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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

#171

Post by darkpuma »

Sharlin wrote: post #166
darkpuma wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Nitpicks aside, if Blackberry preceded the iphone only in America, it still preceded the iphone. Note that I never claimed that predecessors to the iphone, with more functionality than the iphone, were also more commercially successful in America, let alone worldwide. Claiming that would be ridiculous.

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

#172

Post by ct520 »

Sharlin wrote: post #169
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.

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.

Nah I was a big fan of s60 Had the birth control 3650 with multiplayer snake. That phone upped the game, but thought we were talking about design and functionality. I wouldn’t call the 3650 a jump in functionality besides it included one of the first cameras stateside .

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

#173

Post by darkpuma »

kerng wrote: post #165
scarface74 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember CRT touchscreens being used as cash registers in the late 90s. It's true, touch was nothing new. What was new was the combination of capacitive touch and a slick responsive UI. Previous systems had unresponsive GUIs or inferior touchscreen technology like resistive, IR or lightpen.

Getting both right at the same time was the big first for the iphone, not the bare concept of touchscreens as input devices.

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

#174

Post by leoc »

idlewords wrote: post #162
leoc wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> That's why people laugh out loud when they see the photo of the thing charging.

That's why it's an apparent mistake. It's only an obvious mistake if there's an obviously—and really, not just apparently—better solution.

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

#175

Post by Dylan16807 »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #128
morpheuskafka wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Is there something wrong with using present tense to talk about a specific mouse design?

The "just" in the first sentence could be misinterpreted, but that's not the part you quoted...

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

#176

Post by InvaderFizz »

kerng wrote: post #165
scarface74 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone that was a daily iPAQ user with it Bluetooth tethered to my phone, they aren't even comparable.

The browser on the iPhone was actually good for the time. Touch actually worked, the display was responsive, they OSK was quite fast, and the lack of copy/paste was just dumb.

I ditched the iPAQ as soon as I held the iPhone and used it for five minutes.

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

#177

Post by r00fus »

darkpuma wrote: post #11
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

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.

The fact that you could browse actual websites (sans Flash of course) was amazing.

WiFi and the companion iPod Touch made me feel it wasn't as much a phone as a goddmaned computer with a phone app that mostly didn't suck.

The text input took a while but I still charge up and unlock my OG iPhone and am amazed at how well it fares (yes, iOS3).

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

#178

Post by r00fus »

Sharlin wrote: post #169
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.

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.

Yeah I remember seeing a demo of a Psion from a SwissAir seatmate. It was quite awesome for year 2000.

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

#179

Post by insulanus »

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…

Regarding the Thinkpad: I know this may sound crazy, but consider using installing windows, and using Linux in a VM. You get all the OEM and MS drivers for the hardware that way.

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

#180

Post by idlewords »

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.

You're forgetting the fake leather on the calendar, and the ugly green felt of the Game Center. https://www.cultofmac.com/189707/steve-jobs-himself-is-respo...
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