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Agreed, on both accounts. I'd like to interject that 15-10 years ago, Apple was stellar at this, I only noticed their general UX/UI out-of-this-world-excellence
by K0SM0S 7y ago
Agreed, on both accounts. I'd like to interject that 15-10 years ago, Apple was stellar at this, I only noticed their general UX/UI out-of-this-world-excellence slipping down (slightly, still among the best-in-class, just not the unrivaled best) as of 2014 or so for the very first "little things", and by 2016-17 it had become a true UX issue for me.
I frequently support my mother for all digital things, and everytime I need to fix something on her iPad (or formerly her iMac, since then I put her on Windows), I too often spend several frustrating hours with a 50/50 chance of success. Android for my SO is the same, my god, it's a misery of UX, the absence of thought into human cognitive flow reminds me of old Windows sometimes.
To be fair I think we're seeing one downside of an agile ecosystem where things are much less holistic, much more disjointed than with previous waterfall, major version box paradigm. It'll take time before we collectively learn how to address these issues under the (relatively) new DevOps model. Things are moving fast, faster than ever; UX requires time. There's a fundamental tension here, it's not an easy problem.
- johnzim 7y agoJonny Ive took control of software design about 7-8 years ago which I think caused a fall in usability even as things got prettier. Sometimes look back at MacOS 9, even with its numerous issues and marvel at how good a lot of the UI/UX was.
- K0SM0S 7y ago> Jonny Ive Ah, this would explain that. I seem to remember that he did not want to deal with software design, but pretty much had to to fill the gap after Jobs passed away. something along those lines. I'll cut him some slack for the monumental achievements in his career, but Apple as a company should re-think their UX strategy for the 2020's imho. And thank you for a nice trip via MacOS 9 memory lane!
- tres 7y agoI think what really changed was the departure of Scott Forstall after the death of Jobs & the decision to put Tim Cook in charge. Remove that someone who didn't just look at software as an accoutrement to hardware -- but as a necessary, functional part of that hardware (skeuomorphism was the natural outcome of this worldview), then replace them with someone who reveres form over function and we end up where we are. Still missing Scott Forstall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Forstall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Forstall
- K0SM0S 7y agoI too revere this man as far as design goes. It is my understanding that he's not the best at managing whole products the likes of what Apple sells; my intuition is that he should have joined Google —a true engineering temple of software-first, imho. But apparently he's taking a (probably much-deserved) time off from tech, so more power to him.
- ninkendo 7y agoJony was only doing iOS design for a year or so, around the release of iOS 7.