Post by pvg »

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 comment paraphrases the story/book excerpt much more harshly than it's originally presented. I can't find the bit about Jobs having to step in and "check Ive's worst tendencies" in there at all. Here's the quote.

Jony and his team preferred the Extrudo look and gave it the most attention. They tried cases that were extruded along the X-axis, and some along the Y-axis. But problems surfaced immediately. Extrudo’s hard edges hurt the designers’ faces when they put it up to their ears. Jobs especially hated this. To make the hard edges softer, plastic end caps were added, which also helped with the radio antennas.

If you read further, you'll see that there were other factors leading to the abandonment of the "Extrudo" version as well.

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

#130

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]
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