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Jony Ive on Apple’s New HQ and the Disappearing iPhone
- osazuwa 9y agoOh thank God! I once caught my 5 year old niece watching some video of the Frozen princesses getting tied to a chair and tortured.
- touchofevil 9y agoLooks like a cool building, but I wonder how much mental bandwidth designing it took up at Apple. The mac mini needs an update, they need to release a Mac Pro that is viable for video pros, and they definitely haven't sold me on their new macbook pros (without mag safe!) Also, where's the Apple equivalent to the Hololens? And what happened to all the rumors about Apple cars and Apple Smart TVs? How are they doing on creating smart home devices? I'm not sure that they really should make cars, or TVs, but they are basically an amazing phone company at this point and that's about it. Maybe, I don't know, build an ad-free search engine and bake it into all your products so that you can give google a run for their money instead of obsessing over a $5 billion building. Edit: I forgot about the Apple watch, which I'm a fan of.
- dbmonkey 9y agoOne functional use of the building is that it will attract top employees. I would rather spend ~1/4 of my time in a really nice building than what some competitors use.
- dogruck 9y agoPerhaps. Certainly a good building is better than a bad one. Indisputable. But everything has a trade off. I’d trade for higher pay or more commercial projects.
- bla2 9y agoMeh, it's still open office. The campus looks nice, but design is how it works.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoThey go out of their way to describe the segments as "configurable" with "everything from open plan to individual offices." I makes me wonder if initial reactions caught them by surprise.
- sbuk 9y agoEngineering is how it works, design/architecture is about solving the problem leading to the engineered solution.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ACow_Adonis 9y agoTo each their own, but for contrasting feedback, I could almost feel my anxiety rising just looking at a big giant corporate open office. I think wired hit on something when they called it a design out of the 1950's. Its a suburban corporate office park. A white, glass, and wood suburban corporate office park, but a suburban corporate office park none the less. Edit: I am witholding my judgement of the actual space until 6 months after its inhabited though, because I'm not sure I can be objective about it at this stage...
- nkkollaw 9y agoLots of employees complained and said they would rather find another job than work in an open space.
- Theodores 9y agoMclaren have a similar type of building albeit on a smaller scale. I would definitely think about giving it a go there, but, then again, would I prefer the Williams team up the road where vision and leadership is not mixed up with impressive building design? I don't know, but I think the McLaren building has worked out nicely for them. Working there might not be to everyone's tastes but they set the standard for how it is done and the rest of the industry took note. Some of the buildings in North Korea are quite amazing and the subway system is a work of art, immaculately clean. Working in the parts they show Westerners should be a true joy with the most pleasant of traffic free commutes. However I would not feel entirely free working in North Korea, being deprived of the Internet would matter to me and I would not feel happy 'cut off'. I imagine working at the wonderful Apple HQ to be slightly cultish in the North Korean way rather than the McLaren way. Perhaps I prefer smaller churches in smaller towns. Or maybe I am more interested in FOSS and computing in general rather than the intricacies of doing things the Apple way. The old SGI building as used by Google, that has things one can criticise but that building has survived the test of time. Many wonderful things have happened in this building but ultimately it is just a building and not a sacred shrine. The Apple building sort of crosses into 'sacred shrine' territory that will always be entwined with the memory of the founding story.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoI did some work for McLaren a few years ago, it struck me at the time that the building was really a reflection of their own culture. I think it would have been impossible for them not to apply the attention to detail in that building that they did.
- Alupis 9y ago> $5 billion building. Just hoping it doesn't turn into another Sears Tower - an overly extravagant building built by a company at the peak of their existence, only to have markets shift out under them... soon winding up with way too much building for way too much cost.
- revscat 9y agoYou know, I’m not sure if this is a bad thing. Seemingly indomitable companies prove mortal, but the architecture they leave becomes part of the culture. Apple will not last forever, of course, but architecture... that can last a good deal longer.
- taurath 9y agoThey have like $200b in cash on hand - even if they stopped making products they’d probably be fine for 10 years (post some layoffs)
- Alupis 9y ago> they’d probably be fine for 10 years It's not uncommon for the land under such buildings to have 100+ year leases. That much money and time put into that much building requires very long terms. Maybe Apple bought the land outright, but I'm certain they're thinking longer-term than 10 years here... as was Sears at the time they built their tower. This also doesn't account for the annual maintenance costs of such a grand building. Apple's sitting on top of a big pile of money today, but that may not be the case 20 years from now (as was the case for Sears)... the maintenance costs will only increase as the building ages.
- sbuttgereit 9y agoThey own it. http://www.mercurynews.com/2010/11/24/apple-makes-big-land-purchase-in-cupertino-2/ http://www.mercurynews.com/2010/11/24/apple-makes-big-land-p...
- rtkwe 9y agoI'd be more worried if Apple didn't have 256 billion dollars in cash reserves, which is frankly a kind of insane amount. Can't find how much cash Sears had on hand in 1973 but the equivalent to Apple's cash on hand vs building would be 7.6 billion.
- Bromskloss 9y agoHow would the ad-free search engine make money?
- touchofevil 9y agoIt would harm Google's primary revenue source Ad-words. Reducing the revenue of your competition is beneficial since they will have less money to fund their competing products with.
- mythz 9y agoSo Apple should invest billions of their profits in a technology they have no experience or skills in and over a decade away from being able to catch up and provide a competitive service against arguably the smartest company in the world whose core competency is search, so they can devalue the Apple brand with a sub par service that has nothing to do with their strengths, absorbs the billions required to develop and maintain the infrastructure (see: Bing), forgo billions of Service revenue their now receiving from Google to provide an ad-free Service that will never be profitable so they can force a worst end-user UX on their Customers? Somehow I don't see this happening.
- iainmerrick 9y agoThey already did something similar with Maps. Very rough launch, but now it's pretty good.
- mythz 9y agoApple invested in Maps so they have control over their destiny of one of the most popular use-cases people use their Smart Phones for as Google was with holding key features like turn-by-turn directions which would've given Android an edge. Apple always wants to be seen as the best, they love to say they offer the best Smart Phone with the best hardware, best OS, Apps, etc. Having a sub-par experience on a core feature would've hurt both their brand and sales. Although it required a significant investment and Apple Maps still isn't as good as Google Maps, end-users still end up with a first-class experience in iOS with their choice of either. This isn't the same as Search, Google wants to provide the best Search service for iOS as possible and is now paying Apple billions for privilege of being the default. Attempting to develop an ad-free Search alternative would dilute their focus, cost them a fortune and their Customers would be worse off for it.
- goseeastarwar 9y agoThis is a hilarious question, only because it's normally asked in the context of a startup. Apple could hire a team of people to work on literally anything.
- iainmerrick 9y agoApple already admitted they dropped the ball on the Mac Pro, and promised to fix it. You would think they have enough money to do everything at once, but for whatever reason, it evidently doesn't work that way.
- wolco 9y agoIf you sit on the money you can't do everything at once.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoThe building is a factor in talent acquisition and will therefore hopefully theoretically improve their products over time.
- rusk 9y agowithout data to support it, your theory is merely a hypothesis
- frik 9y agoApple new HQ looks great, I visited when it was almost finished earlier this year. Some design elements look great, but are probably hard to keep clean, and functionality might suffered a bit, and some elements surface reflect too much sun light. That everyone got a height-adjustable desk is great.
- Bromskloss 9y agoFor those who also wondered what espionage incident this might be about, the "disappearing iPhone" seems to refer to this: > But if Ive is a maker and industrial designer in the classic mould […] he is also the man most responsible for making our new most essential objects all but disappear. ‘As a design team our goal has been, in some ways, to get design out of the way. We try to define a solution that seems so inevitable that it does recede.’
- vira28 9y agoNow we know why we need to pay $1000 for iPhoneX.
- Bromskloss 9y agoThose stairs [0] are reminiscent of those hugging the wall of the reading room in the courtyard of the British Museum [1,2]. [0] https://cdn.wallpaper.com/main/93wpr17dec118-2.jpg https://cdn.wallpaper.com/main/93wpr17dec118-2.jpg [1] http://www.thecosytraveller.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/20150725_151217.jpg http://www.thecosytraveller.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/British_Museum_Great_Court%2C_London%2C_UK_-_Diliff.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/British_...
- TheCoreh 9y agoI wonder what material are the walls and the handrails made of?
- pentae 9y agoLimestone
- zachrose 9y agoAlso similar to Michael Heizer's sculpture at LACMA, Levitated Mass [0]. [0] http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NY-DE081_NYSCEN_G_20140820204412.jpg http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NY-DE081_NYSCEN_G_...
- xiphias 9y agoI remember reading here on HN some time ago that some privileged teams could ask to be outside the new Apple HQ building so that they don't have to be part of the damaging open office culture.
- simonh 9y agoEveryone keeps bangers by on about that. Tons of companies have open offices. I’ve not worked in anything else for the last 25 years. It’s not like they’re embarking on some unknown experiment never before imagined.
- shabbyrobe 9y agoNo, they're embarking on a known folly. Everyone keeps banging on about open offices because they're awful, and for 25 years we've all been stuck in them.
- philliphaydon 9y agoI work in an open office. I’m less productive at work than I am at home. No amount of noise cancelling headphones can counter someone tapping you on he shoulder for help.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoI had that problem when I started working from home, I just made it clear when the door is shut not to disturb me unless the house is burning down.
- Gaelan 9y agoThe article said that sections could be configured as open or closed office.
- xiphias 9y agoGenerally offices that can be configured start as closed, then when more people are coming, the walls go down to ,,save place''. With big growing tech companies this phonemon happens quite fast... CEOs somehow forget scaling up the buildings linearly with hiring people.
- mostafah 9y agoThey talk about the “disappearing” iPhone. That’s the kind of thing that every designer talks about and strives for: putting the user and product first and making the design an invisible servant of that. But, unfortunately, Ive’s design have been the opposite of that in the last few years. Most of his designs are about design. The Steve Jobs Theatre is a good example. It’s very impressive and looks great. But it serves the designer more than the user. It’s so “perfect” that staircases would ruin it, so they are invisible. In the last iPhone event Apple employees were standing there to show people where are the stairs. That is not good design. It’s a conference venue but they had put temporary desks outside for information/cards/… because it does not have a place for that. Even bathrooms are hidden because they would ruin the designer’s great vision. The whole thing is very impressive, but it’s bad design. Edit: I’m not saying that Ive’s a bad designer. Not at all. He’s one of the best. A great example from Apple’s recent works is how the lid of the new MacBook Pros opens without the keyboard part moving up. And you can do it with one finger. But, unfortunately, there are so many examples of bad design that looks good.
- pocketsquare2 9y ago> Edit: I’m not saying that Ive’s a bad designer. Not at all. No, that's exactly what you're saying. Would you mind providing an example of your Platonic ideal of a designer?
- ianai 9y agoHe made his point. Apple’s design has turned into a performance piece for other designers at the cost of UX. That’s a substantive loss for the end user.
- pentae 9y agoSo Jony, if your goal is to get design out of the way, why the notch?
- Gaelan 9y agoCompromise?
- arketyp 9y agoThrowing out the selfie cam, now that would have been a compromise and a move in the spirit of Jobs. Think different.
- sbuk 9y agoAd where would the sensors for FaceID go? Or is compromise taking away a new feature too? Also, thinking in the spirit of Jobs is ritualising the process, the very antithesis of what Jobs was about! Jobs’ advice to Cook was “Do what is right” - like the hockey-puck mouse…
- shiado 9y agoThey talk about the disappearing iPhone but what we all really want to hear about is Jony Ive's opinion on the disappearing taxes.
- CamperBob2 9y agoHe'd probably say something like, "Don't hate the player, hate the game."
- sbuk 9y agoWhat disappearing taxes? They pay more tax than anyone else. If you are referring to tax on money they made outside of the USA, then go fish. They pay tax where they earn it. The USA is literally the only country that taxes it’s business and citizens for income earned outside of its borders.
- willtim 9y ago> They pay tax where they earn it. No they don't. They employ offshore tax havens, shell companies and exploit various loop holes in order to avoid doing so. It's lawful yes. But it's immoral and unfair to smaller businesses who do pay their share. Buying an iPhone in Europe means less money for infrastructure, schools, hospitals and universities. The iPhone itself piggybacks on decades of tax funded research and development, yet Apple do not contribute back. Apple are of course one of many corporations that employ these practices, but they are the largest and often market themselves as being ethical.
- sbuk 9y agohttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple-tax-payments/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple...
- willtim 9y agoNot surprisingly, most information on this is outside apple.com: http://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/06/apple-secretly-moved-jersey-ireland-tax-row-paradise-papers http://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/06/apple-secretly-m...
- kwhitefoot 9y agoWhat are the acoustics like in that 4000 seat cafe?
- binaryapparatus 9y agoUltimate disappearing trick was performed by Apple in Mac Mini design.
- meddlepal 9y agoMeh the new Apple HQ reminds me of everything that is wrong with modern architecture and planning. Isolated (suburban) and fake (random offices mixed with meticulously landscaped "parks").
- nkkollaw 9y agoIve both saved and is ruining Apple. I'm eying a Surface because all the stuff Apple makes is now more about looks (not design, mind you) than functionality, and I'm totally fed up with giving a lot of money to someone who cares more about how the thing looks then if it convenient for me. Ive or whoever designs both hardware and software there has lost touch. Most of the stuff they make puts huge compromises and sacrifices convenience to improve looks.
- Steko 9y agoSwitching to a Surface because you want long term quality is kind of hilarious tbh. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-surface/microsoft-surface-devices-fail-on-reliability-consumer-reports-idUSKBN1AQ1EP https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-surface/microso...
- nkkollaw 9y ago> Switching to a Surface because you want long term quality is kind of hilarious tbh. Perhaps, but I never said that. Where did you get that from?
- lh7777 9y agoQuality is actually a great illustration of your original point, though. Apple recently went to great lengths to redesign the MacBook keyboard for no good reason. As if compromising the key feel for many (most?) users just to shave a millimeter or two off an already very thin device wasn't enough, it turns out that the new keyboards have some serious reliability issues[1] and repairs cost $700. I think John Gruber said it best: "I find these keyboards — specifically, the tales of woe about keys getting stuck or ceasing to work properly — a deeply worrisome sign about Apple’s priorities today." While the Surface line has had its reliability issues (especially Surface 4), rumor has it that the omission of USB-C from the latest Surfaces was part of a deliberate effort to focus on refining the current design (and improving its reliability) rather than adding new features and risking creating even more issues. They also have a point that USB-C isn't quite ready for prime time and I can't say I miss it having recently switched from a MacBook to a Surface Pro. I'm not saying that these companies should stop trying to innovate (far from it). What I'm seeing is a big difference in priorities, and I'm not a fan of Apple's of late -- too much focus on design ideals and not enough on things that actually help me get my work done. [1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/17/johnston-macbook-keyboard https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/17/johnston-macboo...
- dingo_bat 9y agoWhat an amazing place to work! As much as I hate the phones designed by Jony, this building is a work of art and the people who will work here are extremely fortunate.
- visarga 9y agoYep. After all the critique, it is a building I would like to see about just as much as the Louvre or the White House.
- dmitriid 9y agoThe people there will not work in the amazing design-chair laden paradise. The people there will work in by-the-numbers open-office meat factories (see the corner of one in one of the pictures). Many people (including Gruber) reported the massive internal outrage Apple employees had when they learned about the actual working conditions.
- dmitriid 9y agoNote how no pictures in the article show the actual work spaces where people will spend most of their time. Save for one picture showing the corner of a by-the-numbers openspace with non-ergonomic chairs