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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

#291

Post by baddox »

baq wrote: post #227
baddox wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fatal flaw of CEC, at least with my particular setup, is that there is no way to play music on my receiver via the Apple TV while having the TV off. When CEC is enabled, turning on the receiver turns on the TV, and turning off the TV turns off the receiver. It’s insanely frustrating, but hey, how could it know when I really don’t want to turn off the receiver?

my receiver (denon x1400) doesn't turn on the tv when it turns itself on, but the tv turns on the receiver and turns it off. i've set it up a long time ago but IIRC it was configurable.

I think that's approximately the issue with my setup as well (I also have a Denon receiver). I believe I settled on only disabling CEC on the TV. Thus waking up the Apple TV does turn on the receiver, and putting it to sleep turns off the receiver. I only have to manually turn the TV on and off, which isn't so bad. Ideally I would be able to configure it so that all CEC controls were active except that manually turning off the TV did not turn off any other device.

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

#292

Post by Glyptodon »

jmull wrote: post #263
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…

You're welcome to your opinion, but that's almost pure FUD. Somehow millions are using Magic mice without getting injured. Obviously, one device isn't going to work for everyone... and fortunately no one is try to make that happen.

How do you rest your hand while using it without constant strain from holding your fingers off the surface?

Edit: I'm not trying to question you, I'm wondering if I used wrong somehow.

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

#293

Post by Fins »

scarface74 wrote: post #290
Fins wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, no, it was not. Even Windows Mobile was far more functional than iPhone. But iPhone looked cute, and had some ease of use affordances for people who could not be bothered actually learning anything (but then this had always been Apple's target audience).

I wrote field service apps for Windows Mobile devices around 2006-2008. Windows Mobioe could do more, but it wasn’t more functional.

What is your definition of functional then?

Obviously, Apple did something (likely marketing, imho, and of course extreme ease of use) right to make the iPhone as popular as it is, but I would need to be convinced that it had something to do with functionality.

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

#294

Post by scarface74 »

Fins wrote: post #293
scarface74 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote field service apps for Windows Mobile devices around 2006-2008. Windows Mobioe could do more, but it wasn’t more functional.

What is your definition of functional then? Obviously, Apple did something (likely marketing, imho, and of course extreme ease of use) right to make the iPhone as popular as it is, but I would need to be convinced that it had something to do with functionality.

Windows CE was not functional with an easy to lose stylus, the touch screens were horrible and it was mostly a miniature Windows desktop. The apps were not exactly touch friendly.

The version of IE was unusable for most of the web. But you don’t think “extreme ease of use” made the iPhone more functional?

The devices we use to deploy were $1000-$2000 (ruggedized devices) so they definitely weren’t cheap devices for the time.

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

#295

Post by vardump »

mch82 wrote: post #98
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

“The iPhone Is a Breakthrough Handheld Computer”, Walt Mossberg’s original review. Maybe not 1000x, but definitely multiple X better (especially compared to leading US phones). - First phone emphasizing Wi-Fi - Full web browser - Integrated iPod http://allthingsd.com/20070626/the-iphone-is-breakthrough-ha...

My old Nokia E90 would beg to differ. It was released before the first iPhone, WiFi works very nice, thank you, has a full web browser, and worked more than well enough as an MP3 player.

It also sported a screen comparable to a "retina" display.

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

#296

Post by kalleboo »

Shivetya wrote: post #225
dwaite wrote: post #139

While it is obvious that the 2013 "Trashcan" Mac Pro was not a successful design, it seems a lot of people don't get what Apple was going for. Their goal was a computer heavily focused on multithreaded and OpenCL loads, as most vendors were still preaching to developers that the single threaded performance increase ramp was dead, and workload would have to scale out instead. At the same time, it is quite easy to poin…

The trashcan was a bad design from day one. It was more oriented towards the pretentious developers instead of the professional developer. I suggest the new Mac Pro is as well. It is more about being seen with it than being able to use and considering its price point that exclusivity seems to have been an Apple goal, as in you are not worthy of our hardware if the price makes you flinch. Same for that monitor. The ne…

The trashcan wasn't oriented towards developers of any kind. In 2013, developers had no need for the dual AMD GPUs that you were forced to buy. It was oriented to people using Final Cut Pro (a pretty small market)

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

#297

Post by Fins »

scarface74 wrote: post #294
Fins wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your definition of functional then? Obviously, Apple did something (likely marketing, imho, and of course extreme ease of use) right to make the iPhone as popular as it is, but I would need to be convinced that it had something to do with functionality.

Windows CE was not functional with an easy to lose stylus, the touch screens were horrible and it was mostly a miniature Windows desktop. The apps were not exactly touch friendly. The version of IE was unusable for most of the web. But you don’t think “extreme ease of use” made the iPhone more functional? The devices we use to deploy were $1000-$2000 (ruggedized devices) so they definitely weren’t cheap devices for t…

My first WinMo device (and still the most convenient smartphone I've ever had, the SCH-i760) was perfectly well operable 95% of the time even without the stylus -- there was a joystick (and a dialpad) on the front. I rarely had to actually use a stylus.

IE eventually got pretty useless, but unlike iPhone you could always load alternative browsers, shells, and what not.

Sorry, I am still seeing that yes, iPhone is easier to use, as long as you don't need to do much, but functional? Not back then. And whether capacitive or resistive screen is better is a big question -- at least resistive is far more precise.

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

#298

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #204
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mice seem to have handled that fine for decades?

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

#299

Post by beezischillin »

_ph_ wrote: post #254
bangonkeyboard wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, I never really had to develop a strategy, just started using it and used it since. Only thing I did was install magicprefs to make it slightly faster and never thought about the rest. Compared to the generic Microsoft-branded wireless mouse I used about 8 years ago with my PC, the difference is night and day. That mouse, designed for both left and right-handed people messed me up so much that my pink went numb for months even after I stopped using it. The magic mouse is much more comfortable than it looks, strangely enough.

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

#300

Post by beezischillin »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #12
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…

You are right, but unfortunately nothing beats the Macbook trackpad, and that's what I tend to use 99% of the time nowadays.

Some of that must be due to the features and gestures MacOS offers but I generally use my personal laptop at home without an external screen, keyboard, etc. because I never wanted to use a Windows / Linux machine with the trackpad a second more than I had to. I didn't expect much from my Macbook when I bought my first one and ended up using it almost exclusively with the touchpad only. From what I hear Microsoft's been trying to catch up with some new updated drivers, though according to LinusTechTips, they're still not there.

I used to have a Logitech G700 mouse for my old Windows machine and it had this ability to unlock the scroll wheel for smooth / fast scrolling but it was a disaster due to Windows' shoddy support of it. More often than not it just overloaded the window with scroll events and it bingbonged from the speakers for a while until the scroll events stopped. Glad to see that at least that's getting addressed.

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