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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

#51

Post by jb1991 »

sephamorr wrote: post #46
imwillofficial wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The MacBook Pro can support several external displays simultaneously:

Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Pro) or up to three external displays with up to 6K resolution and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Max)

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#52

Post by Matthias247 »

dubswithus wrote: post #11
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.

> They're slowly going from Ive's minimalist artistic designs back to useful computing devices and user interfaces. Is this a subtle attack on USB-C?

USB-C itself is great. Love the fact that I can plug a single cable into my MacBook for all docking purposes (charging, display, peripherals).

The annoying thing was the lack of everything else except usb-c. Especially in 2017 when it was uncommon and for devices featuring only 2 ports. „Dongle life“ was a serious step backwards.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#53

Post by alexsereno »

etempleton wrote: post #21
hbosch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Ive was a fantastic and visionary industrial designer, but when he debuted as the design czar over software as well I think Apple’s UX kinda entered a nosedive. The actual designers “on the ground” there really pulled iOS through those times and I agree with other commenter that nowadays Apple is really so much better.

Yes, it felt like Ive had too much unilateral decision making power. Steve loved the push and pull of constructive arguments and disagreements and famously lamented that even he didn’t always get his way if others had compelling arguments. Ive is and was a designer. Design and—more specifically, his design asthetic—always came first under his tenure post Steve.

He needed to have Fadell around to argue with, but Tim prefers an office style with less tension. Which has been great for shareholders, bad for consumer design tho. It’s hard to know what is more “right” since more people have apple products than ever before, but wow I love my post-Ive Mac a lot more, and design across the board has focused a bit on function w/ Craig getting a bigger role

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#54

Post by ben_w »

raverbashing wrote: post #33
hbosch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Ive was a fantastic and visionary industrial designer, but when he debuted as the design czar over software as well I think Apple’s UX kinda entered a nosedive. The actual designers “on the ground” there really pulled iOS through those times and I agree with other commenter that nowadays Apple is really so much better.

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?

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#56

Post by can16358p »

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 don't wanna pay for an HDMI port, SD reader, and a headphone jack that I'll never use in my entire life. I still believe after all the years, unification of everything to a single port (USB-C) was right. The industry should have forward to, say, support HDMI over USB-C on ubiqutiously, and really should have adopted a single card type: now we practically have 3: SD, microSD, and CF. My camera has a CF card, my drone has a microSD, and ironically regular SD is the only one that don't use so I still carry a dongle anyway (microSD adapter in this sense can be considered a passive dongle). Instead of the headphone jack it could stream raw audio over USB-C and offload DAC to the connected device. I also get that without a single standard, Apple also couldn't make everyone happy at the same time, but if there was a single standard port, or even a wireless standard that provided Gigabit speeds in around less than a meter, that would have been a great device with much less ports.

Of course, this is not reality, and I of course also get why Apple added all those back, and I love my M1 MacBook Pro regardless. I just wanted to share a vision.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#57

Post by rmk »

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.

Larry Ellison was prescient when he said that Jony Ive would run amok without an editor in Steve Jobs, in an interview after Jobs' death (Ellison was good friends with Jobs). Perhaps the utter lack of design innovation and frankly, new consumer products led Jony Ive to obsess over the ring campus, going to ridiculous lengths to make things just so. All that money and creative energy could have been put into groundbreaking product, but with Steve Jobs gone, I doubt there was anyone else who could do what he did.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#58

Post by lupire »

alexsereno wrote: post #53
etempleton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it felt like Ive had too much unilateral decision making power. Steve loved the push and pull of constructive arguments and disagreements and famously lamented that even he didn’t always get his way if others had compelling arguments. Ive is and was a designer. Design and—more specifically, his design asthetic—always came first under his tenure post Steve.

He needed to have Fadell around to argue with, but Tim prefers an office style with less tension. Which has been great for shareholders, bad for consumer design tho. It’s hard to know what is more “right” since more people have apple products than ever before, but wow I love my post-Ive Mac a lot more, and design across the board has focused a bit on function w/ Craig getting a bigger role

Apple's post-Jobs success has been the snowball effect of iPhone capturing more of the market.

Mac suffered a lot under Jobsless Ive (Cook doesn't care about product one way or the other), surviving the butterfly / touchbar winter because customers were able to keep their old Retina laptops, customers groaned and beared with lemon laptops for a few years, and desktop declined in overall relevance (except gaming where Apple never had a presence anyway), and started to recover in the post-butterfly/post-touchbar/M1 era.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#59

Post by lupire »

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?

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

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#60

Post by tmh88j »

sephamorr wrote: post #46
imwillofficial wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.
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