5 ms·

Jony Ive’s Fragmented Legacy: Unreliable, Unrepairable, Beautiful Gadgets

62 points by mrzool 7y ago

java-man 7y ago
... without the headphone connector.
- PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
  Yep. Nothing epitomizes Ive’s war on usefulness better than music-centric devices with no audio outputs. What a “genius.”
  - threeseed 7y ago
    iPhone has two external audio outputs: Lightning and Bluetooth. And you can get adapters for both to connect them to legacy headphones.
    - starsinspace 7y ago
      „Legacy“ headphones? They are just... headphones. I’m sure that long after Bluetooth has become an obsolete and widely unsupported protocol, and long after all the Bluetooth headphones like AirPods and others have died from failing glued-in batteries, good old normal headphones will still work fine, with any device which can output analog audio at suitable power. (Heck, given their incredible resilience, my old AKGs might still work then too.)
    - blub 7y ago
      Currently it's more like normal headphones that everyone uses and weirdo lighting headphones that only Apple uses. This Apple dongle fetish is a usability anti-pattern, it can't be seriously suggested that we attach all sort of crap to our devices so that they continue working with Apple products.
delish 7y ago
I don't disagree with anything in that article, but Jony Ive's legacy is not merely the iPhone, the Watch, and the most recent MacBook Pros. It's also the iMac, the PowerMac G5, the Wall Street PowerBook, the unibody MacBook Pro--I can go on. And don't forget that Steve Jobs hated that there were screws on the Apple II and Macintosh--he wanted the devices to be appliances you sell when you're done with, and buy a new one. And another point: Phones and computers were plastic before Jobs and Ive. Now they're the strongest glass, and aluminum and steel. Those are improvements both to reliability and repairability. The article may be justified in saying that Ive's most recent products form his legacy, but I remember much more when I think about Apple.
- LIV2 7y ago
  Apple products are the least repairable they've ever been with glued in batteries, soldered ram & ssd, pentalove screws (an effort to keep people out) iMacs are glued shut etc etc. To replace the battery on a modern MacBook they have to replace the entire top case, keyboard and trackpad too which is hardly an improvement when it comes to repairability
- close04 7y ago
  > Now they're the strongest glass, and aluminum and steel. Those are improvements both to reliability and repairability. What are reliability and repairability from your perspective? Years of iFixit teardowns disagree with you. Normal screws instead of glue, and removable/replaceable covers and inner components increase the repairability of a phone. Using glass and metal says nothing about the ease of repair. Which phone is more repairable now that screens and batteries (the 2 most commonly replaced components) are glued and/or sealed in, or the chances of finding an after-market glass back for it are 0? And the only place where the reliability increased is scratch and wear resistance. Take an older polycarbonate phone (say a Lumia) and chances are you can easily drop it from height with no obvious damage. My iPhone's glass front and back might crack if I look at it the wrong way.
  - newsoul2019 7y ago
    Realistically we take these beautiful designs and wrap them in Otter Boxes (and similar)
maxxxxx 7y ago
I think he just needed people like Jobs and others to keep him in check. With Cook at the top I would expect more business people to run the show who don’t have much input in the product.
GoofballJones 7y ago
I know it's trendy to hate on Apple in this type of community, but why is all the blame for their unrepairability laid at his feet? Did he decide all that on his own? He DID have bosses, yes? They have meetings on all this stuff. Someone sat in a meeting and told Ive to "design it so it's a closed system" or whatever. Don't get me wrong, Ive was a huge part of it, no doubt. But he didn't do this alone.
- threeseed 7y ago
  Because people need traffic and attention. Ive had limited responsibility over which features went into the products or how repairable they were. That responsibility goes to Product Marketing, Hardware Engineering etc. The design team ultimately works within a box defined by others.
- e40 7y ago
  I think the consensus is that after Jobs was gone, Cook gave Ivey a lot of power to make these decisions on his own.
Terretta 7y ago
Unreliable and unrepairable but “well deserved” highest ease of service for screen and battery “unmatched” by any Android phone... Nice title versus content: ”The iPhone is the highest scoring flagship phone on our chart right now, and it’s well deserved. The fundamental repairability challenge with smartphones is making the display and the battery, the parts most likely to break and wear out, easily removable. It took Apple many generations, but they nailed it with the iPhone 6 and haven’t looked back since. No Android phone design has managed to replicate the iPhone’s ease of service for these critical components.”

62 points by mrzool 7y ago

java-man 7y ago

... without the headphone connector.

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
Yep. Nothing epitomizes Ive’s war on usefulness better than music-centric devices with no audio outputs. What a “genius.”
- threeseed 7y ago
  iPhone has two external audio outputs: Lightning and Bluetooth. And you can get adapters for both to connect them to legacy headphones.
  - starsinspace 7y ago
    „Legacy“ headphones? They are just... headphones. I’m sure that long after Bluetooth has become an obsolete and widely unsupported protocol, and long after all the Bluetooth headphones like AirPods and others have died from failing glued-in batteries, good old normal headphones will still work fine, with any device which can output analog audio at suitable power. (Heck, given their incredible resilience, my old AKGs might still work then too.)
  - blub 7y ago
    Currently it's more like normal headphones that everyone uses and weirdo lighting headphones that only Apple uses. This Apple dongle fetish is a usability anti-pattern, it can't be seriously suggested that we attach all sort of crap to our devices so that they continue working with Apple products.

delish 7y ago

I don't disagree with anything in that article, but Jony Ive's legacy is not merely the iPhone, the Watch, and the most recent MacBook Pros. It's also the iMac, the PowerMac G5, the Wall Street PowerBook, the unibody MacBook Pro--I can go on. And don't forget that Steve Jobs hated that there were screws on the Apple II and Macintosh--he wanted the devices to be appliances you sell when you're done with, and buy a new one. And another point: Phones and computers were plastic before Jobs and Ive. Now they're the strongest glass, and aluminum and steel. Those are improvements both to reliability and repairability. The article may be justified in saying that Ive's most recent products form his legacy, but I remember much more when I think about Apple.

LIV2 7y ago
Apple products are the least repairable they've ever been with glued in batteries, soldered ram & ssd, pentalove screws (an effort to keep people out) iMacs are glued shut etc etc. To replace the battery on a modern MacBook they have to replace the entire top case, keyboard and trackpad too which is hardly an improvement when it comes to repairability
close04 7y ago
> Now they're the strongest glass, and aluminum and steel. Those are improvements both to reliability and repairability. What are reliability and repairability from your perspective? Years of iFixit teardowns disagree with you. Normal screws instead of glue, and removable/replaceable covers and inner components increase the repairability of a phone. Using glass and metal says nothing about the ease of repair. Which phone is more repairable now that screens and batteries (the 2 most commonly replaced components) are glued and/or sealed in, or the chances of finding an after-market glass back for it are 0? And the only place where the reliability increased is scratch and wear resistance. Take an older polycarbonate phone (say a Lumia) and chances are you can easily drop it from height with no obvious damage. My iPhone's glass front and back might crack if I look at it the wrong way.
- newsoul2019 7y ago
  Realistically we take these beautiful designs and wrap them in Otter Boxes (and similar)

maxxxxx 7y ago

I think he just needed people like Jobs and others to keep him in check. With Cook at the top I would expect more business people to run the show who don’t have much input in the product.

GoofballJones 7y ago

I know it's trendy to hate on Apple in this type of community, but why is all the blame for their unrepairability laid at his feet? Did he decide all that on his own? He DID have bosses, yes? They have meetings on all this stuff. Someone sat in a meeting and told Ive to "design it so it's a closed system" or whatever. Don't get me wrong, Ive was a huge part of it, no doubt. But he didn't do this alone.

threeseed 7y ago
Because people need traffic and attention. Ive had limited responsibility over which features went into the products or how repairable they were. That responsibility goes to Product Marketing, Hardware Engineering etc. The design team ultimately works within a box defined by others.
e40 7y ago
I think the consensus is that after Jobs was gone, Cook gave Ivey a lot of power to make these decisions on his own.

Terretta 7y ago

Unreliable and unrepairable but “well deserved” highest ease of service for screen and battery “unmatched” by any Android phone... Nice title versus content: ”The iPhone is the highest scoring flagship phone on our chart right now, and it’s well deserved. The fundamental repairability challenge with smartphones is making the display and the battery, the parts most likely to break and wear out, easily removable. It took Apple many generations, but they nailed it with the iPhone 6 and haven’t looked back since. No Android phone design has managed to replicate the iPhone’s ease of service for these critical components.”