Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by wastedhours » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 10:48 AM UTC

I'm not usually an Apple apologist, but I appreciate their tenacity in trying to turn beautiful visual design into genuinely functional design.

They might fail at it, but it feels like they put a stake in the sand, and then run to get there. Sometimes they trip up and don't get there (Magic Mouse 2, "you're holding it wrong"), and sometimes they do (MBPr, Watch, several iterations of iPhone).

I don't have the disposable income to fund said tenacity at the bleeding edge (in case they do trip), but my iPad Mini v2 and MBPr are both examples of a product they doubled-down on and got right from both ends.

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

#242

Post by infosecdude64 » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 10:55 AM UTC

My wife, kids and I have slowly been replacing all our Apple products over the past couple of years. We've replace the kid's MacBook Airs with MS Surface and my MBP was replaced with an MSI laptop with proper dedicated GPU.

The decision to change was quite natural. The kids like the Surface and how it was a touch screen, but could also be used as a laptop that they could do school work on.

Moving to Windows was easy for me once WSL was introduced. I no longer needed OSX to do development as I am now able to do everything I was doing on my MBP on my MSI in WSL.

I still can't believe that Apple has yet to come out with a laptop with a touch screen that isn't an iPad. The touchbar is very clever, but I never use it.

The last couple of straws for me for moving off of Apple at 10+ years was the MBP. Touch Bar, shitty keyboard, and no proper USB ports....I hate having to keep dongles at the ready.

For me, at least, the magic that was Apple died when Steve died. Now they just push out product and services and nothing that can be considered "magic" or unique.

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

#243

Post by tsss » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #108

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.

It's not that Jobs had irreplaceable design sense that makes Job's very hard to replace, but his ability to check egos and call out a bad design when he spotted it. Everything I read makes it seem like Jony Ive is full of himself. Jobs was the only one that could tell him that.

He was probably the only person there with an even bigger ego than Ive.

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

#244

Post by sjwright » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:05 AM UTC

PunksATawnyFill wrote: post #134

sjwright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The misses are noteworthy for their relative rarity. The G3 cube was a good idea but was overpriced, as it was inferior to the regular G4 in every aspect other than size. It was priced to be a 2000’s-era executive desk ornament, a relatively tiny market segment. A few years later a substantially similar product was released to massive success—the Mac mini. The puck mouse was stupid, but it wasn’t as bad as people mad…

The follow-up to the puck mouse sucked just as much, because its entire body was the button... meaning you couldn't pick the mouse up while holding the button, to continue a long drag operation. Then the asinine "Magic Mouse," which somehow expected you to hold the mouse in position and then swipe across its surface horizontally with several fingers... Not to mention media-centric phones without headphone jacks. Reme…

I'd go further and say Apple hasn't made a single good mouse this millennium. But their trackpad is the best in the entire industry. I've switched to the Magic Trackpad on my desktop and it's been brilliant. Not missing the grip-and-push mouse at all. The Razer Deathadder is back in the drawer and I'm very happy.

As for the headphone jack, if you think it was a stupid idea to remove it, you should save your vitriol for the "idiots" who copied Apple. Surely it's worse to take what you'd class as an obviously stupid idea and blindly copy it like a brain-dead zombie. At least what Apple did showed actual courage. And yes, I'm using that word entirely un-ironically. I personally think it was courage and they've been proven correct by the rest of the industry.

(Personally I'm glad they got rid of the headphone jack because it prompted me to get a pair of Bose QC35 headphones. Absolutely brilliant. Best headphones I've ever owned, and I've owned some high end ones. Meh. I'll leave the "good sound" at home thanks—when I'm out and about I care far more about blocking out the distractions than maximal audiophool wankery.)

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

#245

Post by sjwright » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:09 AM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #160

sjwright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The misses are noteworthy for their relative rarity. The G3 cube was a good idea but was overpriced, as it was inferior to the regular G4 in every aspect other than size. It was priced to be a 2000’s-era executive desk ornament, a relatively tiny market segment. A few years later a substantially similar product was released to massive success—the Mac mini. The puck mouse was stupid, but it wasn’t as bad as people mad…

The G3 cube would power off if you put a sheet of paper on it.

I'm sure plenty of devices would fail if you block their entire cooling channel. Yes, it was a flawed design in many ways, but it wasn't far off the mark. The Mac mini proved that.

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

#246

Post by duncanawoods » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #222

duncanawoods wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Super responsive typing actually does depend on multitouch, because if you type fast then you will have multiple fingers touching different keys at the same time.

It's a stretch to call that multi-touch. The key press events are still a serialised stream of single finger touches. When people have spoken about multi-touch features and patents they have invariably been referring to chords and gestures.

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

#247

Post by tenaciousDaniel » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:34 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #27

proee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a terrible argument to justify a poor design. There are plenty of times you need to use a laptop in non-ideal situations, such as a car or plane. The laptop should not punish you for having to operate it outside perfect conditions.

There is no condition where you should have your forearm digging into the front edge of the laptop. If you come up with a body shape and context and I guarantee you we can come up with a more comfortable way to position the laptop than anything requiring wrists bent downward. This is not about the design of the Macbook: the same goes for any other laptop, however smooth and soft its front edge might be.

I misspoke in my original comment. What I should have said was "wrists" instead of forearms. I don't place my forearms on my machine.

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

#248

Post by gigatexal » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:43 AM UTC

skohan wrote: post #234

gigatexal wrote: post #193

The iPhone 4 and 4s were the best looking iPhones ever made in my opinion.

Agree. The back glass was not completely practical, but mine survived plenty of drops, and the whole thing had a nice weight/density to it, and a very premium feel.

Yup. I loved the almost analog feel to it, very industrial. Much like a Pagani Hypercar

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

#249

Post by _ph_ » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:47 AM UTC

cavisne wrote: post #87

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…

The magic mouse is certainly painful to move, however it would be interesting to see the actual impact on people's hands from it. Since getting one my behaviour has changed to move the mouse with a few fingers, and basically never move my hand. The sensor is very accurate so you can really crank up the movement in settings. This seems similar ergonomically to a trackball so i wonder if there is similar benefits.

Right, I have my wrist basically fixed on the desk and move the mouse with my fingertips. Only when I go very long distances on a large screen I occasionally lift my hand. Alternatively, I lift the mouse and drop it a few centimeters to the side.

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

#250

Post by xattt » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:47 AM UTC

jackcodes wrote: post #220

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

I often read these critiques that Steve Jobs was the one keeping Jony Ive in check in a way that Tim Cook can’t, and even if it is true, is there no significant criticism coming from below Ive? As-in, is there really a full design team that are saying yes to Jony’s demands of an aluminium phone that is painful to hold to the point of requiring only the CEO to step in? Or does criticism from anyone below you not count…

There was a period of time while Steve Jobs was still alive and part of the company but had bigger things on his mind prior to his remission.

We saw this with the release of the aluminum unibody MacBook. There was no product differentiation other than the FireWire port. There were probably a few products that were far enough down the pipeline that couldn't be killed when Jobs was back for a brief period of time.