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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

#201

Post by saagarjha »

scarface74 wrote: post #122
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.

Don't you just click either side of the remote? A hint shows up on the screen if you hold your finger there.

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

#202

Post by saagarjha »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #175
bangonkeyboard wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

The comment above looks a lot like the Mighty Mouse is the mouse they're referring to when they talk about the computer they "just" bought.

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

#204

Post by tonyedgecombe »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #197
asark wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they added the charging port at the bottom of the mouse (facepalm). I thought this was incredibly stupid until I actually used one. The battery lasts so long and charges so fast that it's not a problem, to the point that I wouldn't pay so much as a dollar to "fix" it by moving the port to the edge.

I dislike the inconsistency where the corresponding keyboard is a USB keyboard with a cable connected, but the mouse isn't (and physically couldn't be).

The big difference is you don’t drag your keyboard around the table putting a strain on the connector.

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

#205

Post by saagarjha »

WalterBright wrote: post #118
organsnyder wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Funnily enough that was mine's as well. Didn't stop us from hitting the pump once or twice anyways, though luckily we didn't break anything…

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

#206

Post by saagarjha »

mhh__ wrote: post #66
milemi wrote: post #38

I don't understand how Apple TV remote ever came into being, let alone how it still exists. Even when you somehow break the symmetry, in my case by sticking an ugly address label on the bottom part, skating around the screen with the touch pad is a game of skill that you are forced to play when all you want to do is just select a damn thing on the screen. Not to mention having to undo whatever I've done by touching t…

I don't have one personally but every time I use one at a friend house it just feels crap in a way that I've never felt with an apple product before. It's obviously well made but it just feels pretentious compared to a phone or remote than you can actually type with.

> remote than you can actually type with

Wouldn't that be a reasonably large remote?

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

#207

Post by duncanawoods »

WoodenChair wrote: post #183
darkpuma wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What both you and grandparent are missing is the biggest iPhone touch innovation of all: multitouch. Multitouch was invented largely by a one-person startup that Apple purchased, and the iPhone became the first device to mass-produce it. The book The One Device covers its development well: https://amzn.to/2lrbKA7

IMHO multi-touch is really overrated in significance. The only multi finger gesture I use is pinch zoom and it’s like once a week. If that was a widget or triple tapping or something, I wouldnt notice.

The improvements to touch that made it magical was the super responsive typing and momentum scrolling and it’s all just one fingered.

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

#208

Post by traderjane »

thomasjudge wrote: post #50
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…

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

At some point even Steve Jobs may have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of products, and we don't expect the CEO to be able to provide every product with love.

At some point the responsibility must fall on the design team and Jony Ives, because what is design if not the tasteful balance of factors resulting in a vision of experience, as opposed to the tunnel vision pursuit of maximizing on a metric?

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

#209

Post by robertoandred »

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…

MacBook Airs don't have Touch Bars.

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

#210

Post by Aloha »

darkpuma wrote: post #173
kerng wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Touch interfaces were not widely used on much of anything prior to the mid 2000's. Yes there were exceptions, but it wasn't really used for general computing.
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