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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

#41

Post by imwillofficial »

ivraatiems wrote: post #17
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 saw a woman using one of the new Macbook Pros in an airport a few weeks ago, and I was confused, because it looked exactly like my beloved silver Macbook Pro from 2007. It even had lots of ports! With the speed of the M-series processors, and the fact that I can get one with ports and without an idiotic touchbar, I've started considering an Apple laptop for the first time in years. I'm sure it's just a matter of ti…

It’s only begun to swing towards usefulness.

We got a decade or more to enjoy this time of “doing things right”

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#42

Post by DRW_ »

stevebmark wrote: post #18

From the outside, it seems like the poison of flat design only flourished when Jobs died. The beautiful, thoughtful, intuitive, accessible skeuomorphism was replaced with flat design only after Jobs wasn’t there. Was Jony only able to wrench away the beauty then? It seems like it. Humans live in a 3D world and take visual cues from things like lighting, gradients, shadows, materials and textures. Flat design strips t…

I tend to prefer some of the more 'flat' modern designs in many ways, but I do think people are too binary about the skeuomorphic stuff. They could have modernised the design and still kept some of the useful skeuomorphic cues.

I think what pushed people away from the skeuomorphic stuff is that it feels like the aesthetics can become to feel dated quicker? But I don't think that necessarily needs to be the case.

Like skeuomorphic design in itself isn't 'dated', but the aesthetics chosen can be.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#43

Post by scarface74 »

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.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#44

Post by peyton »

ajaimk wrote: post #10
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 agree. Jon Ive was a genius with design when he had to work under constrained scenarios. But the moment he had unconstrained power, form was able to win over functionality.

From the article:

> nonrecurring engineering costs led Apple’s business division to suspend the iPad [redesign]

That doesn’t sound like Ive had unconstrained power?

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#45

Post by jolux »

peyton wrote: post #44
ajaimk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Jon Ive was a genius with design when he had to work under constrained scenarios. But the moment he had unconstrained power, form was able to win over functionality.

From the article: > nonrecurring engineering costs led Apple’s business division to suspend the iPad [redesign] That doesn’t sound like Ive had unconstrained power?

That was after he left.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#46

Post by sephamorr »

imwillofficial wrote: post #41
ivraatiems wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a woman using one of the new Macbook Pros in an airport a few weeks ago, and I was confused, because it looked exactly like my beloved silver Macbook Pro from 2007. It even had lots of ports! With the speed of the M-series processors, and the fact that I can get one with ports and without an idiotic touchbar, I've started considering an Apple laptop for the first time in years. I'm sure it's just a matter of ti…

It’s only begun to swing towards usefulness. We got a decade or more to enjoy this time of “doing things right”

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

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#48

Post by musesum »

bluk wrote: post #31
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.

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 TV. It kinda forces you to think differently.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#49

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

ballenf wrote: post #24
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 just don't buy that the river metaphor wasn't about Apple. It just doesn't make sense unless he was retiring or leaving design entirely. Otherwise the lack of water is clearly related to Apple. If it really was solely about himself it's a really poor metaphor. So the river is moving to a new mountain? And the river's lack of water has nothing to do with the current one? Or, the mountain (Apple) has plenty of water…

Well, it’s not his own poetry - it’s some Persian classic he’s quoting so you could probably look into it and find a whole well-spring of deep knowledge explaining exactly what he meant by it.

In the letter he talks about his own soul, and the experience of deep work being like that of a river. So it’s pretty clear he’s talking about what’s on his interior spiritually. From a designer “I am barren and in a creative rut” pretty much means “I can’t come up with good stuff and I’m of no use to all of you here”.

However, regardless of what he actually said, he was on his way out from a tight-knit and emotionally connected team in which expressing your feelings and being sensitive is sort of expected, only the guys running that team were so paranoid that they decided to burn him and smear shit all over his beautiful farewell letter. That’s a dark thing to do to someone’s career/reputation etc.

Getting that glimpse, I do wonder to what extent Ive and his buddies have other ugly deeds on their accounts. Perhaps Ive running that separate company of his is really only a way of gracefully pushing this kind of toxicity away from the house just in case.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#50

Post by protastus »

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…

Anyone in a leadership position has a responsibility to measure their words carefully, especially in a farewell email.

"Sadly, rivers dry out, and when they do, you look for a new one." broadcasts extreme negativity to the people who remain. It almost reads like a cautionary warning followed by advice.

One can write a heartfelt goodbye without ambiguity. Assuming the ambiguity was unintentional, the author was careless and paid the price. He could've gotten away with it in other places (large companies are generally too bureaucratic to fire someone who's already leaving) but obviously not in this case.

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