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I think one of the reasons for Apple's famed 'ease of use' is because they do put a lot of attention to the details. When I read stories like this one, it it r
by tobtoh 17y ago
I think one of the reasons for Apple's famed 'ease of use' is because they do put a lot of attention to the details.
When I read stories like this one, it it reminds me of the story about Van Halen and the 'no brown M&Ms clause' in their contracts (http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp). Both are indicators that someone/a business is paying attention to the details.
- kalid 17y agoExactly. You don't improve by parroting details like this in your own presentations, you want to gain the mindset that would make you care about having such detail.
- elblanco 17y agoAnd yet....http://fontfeed.com/archives/ipad-typography/ http://fontfeed.com/archives/ipad-typography/
- tptacek 17y agoAnd yet what, a typography blog disagrees with Apple's type choices? How slipshod of Apple.
- elblanco 17y agoThe point is that having some kind of reason for the clock's time in advertisements elicited all kinds of oohs and ahhs from the Apple fanboy crowd, "wow, no wonder everything Apple puts out is made out of unicorn farts, if they are this careful about this kind of insignificant detail." And yet typography, one of Apple's most important differentiators, the one that put them on the map, that sustained the company for years among the graphic artist and desktop publishing industry, and probably one of the most important reasons the company is around today and didn't die off in the 90's, is in shambles on theses platforms. In other words, Apple cares about the appearance of attention to detail without actually caring about the actual substance. And as the blog post notes, Microsoft of all companies has actually taken some time and effort to improve their typography. Sure, Microsoft's font efforts are not nearly up to Apple's old standards, but then again, neither is Apple (as we see). So long as people like yourself continue to overlook these kinds of differentiators, Apple will continue to de-emphasize them in their development efforts and instead appeal to the people who care about things being shiny than actually well thought out. They may as well just fire the entire development staff and release a block of pyrite and sell it for $1200 at Best Buy. It will be released at a keynote, with a list of bulleted features. The inability to do anything with it will be one of those bullets. Fanboy blogs will carry on slavishly for years about how Apple carefully designed their pyrite product to fit the lifestyles of real people like them. And that the missing features, like actually doing anything, are the result of careful design activities by Jonathan Ive. Breathless commercials touting the shape of the block, how it just "fits" in the palm of your hand and was polished to a perfect shine by teams of Iraqi orphans, and how Jonathan Ive had a revelation and realized that it "should just be all bezel" will air during the Superbowl and the Olympics, "iPyrite, think shiny." It will be followed a year later with a 50% price reduction and a new version at $1400, in an ever so slightly differently shaped block, and have a dazzler light attachment you can buy at the Apple store for $39.99. It'll be called the iPyrite 2GS. Some people will try to "jailbreak" their iPyrites by just shooting themselves up directly with heroin and bleach. But Apple will spend %20-30 of their revenue funding police departments and counter drug authorities to lock those people up. Fanboy blogs will carry on asking questions like why anybody would want to jailbreak their iPyrite. It's clearly the best product in the mineral class. Jailbreaking will just ruin Apple's carefully designed user experience ecosystem and make Jonathan Ive (yes you have to say his full name every time) cry.
- tptacek 17y agoI stopped reading when I saw "typography, one of Apple's most important differentiators". I may be living in a fantasy world, but it's clearly not the same world you're living in.
- LiveTheDream 16y agoYou should keep reading for a good laugh - the rest is very amusing.
- elblanco 17y agoPerhaps. I remember a time, of about a good decade or so, where the only places you saw Macs were in graphic design and desktop publishing shops, schools and movies (in that order). And the sole reason for that was that the Mac had excellent typography and WYSIWYG to printer support. Astoundingly good as a matter of fact.
- tptacek 17y agoThere was also a time when Macs used m68k. Apple in 2010 is not Apple in 1990. Apple still has excellent typography. They're simply no longer objectively better than Microsoft --- at typography. At design in general, they're still destroying everyone else. If there's a branch of design that is one of Apple's "most important differentiators", it's industrial design. It isn't typography. If it was, Apple would spend the infinitessimal percentage of the huge amount of money they've banked to design a couple typefaces. The article you're citing is also over-the-top. There are some real typographic nits in it, but there's also overt nonsense, like the idea that Apple is selecting its typefaces because they want to avoid licensing fees.