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While I think Jobs was not perfect in many aspects it seems that Apple is unfortunately suffering from his absence. Ive and his team no doubt knows industrial d

by mhomde 10y ago

While I think Jobs was not perfect in many aspects it seems that Apple is unfortunately suffering from his absence. Ive and his team no doubt knows industrial design, perhaps better than any company right now. Yet they can't seem to connect with the needs of real users, their decisions seem more grounded in design "purity" and sometimes there's a disconnect between that and reality. Tim Cook seems very competent business person, but has little vision on his own. He'll not risk the bottom line out of conviction like Jobs did. Say what you want about Jobs but it seemed he was driven by a true sense of what users "should" want... the current leadership seems more to be about stock prices and retaining market share.

lisper 10y ago
> Ive and his team no doubt knows industrial design That's the conventional wisdom, but I dispute it. Ive and his team seem to have lost sight of some of the most basic principles that made the Mac great in the first place, like: it should be easy to tell what parts of the screen contain things that you can click on. I'm still running Mavericks because I want buttons to look like buttons. Is that really too much to ask?
- galad87 10y ago
  Buttons on 10.10 and newer still looks like buttons…
  - lisper 10y ago
    We'll have to agree to disagree about that. The flat colored circles at the top left corners of windows don't look like buttons to me. And the OS is chock-full of clickable text that is visually indistinguishable from non-clickable text, and hidden controls that only show up when you hover over a magic area of the screen, again with zero visual cues that there is anything there. I like a good easter egg as much as the next person, but not when finding them is actually crucial to getting things done. There may be some widgets that still look like buttons, but that's not what I'm talking about.
- mhomde 10y ago
  yeah sorry that was what I meant: they know industrial design in itself but failed to understand what users actually need for that design to provide functional benefits. Either their understanding is lacking ... or they're targeting different users
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
I think Jobs was driven by a genuine desire to make products that were cool, fun, empowering, and elegantly engineered. A lot of that drive was motivated by unpleasant personal narcissism - he seems to have had a strong need to feel cool, fun, empowered, and elegantly engineered himself. But still - it pushed computing in directions that were really positive. I have no idea what Cook is motivated by. I suspect not even Cook knows what Cook is motivated by. He knows what Jobs looked like from the outside, and he has some ability to follow some of the moves. But it feels as if there's an aloof and maybe even slightly hostile detachment that Jobs never showed much evidence of. Unless he has an epiphany and understands that user benefits matter more than manufacturing margins, Apple's future is going to look increasingly unexciting.
- mhomde 10y ago
  Yeah, no doubt Jobs was driven by his demons and desire to prove himself ... but layered on top of that seemed to be some kind of genuine ideology and good taste. Say what you want about him but if the choice was between earning a little more or doing what he thought was "right" I think he'd go with the later... and he probably believed it led to the former. Big companies are so difficult to steer and be allowed to do so, and in an increasingly complex world it's only getting worse. I'm not sure it's feasible for much longer for a person to have the amount of power and charisma needed to steer a company off the beaten path. The ever increasing entropy of modern time complexity is not all encouraging.
appleiigs 10y ago
But the scary thing is if the current leadership was interested in retaining market share they wouldn't have made niche product out of their most popular mac. So they are failing at industrial design and mass marketing.
- mhomde 10y ago
  Well, there's a few options why they did what they did, to be honest I'm not sure which might be true or if I missed any a) Leadership is smart and actively dismissing portion of the market that's vocal but the largest one b) Leadership is dumb and misjudged what their users want c) Jonathan Ive has a lot of internal power and is dictating industrial design changes being disconnected to what their users want d) They see PC sales slumping anyways and is targeting their efforts where they can earn the most money e) Internal strife and confusion leading to a muddled product f) Following an internal strategy road map and being so focused on it that they're discarding any signs that they're wrong g) They're right and this will be a commercoal successful product... but they might lose their professional segment h) We're all wrong, it will be a commercial and overall success. We're a loud minority

by mhomde 10y ago

lisper 10y ago

> Ive and his team no doubt knows industrial design That's the conventional wisdom, but I dispute it. Ive and his team seem to have lost sight of some of the most basic principles that made the Mac great in the first place, like: it should be easy to tell what parts of the screen contain things that you can click on. I'm still running Mavericks because I want buttons to look like buttons. Is that really too much to ask?

galad87 10y ago
Buttons on 10.10 and newer still looks like buttons…
- lisper 10y ago
  We'll have to agree to disagree about that. The flat colored circles at the top left corners of windows don't look like buttons to me. And the OS is chock-full of clickable text that is visually indistinguishable from non-clickable text, and hidden controls that only show up when you hover over a magic area of the screen, again with zero visual cues that there is anything there. I like a good easter egg as much as the next person, but not when finding them is actually crucial to getting things done. There may be some widgets that still look like buttons, but that's not what I'm talking about.
mhomde 10y ago
yeah sorry that was what I meant: they know industrial design in itself but failed to understand what users actually need for that design to provide functional benefits. Either their understanding is lacking ... or they're targeting different users

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

I think Jobs was driven by a genuine desire to make products that were cool, fun, empowering, and elegantly engineered. A lot of that drive was motivated by unpleasant personal narcissism - he seems to have had a strong need to feel cool, fun, empowered, and elegantly engineered himself. But still - it pushed computing in directions that were really positive. I have no idea what Cook is motivated by. I suspect not even Cook knows what Cook is motivated by. He knows what Jobs looked like from the outside, and he has some ability to follow some of the moves. But it feels as if there's an aloof and maybe even slightly hostile detachment that Jobs never showed much evidence of. Unless he has an epiphany and understands that user benefits matter more than manufacturing margins, Apple's future is going to look increasingly unexciting.

mhomde 10y ago
Yeah, no doubt Jobs was driven by his demons and desire to prove himself ... but layered on top of that seemed to be some kind of genuine ideology and good taste. Say what you want about him but if the choice was between earning a little more or doing what he thought was "right" I think he'd go with the later... and he probably believed it led to the former. Big companies are so difficult to steer and be allowed to do so, and in an increasingly complex world it's only getting worse. I'm not sure it's feasible for much longer for a person to have the amount of power and charisma needed to steer a company off the beaten path. The ever increasing entropy of modern time complexity is not all encouraging.

appleiigs 10y ago

But the scary thing is if the current leadership was interested in retaining market share they wouldn't have made niche product out of their most popular mac. So they are failing at industrial design and mass marketing.

mhomde 10y ago
Well, there's a few options why they did what they did, to be honest I'm not sure which might be true or if I missed any a) Leadership is smart and actively dismissing portion of the market that's vocal but the largest one b) Leadership is dumb and misjudged what their users want c) Jonathan Ive has a lot of internal power and is dictating industrial design changes being disconnected to what their users want d) They see PC sales slumping anyways and is targeting their efforts where they can earn the most money e) Internal strife and confusion leading to a muddled product f) Following an internal strategy road map and being so focused on it that they're discarding any signs that they're wrong g) They're right and this will be a commercoal successful product... but they might lose their professional segment h) We're all wrong, it will be a commercial and overall success. We're a loud minority