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The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

fastcompany.com

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Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#61

Post by oreilles »

runjake wrote: post #4

I respect Ive's design skills but I think that Ive leaving is one of the best things to happen to Apple in decades. They're slowly going from Ive's minimalist artistic designs back to useful computing devices and user interfaces.

I can't tell for iOS, but for macOS the UI has only gone downhill since Ive's departure. Broken navigation gestures and shortcuts, UI inconsistencies, indistinguishable toolbar icons, wasted space everywhere... Since Big Sur I feel like I'm using a bad Linux clone of macOS.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#62

Post by floydnoel »

scarface74 wrote: post #43
ballenf wrote: post #25

At work, the new MacBooks with HDMI are trickling in and I've never seen so much excitement around a laptop. People (mostly Product people) just giddy they don't need a dongle to connect to screens. I didn't realize how much people hate dongles.

I just wish MacBooks had something like HPs half height expanding Ethernet jacks.

That would be fantastic. I’ll never use HDMI, but I would love to have an Ethernet port!

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#63

Post by lupire »

can16358p wrote: post #56

I really loved the design of the Touch Bar/Butterfly keyboard visually. It would have been great if: - They kept the butterfly but completely solved the failure problem. - Supported Touch Bar with actual haptic feedback that could really be used "professionally" as in a Pro device. It could at best become a gimmick, but if played right, had great potential. - Had a simplified thin chassis with less ports. I really do…

> loved the design of the [product] visually [but it was a functional failure]

Is Ive's trademark.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#64

Post by chrisseaton »

can16358p wrote: post #56

I really loved the design of the Touch Bar/Butterfly keyboard visually. It would have been great if: - They kept the butterfly but completely solved the failure problem. - Supported Touch Bar with actual haptic feedback that could really be used "professionally" as in a Pro device. It could at best become a gimmick, but if played right, had great potential. - Had a simplified thin chassis with less ports. I really do…

I used the old Touch Bar in my profession daily - used it for debugging command shortcuts.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#65

Post by chrisseaton »

ballenf wrote: post #25

At work, the new MacBooks with HDMI are trickling in and I've never seen so much excitement around a laptop. People (mostly Product people) just giddy they don't need a dongle to connect to screens. I didn't realize how much people hate dongles.

The old laptops had mini display port - you didn’t need a dongle to connect to a screen.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#66

Post by ben_w »

musesum wrote: post #48
bluk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if most people consider skeuomorphic designs obsolete/outdated, but the costs would be far greater today compared to when iOS was only for a handful of different resolutions for the iPhone and iPad. Not only do you have to consider the physical screen size differences with possibly different PPI, but all of the sidebar/split-screen/multi-window modes would require additional work. It's kind of like when…

> when most websites started to switch to responsive designs where image heavy layouts and other fun animations kinda dropped off Yep, things got harder with AutoRotate on the iPad. It took a while to get used to SwiftUI. But the pay off is immediate when switching from Portrait to Landscape mode. Now, everything flows perfectly. Imagine designing for every single kind of device: be it watch, phone, pad, desktop, and…

I think it depends on the level of skeumorphism — a button doesn’t need to be a bitmap a-la Bryce or Kai’s Power Tools or Poser to be skeumorphic, it can be a bevelled rounded rectangle like MacOS 8 or a more complex but still procedurally generated 3D effect of the Aqua UI.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#67

Post by azemetre »

lupire wrote: post #59
ben_w wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not so sure he’s even that, I think the hockey puck iMac mouse was his?

He's a great physical aesthetic designer. He's terrible at human interfaces, hardware or software.

I feel like you can't be a great designer if you neglect human interfaces, at that point you're just an artist. Nothing wrong with that, but good design it is not.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#68

Post by lupire »

arrrg wrote: post #30
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #9

That bit about the firing of the designer who used the river metaphor in that email is such a good lesson for anyone: Never ever ever ever announce moves like this if there is still money on the table that can still be taken away from you. No matter how awesome your company is, how great the team, product or how wonderful the atmosphere is. This guy thought he wrote a heartfelt goodbye to his beloved team and was ins…

I also don’t quite get it. Firing that designer would not increase my trust in the design leadership. It would seem thin skinned, skittish, cruel, deeply immoral and evil, leading me to lose a lot of trust, feeling as though creating a culture of fear is the goal. That behavior seems completely incomprehensible to me, especially since you need to have an extremely tortured reading of that e-mail to read it as an atta…

Artists are a petty and vindictive culture, since value is subjective and there's no profit for being pretty good but not the annointed winner.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#69

Post by duped »

tmh88j wrote: post #60
sephamorr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe by next decade, all the MacBook "pro" models will support more than one external display.

What do you mean by that? Multiple monitors without an adapter? I have 2017 and 2019 Macbook Pro's and I use 2 27" monitors with a thunderbolt -> 2 HDMI out adapter. I don't think I'd use it without an adapter even if I could, no need to take up extra ports.

AFAUI that setup is not possible with an M1 Mac today. You can only use one external display.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#70

Post by tchalla »

ben_w wrote: post #54
raverbashing wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he's a great physical product designer. But to bring that, and apply the same principles into SW just doesn't make sense

I’m not so sure he’s even that, I think the hockey puck iMac mouse was his?

I’m not sure if having some badly designed products doesn’t make one a great physical product designer. It’s completely possible to be a great product designer with few bad products.

I’m not arguing that Ive is a great designer. Ok just saying that the iMac hockey puck mouse doesn’t invalidate that claim.

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