{"id":19091,"date":"2017-10-03T20:10:56","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T00:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=19091"},"modified":"2017-10-04T12:06:18","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T16:06:18","slug":"apple-design-in-the-cook-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/03\/apple-design-in-the-cook-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Design in the Cook Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joshua Topolsky<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Stretching perhaps from the introduction of the first iPod in 2001, through the release of the groundbreaking iPhone 4 (and subsequent refinement with the iPhone 5), Apple was regularly lauded as best-in-class when it came to hardware and software design and the synchronicity of those elements.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

But things changed.<\/p>

In 2013 I wrote about<\/a> the confusing and visually abrasive turn Apple had made with the introduction of iOS 7, the operating system refresh that would set the stage for almost all of Apple’s recent design. The product, the first piece of software overseen by Jony Ive, was confusing, amateur, and relatively unfinished upon launch. While Ive had utterly revamped what the company had been doing thematically with its user interface — eschewing the original iPhone’s tactility of skeuomorphic, real-world textures for a more purely “digital” approach — he also ignored more grounded concepts about user experience, systematic cohesion, and most surprisingly, look and feel. Gone were the mock felt backgrounds and virtual dials of Steve Jobs’ iOS, but suddenly present was a set of gestures and layers purported to be part of a system that never quite clicked. Ive converted understandable buttons into confusing rubrics (the share arrow?), clustered controls into a context-free space (Control Center), and perhaps worst of all, made some really ugly icons that have never fully recovered.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

This is not an argument about what Steve Jobs would have done; this is an argument for a central, cohesive vision that accounts for systems, not just nodes on a network. Jony Ive is clearly not providing that vision. Phil Schiller is not providing that vision. And Tim Cook, the all-time don of supply-chain management, cannot and will not provide that vision. So what happens now?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His title is “Apple Is Really Bad at Design,” which I don’t think is true. And I don’t agree with all of his points—for example, the new Control Center seems pretty functional to me. However, I would agree that we are not currently in one of the golden eras of Apple design. Ive and his team are still talented, so what’s changed? From the outside it’s hard to know. One possibility is that it’s only in retrospect that we can really see the contributions of Jobs and perhaps others such as Forstall who have departed. Another is that the scope of what Apple is trying to do has greatly increased. The software and hardware teams seem to be stretched thin, and design probably is, too. Yet the company is clearly still capable of great design. AirPods is a new product that (aside from the manufacturing delays) is as close to perfect as any Apple has ever made.<\/p>\n\n

Michael Love<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Regarding this heavily-discussed rant: virtually every design sin of Cook era has been case of pragmatism > purity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Steven Sinofsky<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This is some rant and I’ve been on the receiving end of @joshuatopolsky rants 😱—seems a bit much to me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Chuq Von Rospach<\/a>:<\/p>\n

With absolute certainty that everyone else is wrong and he’s right. Pure Topolsky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

David Owens II<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Maybe, but I’ve run into far more issues in the past two years with my Apple products then I ever had, all because of design choices.<\/p>\n

I literally have all four some my USB-C ports used, two with USB adapters, one with a DP adapter (b\/c HDMI doesn’t work for me), and power.<\/p>\n

My PENCIL is constantly drained because I haven’t bought yet another adapter. I frequently can’t list to music on my iPhone 7.<\/p>\n

Going back to the SE, they still haven’t actually solved any of the design issues in iOS 7, just used more space to help.<\/p>\n

At some point, these failures all point to bad design choices.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Lockwood<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Look, clearly Apple is great and all their long-term fans who are now complaining are wrong. Everything is fine so just shut up ok lalalala.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

The Macalope<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

No one complained about the plastic iPhone 3G, the buttonless iPod Shuffle, the cheap iPhone 5c, brushed metal, pinstripes and stoplight colors in OS X, or the “fat” iPod nano and no one ever said that the “groundbreaking” iPhone 4 was ugly<\/a>. (The Memory Hole is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your memory-shoving needs.) Topolsky misremembers that people only started complaining when iOS 7 was released. iOS 7 certainly wasn’t perfect, but it was a dramatic reset of the design of iOS, sometime most observers of the company agreed needed to happen. It was just another thing Apple did that people complained about. One that also evolved into something nice.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously: iPhone X Design and the Notch<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2017-10-04): Riccardo Mori<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The thing is, back then I felt that Apple was making the right choices in several contexts, but that a lot of people (even certain long-time, inflexible Mac users) didn’t understand such choices. The absence of the floppy drive in the first iMac. The iPod as a potentially revolutionary device. The transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. The transition from PowerPC to Intel architecture. I spent long months full of long days as a consultant explaining Apple to bewildered users and clients who, more than once, thought that the company was “losing its mind”. And so on and so forth. If you’ve ever done tech consulting and\/or support, you’ve surely been there too.<\/p>\n

But now — now I’m criticising Apple more not because I suddenly developed a grudge against the company. On the contrary, I still care a lot about Apple. I’m surrounded by Apple hardware at home, I’m still quite invested in the ecosystem, and even vintage and obsolete machines are put to good use in the household. It’s because I care that I feel, strongly, that Apple should be criticised — mercilessly, provided it’s informed criticism — whenever there’s something truly worth criticising. And in recent times I’ve been more critic of Apple because I simply think there’s more to criticise.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joshua Topolsky (Hacker News): Stretching perhaps from the introduction of the first iPod in 2001, through the release of the groundbreaking iPhone 4 (and subsequent refinement with the iPhone 5), Apple was regularly lauded as best-in-class when it came to hardware and software design and the synchronicity of those elements.[…]But things changed.In 2013 I wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1422,38,992,1569,77,545,31,1472,85,628,30,1529,60],"class_list":["post-19091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-airpods","tag-apple","tag-apple-watch","tag-control-center","tag-design","tag-icons","tag-ios","tag-ios-11","tag-iphone","tag-jonathan-ive","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-13","tag-timcook"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19091"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19103,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19091\/revisions\/19103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}