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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

#161

Post by atombender »

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…

Not just the mice themselves. For a long time, Macs had an insane mouse pointer acceleration curve. It required long movements in order to move the pointer anywhere beyond the immediate area, and it affected both the trackpad and wired mice.

Back when I switched from Windows to Mac in 2006, I found this perhaps the most disruptive aspect; everything else was pretty standard GUI stuff, but the mouse behaviour was a nightmare. Windows had a different acceleration curve that felt super snappy (at the cost of a loss of precision), whereas on the Mac it was sluggish; it was a chore to get the mouse pointer to move anywhere.

For years I ran various apps that would fix the acceleration, including a tool from SteelSeries. I wasn't alone in being frustrated — forums were full of discussions about this. I'm not sure what happened or when, but I haven't needed that app in a long time. Apple must have changed the acceleration curve — I don't see any other explanation. Perhaps it came with the attempts at unifying the trackpad with iOS gestures, which require a 1:1 correspondence of your movement with what happens on the screen.

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

#162

Post by idlewords »

leoc wrote: post #117
idlewords wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Of course it's an obvious mistake. That's why people laugh out loud when they see the photo of the thing charging.

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

#163

Post by TickleSteve »

anbop wrote: post #156
idlewords wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ultimately, a hit is worth 100 misses and he had 7 colossal hits in his career (Apple II / Mac / NextOS / MacBook / iPod / iPhone / iPad)

Apple II was not Ive, it was Frog Design.

NeXTStep was Steve Jobs, not Ive who was at Apple at that point in time IIRC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_design_language

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

#164

Post by zokula »

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.

And don't forget iPhone lacked MMS on release and almost a year or two after if I remember correctly

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

#165

Post by kerng »

scarface74 wrote: post #111
idlewords wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ipaq had touch 3-4 years before iPhone came out. Obviously not as slick. People seem to always forget that the iPhone was just an evolution not some kind of magically unexpected or unanticipated device.

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

#166

Post by Sharlin »

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.

Blackberry ruled the US. It was mostly unknown in the world.

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

#167

Post by olivil »

TickleSteve wrote: post #163
anbop wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, a hit is worth 100 misses and he had 7 colossal hits in his career (Apple II / Mac / NextOS / MacBook / iPod / iPhone / iPad)

Apple II was not Ive, it was Frog Design. NeXTStep was Steve Jobs, not Ive who was at Apple at that point in time IIRC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_design_language

Pretty sure the previous comment was talking about Jobs and not Ive.

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

#168

Post by Dylan16807 »

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'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 ripped out part of a server and started carrying it around.

Personally that's the aesthetic I want in a laptop.

I'll accept minimalism, though. Or anything that's not too flashy and doesn't scream GAMER.

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

#169

Post by Sharlin »

ct520 wrote: post #24
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.

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.

Americans have a blind spot when it comes to smartphones pre-iPhone, because Nokia wasn't such a big player on that side of the pond. The Symbian S60 ecosystem was fairly well-developed, certainly by the standards of the time.

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

#170

Post by andy_ppp »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #90
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…

It drives me crazy that you can’t hold the Apple TV remote while watching tv for fear of accidental input. As soon as I turn something on, I set it down. Then, when I need it, I slowly reach for it, being careful not to inadvertently hit any buttons or swipe the touch pad. When you’re using it, it’s fine. No complaints. But any time you’re not using it, it feels like a ticking time bomb waiting to mess up your show.

This is true with all remote controls to some degree.
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