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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

#271

Post by specialist »

gdubs wrote: post #264

I love a lot of Apple’s design, but there is one particular example that frustrates me often: the mouse that comes with the iMac Pro. It perfectly illustrates Jobs’ mantra that design isn’t just about looks. The problem is that in order to produce the beautiful silhouette, they put the charging port on the bottom. I never seem to remember to charge the thing, so it’s always needing to be plugged-in. And then you can’…

Ya, the belly port is ridiculous.

After long distain, I finally adapted to the Magic Mouse:

Movable trackpad.

I now nudge it around a bit and then take my hand off to do the gestures on the top surface. Previously, I tried to continue holding it while doing gestures, and it's way too small for my hands.

I still prefer the trackpad, but now the Magic Mouse feels usable.

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

#272

Post by Technetium_Hat »

wastedhours wrote: post #241

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 disposa…

Macbook pro right from both ends? I guess we're ignoring that - the keyboards don't work - the touchbar exists - all the thermal issues it has had

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

#273

Post by Technetium_Hat »

Phillipharryt wrote: post #140
baggy_trough wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy a $6 case for the remote, it becomes quite usable.

How would a case change the touchpad being a terrible control method?

it allows you to hold the remote without accidentally triggering the touchpad.

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

#274

Post by atombender »

rimliu wrote: post #195
atombender wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ni…

You can change the acceleration in the preferences. I don't remember if it was there in 2006, but I assume so.

You've always been able to change the speed, but not the acceleration.

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

#275

Post by Technetium_Hat »

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.

The closest thing I have felt to its just solid feel is my essential phone. don't get me wrong - it is not a good phone, but the build quality is unbelievable.

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

#276

Post by wastedhours »

Technetium_Hat wrote: post #272
wastedhours wrote: post #241

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 disposa…

Macbook pro right from both ends? I guess we're ignoring that - the keyboards don't work - the touchbar exists - all the thermal issues it has had

Sorry for my shorthand, but "MBPr" is usually used to refer to "Macbook Pro Retina", so the c.2015 model. That one they very much got right from a usability and aesthetic perspective.

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

#277

Post by asark »

pier25 wrote: post #267
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 reckon it's not so common but... what if you are in the middle of something and your battery dies?

If you 1) don't plug it in at all for several weeks, including 2) ignoring low battery warnings for multiple days near the end, then you're looking at like 15min of making coffee and taking a walk around the building to let it charge enough to finish out the day, if, say, you sat down at your desk in the morning and it was already dead. Or 15min of using your trackpad if you're using it with a Macbook. But it's the kind of thing you'd have to be almost trying to do to have it happen even once a year. The crazy-good battery life and very fast charging are what make it such a non-issue.

If it had an edge plug I'd probably have started off using it plugged in all the time, though, just because I'm so used to battery powered peripherals being so shitty that not plugging them in when there's an opportunity is a bad move. Kinda like how it took a period of adjustment when I started using Macbooks to get used to my laptop being usable long enough on battery power that I didn't need to constantly be looking for power outlets, or carting my power supply everywhere I went.

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

#278

Post by Kimitri »

jdofaz wrote: post #21

In my opinion the fruit flavor iMacs and the clamshell iBooks were incredibly ugly. Same feeling towards the original versions of MacOSX with the “lickable” candy color theme.

The iBook did look a lot like a toilet lid but some colors looked great on the G3 iMac. I used to own a graphite one and I think it still looks cool.

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

#279

Post by pier25 »

asark wrote: post #277
pier25 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reckon it's not so common but... what if you are in the middle of something and your battery dies?

If you 1) don't plug it in at all for several weeks, including 2) ignoring low battery warnings for multiple days near the end, then you're looking at like 15min of making coffee and taking a walk around the building to let it charge enough to finish out the day, if, say, you sat down at your desk in the morning and it was already dead. Or 15min of using your trackpad if you're using it with a Macbook. But it's the k…

I don't know if it would be a once-a-year event. That happens more frequently to me with the the Magic Keyboard 2. Thankfully I can connect it and keep working.

No integrated keyboard in my iMac... :)

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

#280

Post by dctoedt »

thom wrote: post #240
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 made laptops out of plastic that went yellow and fell apart when humans touched them under Jobs' watch. They pushed out plenty of thinner machines with fundametal thermal issues under Jobs' watch. They pushed out apps daubed in rich Corinthian leather under Jobs' watch. This idea that somehow Steve Jobs was the only thing between Jony Ive and disaster has to stop. All design is hit and miss. Internal forces in l…

Nit: ON Jobs' watch is more accurate — it's not evident (although it certainly could be true) that the cited developments occurred under Jobs's watch, i.e., that he was in fact overseeing those developments. (The term "on X's watch" derives from a naval expression: Event Y happened while X was "on watch," i.e., it happened "on X's watch," where the term watch refers to a time period.)
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