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

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

#251

Post by schnable » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:54 AM UTC

traderjane wrote: post #208

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

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?

It falls on the product team.

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

#252

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:55 AM UTC

duncanawoods wrote: post #246

nicoburns wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the app standpoint it is, but not from the actual implementation algorithm.

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

#253

Post by _ph_ » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 12:04 PM UTC

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…

For me, the magic mouse is the best mouse I ever used. I am using BetterTouchTool to configure its touchpad part though. The mouse is very thin, so my hand comfortably rests on the desk and I can do all actions with my fingers. The big win though is, that I have perfect scrolling in y and x direction, something missing by all other mice I know of. I can use the whole back of the mouse for clicking. Especially nice is the ability to switch desktops or activate expose with multi-finger swipes.

I even mange to play StarCraft using the magic mouse.

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

#254

Post by _ph_ » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 12:05 PM UTC

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #52

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 honestly don't know how the Magic Mouse is meant to be used for extended lengths of time. The touch surface means that not only do your index and middle fingers need to be held hovering above it, but the rest of your fingers also need to claw in from the sides to keep overhangs of skin from triggering stray cursor movements. It is truly painful to use.

You don't need to hold the non-clicking fingers over the mouse for longer time, just lift them slightly when clicking, so a click becomes one finger pressing down, the others slightly moving back in parallel.

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

#255

Post by roelschroeven » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 12:09 PM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #219

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I love how these different usage patterns can make the same thing great for some and terrible for others. It reminds me of my experience on quite a few websites: I'm one of those people who likes to select the text they're reading - or at least the first line or so of the paragraph I'm in. It helps me not lose track of where I am. However, that means I'm often continuously selecting/double-clicking lines of text in a…

Similarly but yet completely different I always positon the mouse cursor away from the text I'm reading, since I find the cursor distracting. Nowadays that sometimes has an annoying side effect: some news sites have video thumbnails in side columns. If the mouse cursors hovers over one of them for a few seconds, the browser opens the page with the full video. Gone is the article I was reading.

I don't understand what problem the developers were trying to solve with that feature/bug.

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

#256

Post by schnable » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 12:20 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #30

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

A Blackberry was probably more functional at that time but wasn't as nice as to use and look at.

Blackberry failed by not embracing apps. The app landscape was a mess of incompatibility, had poorly made apps, and no unified App Store. This where iOS killed Blackberry.

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

#257

Post by machinecoffee » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 12:39 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #100

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

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.

What is this G3 Cube? G4 Cube (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4_Cube)

Alas the speakers that came with it have a custom USB wiring, so they can't be used on any other computer.

Otherwise it was an excellent machine - just a bit under powered. But really easy to upgrade - just lift it out of the enclosure via the click-out handle and the whole machine was available to upgrade RAM and install a wireless card (when that was a novel thing...). Design was nice, fits on a desktop and was mostly silent except for the HD.

Jobs' love of the Cube shape can probably be traced back to NeXT : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTcube

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

#258

Post by ksec » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 12:49 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #100

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

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.

I strongly disagree on skeuomorphism. My parents learned how to use most of those skeuomorphism apps on first sight. It was absolutely brilliant, it may not look beautiful from UI perspective, but it was the easiest way to learn how to use it. Skeuomorphism isn't just about the looks, it is about how it relate to real world object that is instantly recognisable.

-----------------------

I still remember I was struck hard when I could not teach my parents how to do double click on mouse, and when to use right click on windows in the early 90s. For years computing were merely a typing machine with a Screen in front of them. And serving the web as well as email has some sort of pain involves in the process. It was bearable for them, but it certainly wasn't fun.

I thought my parents were dump, but then later I realise majority of people not grown up in age of computing have similar problems. It wasn't until iPhone before everything was obvious. It was stupidly simple that you could leave it to them and they would discover how to use within minutes. Minutes, when you think back after years of using computer, from time to time they still ask when to use double click and when to use right click. Scrolling somehow become natural, something they fail to learn when using Scroll Wheels.

Skeuomorphism along with Touch Screen UI brings Computing to the rest of the world. And call me old fashion, I would much like a modern take of it than the current trend of Super Flat everything UI.

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

#259

Post by ksec » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 12:53 PM UTC

moogly wrote: post #186

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…

They released several super uncomfortable phones with sharp edges in the iPhone 4-5(S).

They are certainly not Sharp as in Sharp that it hurts. And I prefer the iPhone 4 design ( Current iPad Pro Design ) then the current rounded every corner design

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

#260

Post by ksec » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

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…

From 2013 ( 2 years since Steve passed away ) - 2016, the Ive era. We had

TouchBar Macbook Pro

Trach Can Mac Pro

12"Macbook

>Steve Jobs is gone, and nobody is left to fulfill his roles.

I guess Jeff Williams will at least being saying No to certain things, in terms of reliability and cost. But Steves cares about the user experience more than anything else. Which is something I am not sure Jeff is any good at, but if the Apple Watch was something he has his hands on, than I have lots of faith in him.

It is nice to read I am not the only one complaining about the new Apple TV Siri Remote. I much prefer the old remote, it was so simple and intuitive.