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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

#161

Post by goosedragons »

jiggawatts wrote: post #153
stephc_int13 wrote: post #105

In my opinion, the work Ive did at Apple is greatly over rated. Yes it is clean and minimalist, and some devices like the iPhone 4 were truly innovative, bold and impressive designs. But overall, this is mostly bland, generic, boring. In the same minimalist style, I prefer the work of Dieter Rams. Some Sony products have really good design, including devices that were released a few years before the iPhone, but that…

Citing IBM as good at design makes this read like a parody. Everything IBM does is so hilariously ugly in the least imaginative, boring, industrial way that they’ve gone through “boxy” into some other universe where it’s almost — but not quite — good style. For crying out loud, everything they make is black . There are famous Apple ads deriding the bland corporate look of IBM!

IBM has made lots of not black things. Were any of their typewriters black? The IBM PC sure wasn't and many models after that weren't. I think the ThinkPad was their first black computer at the very least. IMO ThinkPads look great and they've done some really cool things like the butterfly keyboard.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#162

Post by kccqzy »

deanCommie wrote: post #76

> Stringer found the HomePod dissatisfying because Apple treated it as a hobby, depriving it of the cross-division focus it lavished on core products, such as the iPhone and iPad. I mean...yeah? iPod, iPhone and iPad are Apple's whole 21st century legacy. And most recently, arguably Apple Watch and EarPods. They all have the same thing in common - they're wearables that you see on the person on the street. Apple is a…

This hobby attitude is exactly why Google kills so many products. Google Reader is a hobby; leadership can't ever imagine it being a billion-dollar business so it doesn't justify any more maintenance effort. HomePod is certainly going down that path.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#163

Post by deergomoo »

Putting software design under the hardware design folks after Forstall was outed was and remains disastrous IMO.

Dye and his team continue to make beautiful hardware but fuck me hiding every function of a program behind a hover state or overflow menu absolutely kills usability. Productivity is being sacrificed for some weird notion of “cleanliness”. We’re all running displays with millions of pixels, we can afford buttons for stuff.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#164

Post by scarface74 »

grishka wrote: post #151
scarface74 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apple would never do this, this can't possibly be made to look "clean" enough for them to even consider

This is the port.

https://images.app.goo.gl/n3TFrbnZ8JbjzVyp9

It expands to support a standard Ethernet jack

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#165

Post by goosedragons »

grecy wrote: post #159
wincy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I buy a dongle and maybe it’ll support 1080p, maybe 1440p, maybe 4K? Who knows! The Amazon review certainly won’t tell you, the company selling it to you will lie through their teeth. You won’t find out until you’re plugging it in (probably during a presentation) It’s just so much fun playing dongle roulette.

Buy the dongle from Apple and it will be expensive, but it will work perfectly.

Well that depends. The old Apple HDMI to USB C dongle doesn't do 4K 60Hz so if you buy used or the shop you're at has old stock...

The other adapters like the VGA one they make also don't support more than 60W PD passthrough and they don't really make this clear on the store page or packaging either.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#166

Post by expensive_news »

eastbound wrote: post #149
burnished wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? How are you doing that? I want this thing so my laptop can be more easily unplugged and stop being a stylish desktop pc

The legendary dongle! The one that serves as a docking station! I’ve heard of this one, a major company here has it. Even for them, they had their IT team to research it, and it’s valued $300 on the internal resale forum. So, the magic dongle that delivers the USB-C dream is ultra expensive and rare and only worth finding if you have 6000 employees to provide.

No, I bought a dongle on Amazon that I use for my M1 Air for $60. It takes up both USB-C ports, but it handles power, can do 4K@60Hz HDMI (only for 1 display though), has an SD card reader, a few USB-A ports, and maybe another USB-C port. More ports than I’ve ever had to use. The read/write speeds aren’t best in class, but it was only $60.

It’s nice to only have to unplug one thing to be able to take my laptop somewhere, and I like the 2 port design more than I thought I would.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#168

Post by goosedragons »

timeon wrote: post #110
bogwog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I love skeuomorphic designs even though the common consensus seems to be that it's obsolete/outdated. I guess it's a consequence of the unusually high influence Apple has on the design world. It seems like no matter what Apple decides to do, every single designer will blindly follow them.

> It seems like no matter what Apple decides to do, every single designer will blindly follow them. While iOS was still skeuomorphic - first app I had that was flat was made by Microsoft. (Photosynth app)

Yeah I think this flat trend was more started by MS with the Zune HD, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. Apple was late to the flat game with iOS 7.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#169

Post by davidhariri »

psaux wrote: post #152

There is a lot to digest in this piece. Work environments are very dynamic and context and time-in-point is very important. I did not see this behavior, but I was not part of that group at Apple. I worked with Jony after we were acquired. The original Siri linen background was his idea, the bubbles had to be perfect, the padding, the text size, the lists goes on. I inferred this as design obsession and did not find i…

Thanks for sharing this!

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#170

Post by gonehome »

jonas21 wrote: post #116
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…

> That made me lose a whole lot of respect for Ive. I dunno... It sounds like they let him rest and vest for a few months as a courtesy even though he was already checked out. And then, during that time, he sent an email to the entire team that implied (either intentionally or through carelessness) that Apple's river of ideas had run dry. It seems pretty reasonable to ask him to leave immediately after doing that.

Yeah - that was my read. They were helping him out and he wrote a stupid email, so they said fuck this you’re fired.

Maybe part misunderstanding, but it was a dumb thing for him to do.

That’s also taking this article at face value - I’d guess there’s probably more to it as there usually is.

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