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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

#81

Post by blackhaz »

hbosch wrote: post #16
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.

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.

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Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#82

Post by w0mbat »

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.

Jonathan Ive got rich and started designing luxury products for himself. Stuff like gold Apple Watches that were soon obsolete or ridiculous luxury bands for them. Even a regular leather Apple Watch strap ended costing hundreds of dollars. At one point I needed a new leather band for mine and I bought a perfectly nice third party band for the same price as the sales tax on the equivalent Apple one.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#83

Post by sprite »

duped wrote: post #69
tmh88j wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm using 2 of the LG 5k monitors with my MacBook Pro [16-inch 2021 M1 Max]. Complete game changer compared to the past few iterations.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#84

Post by ghaff »

DRW_ wrote: post #42
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…

I think if you went back and looked at some of the OS X and, especially, iOS design elements of a decade or so ago you'd probably find some of them pretty dated.

Another thing worth observing is that Apple exists as part of essentially the fashion industry which is design. And I don't necessarily wholly blame Apple for all the thin, grey, minimalist design that we see everywhere these days.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#85

Post by KptMarchewa »

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 actually like that I can connect everything - keyboard, mouse, two monitors, headphones, power, ethernet via one thunderbolt cable.

What I'd hate is the fact that I'd have to unplug everything and take this dock with me if I wanted to connect in the conference room.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#86

Post by ghaff »

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…

I partly agree. But what makes the iPhone so sticky is ecosystem--and that includes a bunch of other products that might be a lot less interesting in isolation.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#87

Post by musesum »

ben_w wrote: post #66
musesum wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> it can be a bevelled rounded rectangle

ok, yeah. Was thinking of the original Notepad, where the frayed yellow tear-off sheet border drove me nuts! Anything tied to the "desktop metaphor" - bits are not atoms

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#88

Post by musicale »

rmk wrote: post #57
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 groundbre…

> and frankly, new consumer products

I already have a half-dozen Apple devices that I use every day. I don't really need more of them.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#90

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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