11 ms·

How much is due to Covid, and how much is due to Jony Ive's departure? The designs seem to make a bit more sense now, I was always perplexed at Ive's 'thinness

How much is due to Covid, and how much is due to Jony Ive's departure? The designs seem to make a bit more sense now, I was always perplexed at Ive's 'thinness at the expense of everything else' mindset (butterfly switch keyboard, ugh)

robenkleene 5y ago
Here's my speculation: After the stellar early growth years for the iPad (here are some graphs from 2015 https://qz.com/376041/the-ipads-first-five-years-in-five-charts/ https://qz.com/376041/the-ipads-first-five-years-in-five-cha...), there was an impression at the Apple that the future of the Mac is iOS. Then that growth leveled off, and now iPad looks more like a comparable category to Macs (see the more recent Six Colors graphs https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/04/apples-record-second-quarter-in-charts/ https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/04/apples-record-second-quar...). So Apple appears to have been asleep at the wheel with the Mac (which is perhaps why Ive's had so much leeway with clearly unpopular decisions like the keyboard, missing escape key, etc...) resulting in its worst years ever. The laptop keyboard is one example, but the iOS-ification of the Mac is another (i.e., moving towards the iOS security model), as is the stagnate Mac Pro. Now things are back to normal, see the M1, the new Mac Pro, the new iMac, etc... The M1 transition going so smoothly, and with such an emphasis on backwards compatibility (they ported OpenCL! they helped with Blender!) is my favorite example of this, contrasted with the complete &$@^*% you! treatment that developers got with things like notarization, new security features, and pretty much everything recent going all the way back to Mac App Store Sandboxing, which I'd personally consider the start of the dark years (and I'd also consider that the single worst decision in all of this, worse than the keyboard, that's the one that fundamentally broke the Mac ecosystem, maybe forever).
- dangus 5y ago
  While I don't think your analysis is wrong, I think it's highly developer and power user focused, representing a very small percentage of Mac owners. iOS-ification of macOS in particular is incredibly overblown, power users have been playing up a few security design changes and modernized APIs (e.g. kext > system extensions) as if they're huge negatives that will "ruin" macOS. I just don't think those issues matter. If the Mac itself improving was part of the Q2 results, you wouldn't have seen the similar levels of iPad revenue spike. There has been no significant change to the iPad lineup that would convince someone to buy or not buy in the last couple of years. That's why I think this is 100% Covid or whatever you call this current spike in demand.
  - dimator 5y ago
    I don't think the iOS-ification is overblown at all. The fact that unsigned apps are met with increased hostility, and increased hoops to jump through to run them, demonstrates this. It's not hard to imagine in the next couple of macos releases that homebrew stops working, or requires grotesque hacks like local building/linking to escape the signing requirements. Do we honestly think apple is going to reverse course on this? I highly doubt it. Open platforms are not their m.o. for many years. They've let the walled garden around macos have too many cracks and holes, and they're going to recapture those users that have taken advantage.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dangus 5y ago
      Signed apps is not iOS-ification. That's just normal, sane security practices. Apple is not deaf to their users, they know how important Homebrew is. Apple themselves gifted hardware to the Homebrew team: "Particular thanks on Homebrew 3.0.0 go to MacStadium and Apple for providing us with a lot of Apple Silicon hardware and Cassidy from Apple for helping us in many ways with this migration. Enjoy using Homebrew!" https://brew.sh/2021/02/05/homebrew-3.0.0/ https://brew.sh/2021/02/05/homebrew-3.0.0/
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > I think it's highly developer and power user focused, representing a very small percentage of Mac owners. A very important percentage. E.g. Final Cut used to have a 60% market share. Now it's may be 25%? There's most likely a dip among every other category of professional users.
    - dangus 5y ago
      Final Cut is a very old product (1998). The entire market for digital editing has expanded greatly since then. We don't know because Apple doesn't report it, but I would surmise that Final Cut has had a consistently growing user base.
cletus 5y ago
My personal theory is that Apple got better after Ive’s departure. Ive got worse after Steve Jobs died because he no longer had someone pushing back on his crazy ideas, making them practical. The 12” MacBook was the poster child for the search for ultimate thinness. As was the disastrous butterfly keyboard (it was suggested this only shaved off 0.5mm). Look at the iPad Pro refresh just announced. It’s actually slightly thicker because that’s needed for a better display. This would never have happened with Ive at the helm of design.
- giobox 5y ago
  > It’s actually slightly thicker because that’s needed for a better display. This would never have happened with Ive at the helm of design. This is verifiable nonsense, given the iPhone increased in thickness between generations several times with Ive at the helm.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  I think the difference is actually because Tim Cook doesn't care about design. I can't find the link, but I heard when they launched the new Mac Pro, Ives tried to show Tim Cook what it looked like, but Tim responded with "I get it... its a computer", and didn't see the design until the public launch event.
- lttlrck 5y ago
  IIRC force touch increased the thickness of the iPhone 6s over the iPhone 6
  - cletus 5y ago
    Oh Force Touch, this was one of the biggest UX fails of the modern Apple era. It all goes back to one of Apple's Macintosh era fails: the one button mouse. This was one thing that can be reasonably argued (as I do) that Jobs was wrong about. Right-clicking became so ubiquitous and even consistent on Windows. You needed the same behaviour on Macs but had no second mouse button so got that by using modifier keys. Some apps it was Option, others control and so on. The problem was that those modified clicks had no discoverability and less consistency than right-clicking. Windows users on the other hand learned that nothing bad could happen with a right click. Force Touch as a similar kind of UX fail with no discoverability. There was (and is) no consistency with what a Force Touch means or should mean or even if it's an option at all. But yes, Force Touch did make the iPhone thicker and heavier.
flowerlad 5y ago
> how much is due to Jony Ive's departure? Yes, Ive was a bit of a farce. Under Jobs he flourished. Without guidance from Jobs he proved to be comically bad. It will take years for Apple to recover from the damage he did. For example, copying Flat-UI from Windows Phone. Apple hasn't recovered yet.
- crazygringo 5y ago
  > Without guidance from Jobs he proved to be comically bad. I mean, he did basically design the Apple Watch which has been an absolute runaway success, the most successful new entire product category since the iPhone. So not exactly sure how that's comically bad.
  - beforeolives 5y ago
    Runaway success is exaggerated - those watches were not the coolest thing in the world when they came out (and they looked the same as the current models). They gained more traction as the health features got buffed up and Apple stopped marketing the watch as primarily a notification device. I don't think that any of this is due to the design either.
    - unicornfinder 5y ago
      I'm sure I read somewhere that Ive actually really wanted to push the Watch as a high ticket device for rich people, and it was him being ousted that lead to Apple taking the more health-focused direction they're taking now.
    - crazygringo 5y ago
      There are a million ways to eff up design. The Apple Watch and its OS are elegant and do a great job. It's basically a masterclass in design. Remember, the best design is largely invisible, when things just feel obvious and intuitive. Which describes the Apple Watch to a T. Finding product-market fit for health is a separate issue -- that's not the design department's job. Ive's job was to design a brand-new smartwatch from scratch and he and his team knocked it out of the park.
vulcan01 5y ago
Speculation on why Jony Ive pursued "thinness above everything": - for the first x years of apple, everything was legitimately thick - so each generation Ive wanted to make things thinner - it entered the culture (of the design division perhaps) that you had to make each generation thinner than the last to please Ive - Then when things got to a comfortable thickness for users, people kept making each generation thinner to please Ive - Ive never told them to stop making things thinner so they didn't stop. - snowball effect and we got those horrible products - he had to leave to stop the cycle
- cbhl 5y ago
  Lighter and thinner products also increase total addressable market by allowing products to be sold to parents and their kids. See Apple Watch Family Setup; iPad Mini, the various iPods...
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    They're also better for the environment: less materials to assemble, less packaging, less fuel to ship, less waste. At Apple's scale, that really adds up.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      Of course there's tradeoffs here if it requires custom external hardware (dongle proliferation etc.) In general I think this is less of an issue today, since usb-C is both generally great and very small, so you can just use it. But, if thinness came at the sacrifice of common connectors like USB-A (or like HDMI), the opportunity cost of standard connectors might be lost. I'm ignoring that like many of apple's ports are just better than USB-A to focus only on the waste argument here though.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      Non user upgradable products aren't better for the environment though.
      - 5y ago
mhh__ 5y ago
I used a MacBook Air in early 2020, and I thought the keyboard was broken/damaged due to the lack of give in the keys, is that what you are describing?
- Reason077 5y ago
  Yes, but it's not really the feel/travel that was the major problem with those keyboards. It's that they were highly prone to keys getting gummed up and/or failing due to dust and debris ingress. To be fair, Apple acknowledged the problem and provides free out-of-warranty repair/replacement for keyboard issues on the affected models. But it took them years to come out with a better keyboard.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    I think it might have been that then. The keyboard was genuinely like pressing down on a brick on what was at the time a fairly new laptop.
microtherion 5y ago
And yet, Apple just released its thinnest iMac ever last week.
- asimpletune 5y ago
  Mostly due to M1 though
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  That appears to be a product of merging iPad technology with the Mac ecosystem. The display is basically a giant iPad Pro, isn’t it? They borrowed some thin from one product and applied it to another. The M1 allows it, they just needed to add a larger screen, remove some sensors, and flash a different OS. Obviously dramatic over simplification but it doesn’t seem to be the usual kind of thin for the sake of thin design - this iMac seems objectively better than its predecessors and its thickness (or lack thereof) doesn’t seem like a problem or unnecessary constraint.
  - greenknight 5y ago
    essentially yes, and even then with the current level of thickness, they coudlnt fit the power supply (or an ethernet port) inside the imac itself.
    - runawaybottle 5y ago
      It’s going to be a stationary desktop item, so it is expected that the wires will be tucked away elsewhere. Again, they don’t have to solve the mobile/tablet issues on this product, it’s never going to be a portable device.
    - mrkstu 5y ago
      Moving two items out of the main enclosures in this instance also makes the device significantly more repairable.
  - cactus2093 5y ago
    If it were designed like the ipad, the components would live behind the screen in a similar way. I think this is what a lot of people were expecting. They could have done that, but they chose to make it just a little bit thinner and put all the components into a big chin below the screen. They made a trade-off to make it look uglier/bulkier/worse from the front when actually using the machine, just so that if you happen to glimpse it from the side it's a little thinner. There's not even the argument of portability to support the pursuit of thinness here as with most of their other devices. So I would argue the opposite, this new iMac is just about the pinnacle of thinness for the sake of thin design. (You could of course argue that it's not ugly, that's totally subjective, but they clearly went out of their way to make it as thin as possible).
ardit33 5y ago
maybe that's what happens when you give designers too much power. They will create something beautiful at the expense of daily usability. You need some balance. The key is to produce the best looking product without compromising functionality or usability.
- zukzuk 5y ago
  Designers design for usability. The idea that design is about "making things pretty" is on par with the idea that software development is about making computers crunch numbers.
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    So fundamentally correct?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Not sure I agree with that. The trashcan MacPro was definitely not useable as far as what Pro Mac users wanted/needed. That was definitely designed for the designer's sake totally misunderstanding the user's needs.
    - davidivadavid 5y ago
      So it was just bad design.
    - pembrook 5y ago
      So it was poorly designed. Not sure how that has anything to do with the parent's argument.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        >Designers design for usability. It wasn't usable for the majority of the market. Even in the infamous mea culpa Apple made about it, they admitted they designed themselves into a corner. It was designed so poorly, they had to take years to undo it after admitting it needed to be done.
da02 5y ago
Which keyboard(s) do you use currently?
jrsj 5y ago
Covid had a lot more to do with it. Mac is at an all time high yes but the last iteration of Intel MBPs was only slightly different from what we had while Ive was still around, and Mac is still a relative small % of overall revenue which has increased a lot. I don’t really get the Jony Ive hate. The only particularly bad thing I can think of him being involved in was the butterfly keyboard, and the fact that the Apple Watch is the only real success among smart watches more than makes up for that.
- hardwaregeek 5y ago
  Yeah it's pretty baffling. Is there any designer even close to Ive? Is there any company making computers or phones that are even close in terms of aesthetic? I know that wishy-washy ideals like beauty, elegance and feel aren't that appealing to a lot of HN users but Ive's emphasis on them is a significant part of Apple's success
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    I don’t think critique of Ive is bashing. Design isn’t engineering, sometimes you hit an artistic wall or do it too long. IMO the guy got bored and focused on building the museum-like HQ building and took eyes off the ball of actual products, while maintaining total control. Even for an elite, top of his field individual, you need to focus to win. In terms of laptops, HP built some very nice high end business laptops that were more like evolutions of the 2014 MacBook Pro than the garbage Apple pumped out and wasted many millions of dollars on for warranty claims.
    - sbuk 5y ago
      Design is “engineering”. Engineers design, by definition[0]. Design, contrary to popular belief is about solving problems. Industrial design in particular focuses on how things work, not just the aesthetics of an object. [0] from the OED: a) To make drawings for the construction or creation of (something, as a building, object, garment, etc.) according to certain aesthetic criteria; (b) to make plans for the production of (a device, product, etc.) according to structural or functional criteria (sometimes without the implication of aesthetic requirements); (c) (in extended use) to conceive, devise, plan (something immaterial, as a scheme, system, programme, etc.).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Reason077 5y ago
> "The designs seem to make a bit more sense now, I was always perplexed at Ive's 'thinness at the expense of everything else' mindset" And yet now we have the new iMac, the "thinnest iMac ever" at just 11.5mm. So it seems like Ive wasn't the only one at Apple obsessed with being thin.
- thesimon 5y ago
  Dropped even the Ethernet port for the thinness. Really moving into the lifestyle product market.
  - bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
    Ethernet is still there, it’s just in the power brick instead of the monitor.
    - nighthawk454 5y ago
      which, honestly seems fine to me. it's likely to be running from the floor anyway, probably from a nearby place to the power outlet. one cord on the desk. some have also mentioned potential synergy with future MacBooks, which might also adopt this port on the power brick. that could bring a magnetic connector back to laptops _and_ ethernet without a $30 dongle
      - sdfhbdf 5y ago
        Or they could reverse it and start charging the battery of a macbook with power over ethernet
    - thesimon 5y ago
      >it’s just in the power brick instead of the monitor Sure, but it was removed from the main device.
      - anomaly_ 5y ago
samatman 5y ago
I hated the butterfly keyboard, because mine failed, and a keyboard failure on my work machine is completely unacceptable. I vowed to stop buying Apple completely if they didn't fix it, and sure enough, typing this on the 16" 2020 MBP, with its classic scissor-switch keyboard, showing every sign of being just as durable as every other Apple scissor keyboard I've ever had (a considerable number). But I don't think it's entirely fair to just call that failed experiment the pursuit of thinness at all costs. Scissors are a bit mushy, you can move your fingers around on a keypad and feel them wobble. The sound is kind of dull, the action lacks a clean tactile break. The butterfly keyboard felt great, to me at least. Crisp, clicky action, rock-solid pads: to my taste, the tactile experience is superior. If they had found a way to make them absolutely reliable, I'd have called it a win. Although the square arrow keys and lack of a physical escape key were ergonomic disasters, that's orthogonal to keyboard action, they could have fixed both of those things while sticking with the butterfly switches. These are ultimately aesthetic considerations. Someone else certainly prefers the sound and feel of the scissor switches, I respect that, I just disagree is all. So I don't think shaving a half millimeter was the be-all and end-all of the decision to iterate on the ultimately unworkable butterfly keyboard design. I imagine Jony Ive thought it was a nicer keyboard and just spent more time trying to make it work than was really justified, especially since it proved to be impossible.
- dangus 5y ago
  I agree with you here. When it worked, the butterfly keyboard was great to type on. Was it the best on the market? Well, no, obviously not, one of the worst considering the reliability. Is Apple's current scissor keyboard the best on the market? No, it was clearly shoehorned back in from older designs with minimal changes. I would have loved the butterfly keyboard to have just a hair longer travel...and there was something about the key shape/spacing/size that made me slightly less accurate finding the correct keys. It really was "almost there" but they had to throw it out because it was a PR disaster.
raydev 5y ago
> how much is due to Jony Ive's departure Apple is clearly selling to the masses here. Most people don't know or care who Jony Ive is, and the MacBook Pros and iPads don't look meaningfully different in any way. I'm shocked anyone thinks Ive's departure is relevant at this scale.
wuliwong 5y ago
It seems the fixation on 'thinness' has continued with the new iMac release. They chose to keep a big chin on the iMac in order to make the all-in-one desktop computer extremely thin. I don't see any value in extreme thinness as a potential iMac consumer. I would be more interested in a cleaner design when looking directly at the computer. :) I will add that I have no real idea about Ive's design leanings. I guess it is possible to conclude that either he wasn't the driving force behind "extreme thinness" or he managed to convert people inside of Apple to this way of thinking and they still remain influential.
marticode 5y ago
A lot if not all is due to Covid. All the big techs have had stellar quarters. Google, FB or AMD also reported massive results this week. The world is stuck at home and has been starved for hardware and content.

robenkleene 5y ago

Here's my speculation: After the stellar early growth years for the iPad (here are some graphs from 2015 https://qz.com/376041/the-ipads-first-five-years-in-five-charts/ https://qz.com/376041/the-ipads-first-five-years-in-five-cha...), there was an impression at the Apple that the future of the Mac is iOS. Then that growth leveled off, and now iPad looks more like a comparable category to Macs (see the more recent Six Colors graphs https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/04/apples-record-second-quarter-in-charts/ https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/04/apples-record-second-quar...). So Apple appears to have been asleep at the wheel with the Mac (which is perhaps why Ive's had so much leeway with clearly unpopular decisions like the keyboard, missing escape key, etc...) resulting in its worst years ever. The laptop keyboard is one example, but the iOS-ification of the Mac is another (i.e., moving towards the iOS security model), as is the stagnate Mac Pro. Now things are back to normal, see the M1, the new Mac Pro, the new iMac, etc... The M1 transition going so smoothly, and with such an emphasis on backwards compatibility (they ported OpenCL! they helped with Blender!) is my favorite example of this, contrasted with the complete &$@^*% you! treatment that developers got with things like notarization, new security features, and pretty much everything recent going all the way back to Mac App Store Sandboxing, which I'd personally consider the start of the dark years (and I'd also consider that the single worst decision in all of this, worse than the keyboard, that's the one that fundamentally broke the Mac ecosystem, maybe forever).

dangus 5y ago
While I don't think your analysis is wrong, I think it's highly developer and power user focused, representing a very small percentage of Mac owners. iOS-ification of macOS in particular is incredibly overblown, power users have been playing up a few security design changes and modernized APIs (e.g. kext > system extensions) as if they're huge negatives that will "ruin" macOS. I just don't think those issues matter. If the Mac itself improving was part of the Q2 results, you wouldn't have seen the similar levels of iPad revenue spike. There has been no significant change to the iPad lineup that would convince someone to buy or not buy in the last couple of years. That's why I think this is 100% Covid or whatever you call this current spike in demand.
- dimator 5y ago
  I don't think the iOS-ification is overblown at all. The fact that unsigned apps are met with increased hostility, and increased hoops to jump through to run them, demonstrates this. It's not hard to imagine in the next couple of macos releases that homebrew stops working, or requires grotesque hacks like local building/linking to escape the signing requirements. Do we honestly think apple is going to reverse course on this? I highly doubt it. Open platforms are not their m.o. for many years. They've let the walled garden around macos have too many cracks and holes, and they're going to recapture those users that have taken advantage.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dangus 5y ago
    Signed apps is not iOS-ification. That's just normal, sane security practices. Apple is not deaf to their users, they know how important Homebrew is. Apple themselves gifted hardware to the Homebrew team: "Particular thanks on Homebrew 3.0.0 go to MacStadium and Apple for providing us with a lot of Apple Silicon hardware and Cassidy from Apple for helping us in many ways with this migration. Enjoy using Homebrew!" https://brew.sh/2021/02/05/homebrew-3.0.0/ https://brew.sh/2021/02/05/homebrew-3.0.0/
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > I think it's highly developer and power user focused, representing a very small percentage of Mac owners. A very important percentage. E.g. Final Cut used to have a 60% market share. Now it's may be 25%? There's most likely a dip among every other category of professional users.
  - dangus 5y ago
    Final Cut is a very old product (1998). The entire market for digital editing has expanded greatly since then. We don't know because Apple doesn't report it, but I would surmise that Final Cut has had a consistently growing user base.

cletus 5y ago

My personal theory is that Apple got better after Ive’s departure. Ive got worse after Steve Jobs died because he no longer had someone pushing back on his crazy ideas, making them practical. The 12” MacBook was the poster child for the search for ultimate thinness. As was the disastrous butterfly keyboard (it was suggested this only shaved off 0.5mm). Look at the iPad Pro refresh just announced. It’s actually slightly thicker because that’s needed for a better display. This would never have happened with Ive at the helm of design.

giobox 5y ago
> It’s actually slightly thicker because that’s needed for a better display. This would never have happened with Ive at the helm of design. This is verifiable nonsense, given the iPhone increased in thickness between generations several times with Ive at the helm.
vineyardmike 5y ago
I think the difference is actually because Tim Cook doesn't care about design. I can't find the link, but I heard when they launched the new Mac Pro, Ives tried to show Tim Cook what it looked like, but Tim responded with "I get it... its a computer", and didn't see the design until the public launch event.
lttlrck 5y ago
IIRC force touch increased the thickness of the iPhone 6s over the iPhone 6
- cletus 5y ago
  Oh Force Touch, this was one of the biggest UX fails of the modern Apple era. It all goes back to one of Apple's Macintosh era fails: the one button mouse. This was one thing that can be reasonably argued (as I do) that Jobs was wrong about. Right-clicking became so ubiquitous and even consistent on Windows. You needed the same behaviour on Macs but had no second mouse button so got that by using modifier keys. Some apps it was Option, others control and so on. The problem was that those modified clicks had no discoverability and less consistency than right-clicking. Windows users on the other hand learned that nothing bad could happen with a right click. Force Touch as a similar kind of UX fail with no discoverability. There was (and is) no consistency with what a Force Touch means or should mean or even if it's an option at all. But yes, Force Touch did make the iPhone thicker and heavier.

flowerlad 5y ago

> how much is due to Jony Ive's departure? Yes, Ive was a bit of a farce. Under Jobs he flourished. Without guidance from Jobs he proved to be comically bad. It will take years for Apple to recover from the damage he did. For example, copying Flat-UI from Windows Phone. Apple hasn't recovered yet.

crazygringo 5y ago
> Without guidance from Jobs he proved to be comically bad. I mean, he did basically design the Apple Watch which has been an absolute runaway success, the most successful new entire product category since the iPhone. So not exactly sure how that's comically bad.
- beforeolives 5y ago
  Runaway success is exaggerated - those watches were not the coolest thing in the world when they came out (and they looked the same as the current models). They gained more traction as the health features got buffed up and Apple stopped marketing the watch as primarily a notification device. I don't think that any of this is due to the design either.
  - unicornfinder 5y ago
    I'm sure I read somewhere that Ive actually really wanted to push the Watch as a high ticket device for rich people, and it was him being ousted that lead to Apple taking the more health-focused direction they're taking now.
  - crazygringo 5y ago
    There are a million ways to eff up design. The Apple Watch and its OS are elegant and do a great job. It's basically a masterclass in design. Remember, the best design is largely invisible, when things just feel obvious and intuitive. Which describes the Apple Watch to a T. Finding product-market fit for health is a separate issue -- that's not the design department's job. Ive's job was to design a brand-new smartwatch from scratch and he and his team knocked it out of the park.

vulcan01 5y ago

Speculation on why Jony Ive pursued "thinness above everything": - for the first x years of apple, everything was legitimately thick - so each generation Ive wanted to make things thinner - it entered the culture (of the design division perhaps) that you had to make each generation thinner than the last to please Ive - Then when things got to a comfortable thickness for users, people kept making each generation thinner to please Ive - Ive never told them to stop making things thinner so they didn't stop. - snowball effect and we got those horrible products - he had to leave to stop the cycle

cbhl 5y ago
Lighter and thinner products also increase total addressable market by allowing products to be sold to parents and their kids. See Apple Watch Family Setup; iPad Mini, the various iPods...
- arcticbull 5y ago
  They're also better for the environment: less materials to assemble, less packaging, less fuel to ship, less waste. At Apple's scale, that really adds up.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Of course there's tradeoffs here if it requires custom external hardware (dongle proliferation etc.) In general I think this is less of an issue today, since usb-C is both generally great and very small, so you can just use it. But, if thinness came at the sacrifice of common connectors like USB-A (or like HDMI), the opportunity cost of standard connectors might be lost. I'm ignoring that like many of apple's ports are just better than USB-A to focus only on the waste argument here though.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    Non user upgradable products aren't better for the environment though.
    - 5y ago

mhh__ 5y ago

I used a MacBook Air in early 2020, and I thought the keyboard was broken/damaged due to the lack of give in the keys, is that what you are describing?

Reason077 5y ago
Yes, but it's not really the feel/travel that was the major problem with those keyboards. It's that they were highly prone to keys getting gummed up and/or failing due to dust and debris ingress. To be fair, Apple acknowledged the problem and provides free out-of-warranty repair/replacement for keyboard issues on the affected models. But it took them years to come out with a better keyboard.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  I think it might have been that then. The keyboard was genuinely like pressing down on a brick on what was at the time a fairly new laptop.

microtherion 5y ago

And yet, Apple just released its thinnest iMac ever last week.

asimpletune 5y ago
Mostly due to M1 though
steve_adams_86 5y ago
That appears to be a product of merging iPad technology with the Mac ecosystem. The display is basically a giant iPad Pro, isn’t it? They borrowed some thin from one product and applied it to another. The M1 allows it, they just needed to add a larger screen, remove some sensors, and flash a different OS. Obviously dramatic over simplification but it doesn’t seem to be the usual kind of thin for the sake of thin design - this iMac seems objectively better than its predecessors and its thickness (or lack thereof) doesn’t seem like a problem or unnecessary constraint.
- greenknight 5y ago
  essentially yes, and even then with the current level of thickness, they coudlnt fit the power supply (or an ethernet port) inside the imac itself.
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    It’s going to be a stationary desktop item, so it is expected that the wires will be tucked away elsewhere. Again, they don’t have to solve the mobile/tablet issues on this product, it’s never going to be a portable device.
  - mrkstu 5y ago
    Moving two items out of the main enclosures in this instance also makes the device significantly more repairable.
- cactus2093 5y ago
  If it were designed like the ipad, the components would live behind the screen in a similar way. I think this is what a lot of people were expecting. They could have done that, but they chose to make it just a little bit thinner and put all the components into a big chin below the screen. They made a trade-off to make it look uglier/bulkier/worse from the front when actually using the machine, just so that if you happen to glimpse it from the side it's a little thinner. There's not even the argument of portability to support the pursuit of thinness here as with most of their other devices. So I would argue the opposite, this new iMac is just about the pinnacle of thinness for the sake of thin design. (You could of course argue that it's not ugly, that's totally subjective, but they clearly went out of their way to make it as thin as possible).

ardit33 5y ago

maybe that's what happens when you give designers too much power. They will create something beautiful at the expense of daily usability. You need some balance. The key is to produce the best looking product without compromising functionality or usability.

zukzuk 5y ago
Designers design for usability. The idea that design is about "making things pretty" is on par with the idea that software development is about making computers crunch numbers.
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  So fundamentally correct?
- dylan604 5y ago
  Not sure I agree with that. The trashcan MacPro was definitely not useable as far as what Pro Mac users wanted/needed. That was definitely designed for the designer's sake totally misunderstanding the user's needs.
  - davidivadavid 5y ago
    So it was just bad design.
  - pembrook 5y ago
    So it was poorly designed. Not sure how that has anything to do with the parent's argument.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      >Designers design for usability. It wasn't usable for the majority of the market. Even in the infamous mea culpa Apple made about it, they admitted they designed themselves into a corner. It was designed so poorly, they had to take years to undo it after admitting it needed to be done.

da02 5y ago

Which keyboard(s) do you use currently?

jrsj 5y ago

Covid had a lot more to do with it. Mac is at an all time high yes but the last iteration of Intel MBPs was only slightly different from what we had while Ive was still around, and Mac is still a relative small % of overall revenue which has increased a lot. I don’t really get the Jony Ive hate. The only particularly bad thing I can think of him being involved in was the butterfly keyboard, and the fact that the Apple Watch is the only real success among smart watches more than makes up for that.

hardwaregeek 5y ago
Yeah it's pretty baffling. Is there any designer even close to Ive? Is there any company making computers or phones that are even close in terms of aesthetic? I know that wishy-washy ideals like beauty, elegance and feel aren't that appealing to a lot of HN users but Ive's emphasis on them is a significant part of Apple's success
- Spooky23 5y ago
  I don’t think critique of Ive is bashing. Design isn’t engineering, sometimes you hit an artistic wall or do it too long. IMO the guy got bored and focused on building the museum-like HQ building and took eyes off the ball of actual products, while maintaining total control. Even for an elite, top of his field individual, you need to focus to win. In terms of laptops, HP built some very nice high end business laptops that were more like evolutions of the 2014 MacBook Pro than the garbage Apple pumped out and wasted many millions of dollars on for warranty claims.
  - sbuk 5y ago
    Design is “engineering”. Engineers design, by definition[0]. Design, contrary to popular belief is about solving problems. Industrial design in particular focuses on how things work, not just the aesthetics of an object. [0] from the OED: a) To make drawings for the construction or creation of (something, as a building, object, garment, etc.) according to certain aesthetic criteria; (b) to make plans for the production of (a device, product, etc.) according to structural or functional criteria (sometimes without the implication of aesthetic requirements); (c) (in extended use) to conceive, devise, plan (something immaterial, as a scheme, system, programme, etc.).

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Reason077 5y ago

> "The designs seem to make a bit more sense now, I was always perplexed at Ive's 'thinness at the expense of everything else' mindset" And yet now we have the new iMac, the "thinnest iMac ever" at just 11.5mm. So it seems like Ive wasn't the only one at Apple obsessed with being thin.

thesimon 5y ago
Dropped even the Ethernet port for the thinness. Really moving into the lifestyle product market.
- bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
  Ethernet is still there, it’s just in the power brick instead of the monitor.
  - nighthawk454 5y ago
    which, honestly seems fine to me. it's likely to be running from the floor anyway, probably from a nearby place to the power outlet. one cord on the desk. some have also mentioned potential synergy with future MacBooks, which might also adopt this port on the power brick. that could bring a magnetic connector back to laptops _and_ ethernet without a $30 dongle
    - sdfhbdf 5y ago
      Or they could reverse it and start charging the battery of a macbook with power over ethernet
  - thesimon 5y ago
    >it’s just in the power brick instead of the monitor Sure, but it was removed from the main device.
    - anomaly_ 5y ago

samatman 5y ago

I hated the butterfly keyboard, because mine failed, and a keyboard failure on my work machine is completely unacceptable. I vowed to stop buying Apple completely if they didn't fix it, and sure enough, typing this on the 16" 2020 MBP, with its classic scissor-switch keyboard, showing every sign of being just as durable as every other Apple scissor keyboard I've ever had (a considerable number). But I don't think it's entirely fair to just call that failed experiment the pursuit of thinness at all costs. Scissors are a bit mushy, you can move your fingers around on a keypad and feel them wobble. The sound is kind of dull, the action lacks a clean tactile break. The butterfly keyboard felt great, to me at least. Crisp, clicky action, rock-solid pads: to my taste, the tactile experience is superior. If they had found a way to make them absolutely reliable, I'd have called it a win. Although the square arrow keys and lack of a physical escape key were ergonomic disasters, that's orthogonal to keyboard action, they could have fixed both of those things while sticking with the butterfly switches. These are ultimately aesthetic considerations. Someone else certainly prefers the sound and feel of the scissor switches, I respect that, I just disagree is all. So I don't think shaving a half millimeter was the be-all and end-all of the decision to iterate on the ultimately unworkable butterfly keyboard design. I imagine Jony Ive thought it was a nicer keyboard and just spent more time trying to make it work than was really justified, especially since it proved to be impossible.

dangus 5y ago
I agree with you here. When it worked, the butterfly keyboard was great to type on. Was it the best on the market? Well, no, obviously not, one of the worst considering the reliability. Is Apple's current scissor keyboard the best on the market? No, it was clearly shoehorned back in from older designs with minimal changes. I would have loved the butterfly keyboard to have just a hair longer travel...and there was something about the key shape/spacing/size that made me slightly less accurate finding the correct keys. It really was "almost there" but they had to throw it out because it was a PR disaster.

raydev 5y ago

> how much is due to Jony Ive's departure Apple is clearly selling to the masses here. Most people don't know or care who Jony Ive is, and the MacBook Pros and iPads don't look meaningfully different in any way. I'm shocked anyone thinks Ive's departure is relevant at this scale.

wuliwong 5y ago

It seems the fixation on 'thinness' has continued with the new iMac release. They chose to keep a big chin on the iMac in order to make the all-in-one desktop computer extremely thin. I don't see any value in extreme thinness as a potential iMac consumer. I would be more interested in a cleaner design when looking directly at the computer. :) I will add that I have no real idea about Ive's design leanings. I guess it is possible to conclude that either he wasn't the driving force behind "extreme thinness" or he managed to convert people inside of Apple to this way of thinking and they still remain influential.

marticode 5y ago

A lot if not all is due to Covid. All the big techs have had stellar quarters. Google, FB or AMD also reported massive results this week. The world is stuck at home and has been starved for hardware and content.