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From the outside, it looks like Jony Ive was only able to get away with the damaging push to flat design after Steve Jobs died, and since Ive has left Apple, be

• phendrenad2 5y ago
  A nice story with a bow on top, but it doesn't match reality. Flat design started at Google and spread to Microsoft and eventually Apple. It was simply the style, and now the trends are starting to change. We'll go through a 3D glossy "aqua" phase for the next 10 years, then we'll go back to brutalist flat design. And we'll have no choice but to follow the UI designers into whatever obsession they're on time after time.
• applgo443 5y ago
  What's the problem with flat design? I love that!
  • secondcoming 5y ago
    Eliminating the 3.5mm jack was a step too far!
  • baq 5y ago
    It’s ok if you have two eyes, two hands and/or a well lit room. Apple TV remote is possibly the worst remote ever made.
    • ibero 5y ago
      just to clear it up: “flat design” is a reference or common term to a graphical design style that followed skeuomorphism, not a term used for the industrial design aspect.
    • dtgriscom 5y ago
      This. I forever struggle to persuade my remote to do what I want it to. That touch-sensitive panel is a complete PIA, and just navigating across a rectangular array of icons is fraught with detours. If I were paranoid, I'd say it was designed to force people to use the voice-recognition system, which gives better user data.
    • holistio 5y ago
      I guess you are referring to the previous generation. The newest is really good, in fact I think it's the best remote I've ever used.
    • deeblering4 5y ago
      It really is. You can’t even wake the remote from sleep without sending a keypress to the TV. And the trackpad is difficult to use accurately. Totally over engineered for no benefit.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      > Apple TV remote is possibly the worst remote ever made. Yup. It's awful. I shelled out the bucks for the new one, and have found it to be worlds different.
    • notJim 5y ago
      That remote is awful, but isn't usually what I've heard people refer to as flat design. Flat design tends to refer to the more simplistic software UIs that have been in fashion over the last few years.
  • tomxor 5y ago
    You may love the way it looks... but no one being honest with themselves loves the way it functions, UI is visually functional, a functionality that happens in your brain, like legibility - flat UI has very poor "legibility" if compared to something like 3d embossed win95 UI where every identification and anticipation is painfully obvious to the point that it's effortless. It's familiarity is also learned in a very short space of time; whereas flat UI continues to elude even advanced users and remains ambiguous with high cognitive load - you might not realise why, but it will feel slow, and uncomfortable for each new front end you encounter. Designers don't like this fact because that embossed 3d look is considered ugly, but it's intuitively and obviously true.
    • SahAssar 5y ago
      I think all of your points are true for badly made UIs, regardless of if they are flat or not. I like flat UIs, partially because they look and behave like digital things instead of trying to resemble something else and partially just because they usually (entirely subjectively) look better. We have a deeper well of inspiration to draw from for non-flat and more experience with them (so it's easier to make them "better") but I don't think anyone can say they are inherently "better".
      • GhettoComputers 5y ago
        They’re better for accessibility for anyone less interested in learning the new technological design UIs to have their programs function, people that just want to look at something and get how it works without a manual or googling it. The functionally has never improved because of flat designs, ever.
• simonklitj 5y ago
  I disagree with you, I think it was a much needed reboot to the concept of design, and the future will be all the brighter for it. Accessibility is more on everyone’s mind today than ever before, and I think skeumorphism’s accessibility was more of a side effect than an intended effect. I’ll gladly be proven wrong though, but design wise I’d absolutely hate to go back to pre 2012.
  • Retric 5y ago
    I am just glad flat designs look really dated. Skeuomorphic accessibility was very much an early design goal, the issue is it lived so far past it’s origin that people forgot why it was built that way in the first place.
  • mc32 5y ago
    But often times flat design lacks hints or affordances which is the opposite of accessibility.
• hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I mean, in fairness, the design outlined in TFA is an intricate, 3D, embossed design, so maybe Ive himself is off the "simple and flat" train ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• ChrisClark 5y ago
  A deep stain? No, I wish everything remained flat, it is exactly what design of software should be. (I can also state my opinion as fact) But seriously, I do really love flat design. Though I do agree with some of the arguments against it. A more varied design landscape is always better though.
• Osmium 5y ago
  > His legacy is a deep stain on the design industry This is a rather extreme statement. A person's career can be long and complex, involve many projects, not all of which will be successful. We all learn. From the outside, it seems that Jony Ive was successful in a lot of endeavors, was successful in creating a disciplined design culture, and yes, sometimes, went too far (it seems) but even that kind of exploration can be useful for how it informs future work.
  • petilon 5y ago
    Let's consider Jony's performance on software design first. This is what some prominent people have said about iOS 7, which was the first flat-design iOS: The Verge wrote in their review: "iOS 7 isn't harder to use, just less obvious. That's a momentous change: iOS used to be so obvious." In iOS 7 basic usability features such as making buttons look like buttons are now stuffed under Accessibility options. About this, Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment wrote: "If iOS 8 can’t remove any of these options, it's a design failure." (And iOS 8 didn't.) Michael Heilemann, Interface Director at Squarespace wrote, "when I look at [iOS 7 beta] I see anti-patterns and basic mistakes that should have been caught on the whiteboard before anyone even began thinking about coding it." And famed blogger John Gruber said this about iOS 7: "my guess is that [Steve Jobs] would not have supported this direction." And what about Jony's other responsibility, industrial design? The iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and other Apple products from Jobs era are all amazingly well designed and breathtakingly beautiful. But these products weren't designed by Jony Ive all by himself. He designed them under Steve Jobs's guidance and direction. Steve was the tastemaker. Apple's post-Steve products are nowhere near as well-designed. Consider iPhone 5c, for example, which was the first post-Steve-Jobs design. The colors were horrid, and when you add those Crocs-like cases it looks more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen holding. Then they released some ads for the 5c, and I kid you not, one of the ads had sounds of bleating farm animals. (It was titled "Every color has a story", published on tumblr.) That the 5c didn't do well in the market shouldn't surprise anyone.
    • birdyrooster 5y ago
      Don’t forget the cavernous spaceship with acoustics and privacy issues that has caused many an engineer to loathe working in it. That was his design too.
• voldacar 5y ago
  There is something deeply antihuman about flat design. It's hard to describe exactly how, because it sounds silly when it comes out of your mouth, but I really believe this is true on some deep, pre-verbal level. They make me feel mentally and spiritually harmed somehow.
  • lupire 5y ago
    It's easy to describe: It's 2-dimensional.
  • stevebmark 5y ago
    Humans see in 3d, and we use 3d cues from the world around us to assess everything. Taking these cues out of design is absolutely antihuman. And we know it's bad, especially for older populations, where nothing looks like a button or clickable, so folks click on things until something works.
• brailsafe 5y ago
  > skeuomorphic gradients Come on. These were an awful trend.
  • petilon 5y ago
    It wasn't. EVERYTHING beautiful is skeuomorphic. The page turn in iBooks, page curl in maps, cover flow, the shred animation in older versions of Passbook, the date picker (all in iOS 6), rotating settings gear (when updating iOS 6), the Time Machine interface in older versions of OS X, photo borders and shadows in older versions of iWorks documents, etc. This is not surprising, because our sense of beauty comes from the physical world. So what is the problem with skeuomorphism? Tech enthusiasts would like their phones to look like something from the future, not something from the past. But ordinary everyday people prefer for it to look like things they are already familiar with, or can relate to. Tech enthusiasts worry that the skeuomorphism was getting totally out of hand, particularly where the UI metaphor started limiting functionality (e.g. an address database that's limited to what a Rolodex can do, rather than exploiting what is possible with a computer). But this is not really true. For example, iBooks has instant search, something only possible with a computer. Some people point out that many skeuomorphic elements reference things that a large part of Apple's audience hasn't used in a long time, if ever. True, but here's the thing: It doesn't matter whether the user has ever seen a reel-to-reel tape. What matters is whether the visuals depict a physical object that the user can model in his mind. If it is too abstract (that's the opposite of physical) then non-tech-enthusiast users will find it hard to intuit. Some people say skeuomorphism looks tacky. This is partly true. Skeuomorphism is hard to do. When done poorly it does look tacky. But when done well it looks very beautiful. By removing all skeuomorphism Apple threw the baby out with the bathwater.
    • notJim 5y ago
      > EVERYTHING beautiful is skeuomorphic I don't think you can make any kind of categorical statement like this about a topic as subjective as beauty. Maybe you only find skeuomorphic things beautiful, but some of us disagree.
  • stevebmark 5y ago
• petilon 5y ago
  > Jony Ive was only able to get away with the damaging push to flat design after Steve Jobs died Sadly, true. > and since Ive has left Apple, beautiful skeuomorphic gradients, lighting, embosses, drop shadows, and photo-real elements, have started to return. Not really. Where have you seen this return? It hasn't, not in any significant way. The damage Ive did seems more or less permanent. Jony Ive is only part of the problem. The other problems is hatred towards Scott Forstall. Since Scott was a proponent of skeuomorphism, one way remaining Apple execs stuck it to Forestall is by losing skeuomorphism, and then opening deriding skeuomorphism during the reveal of iOS7.
  • hyperpallium2 5y ago
    I humbly await the Second Coming of Forstall to resurrect Apple and rescue it from bankrupcty! it may be a while
  • stevebmark 5y ago
    The iMessage mac desktop icon, the Preview icon using real 3d elements, System Preferences keeping beautiful 3d icons, are all giving me hope that we can back out of this nightmare. > Sadly, true. Any additional context you can give here?
• krisrm 5y ago
  In your opinion, what would be an example of a "beautiful skeuomorphic gradient"? I don't use Apple software (or hardware) much, but I recall a certain stitched-leather user interface for iCal that really put me off skeuomorphism in User Interfaces.
• Angostura 5y ago
  From looking at Apple and this project. I suspect that Ive is quite good at delivering to the client's brief.
• didip 5y ago
  ugh... I loath the skeuomorphic design. A bunch of engineering effort spent just to make digital products looked like the old physical products they killed.
  • GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Why get a retina screen to display what like design limitations of low resolution screens? Why do you loathe them? It’s for ease of use, in iOS 6 the notes app that looks like notes or the newsstand app that looks like a news stand it was easy to understand. What does the photos app look like now? A bunch of circular colors to mean what exactly? What about the news app? Used to be a bunch of geometric shapes, now it’s a square slanted candy stripe.
    • zeroimpl 5y ago
      The actual content (eg pictures, videos and text) all look better on a retina screen. I don’t think people buy retina screens so that the UI elements look prettier.
      • GhettoComputers 5y ago
        That might not be why, but the UI elements looks worst, the apps are unified under uglier UI, and by the logic of content it was an unnecessary design change with less accessibility, more complications to make boring UI that needs explanation and all for no benefit to the user. Just look at the iOS 7 news stand icon or the one that’s a red candy cane stripe versus the iOS 6 news stand icon. Who designed the photos icon and what’s it represent if not just designing for design’s sake? He made it minimalist, harder to use, and forced every iOS UI to congregate under a more flawed design. Pretty elements that highlighted the Retina display’s capabilities in the are now replaced by uglier boring design that was probably a practical scaling solution for ease of designing unified UI that was more developed friendly and less user friendly.
• ThomPete 5y ago
  Flat design was never about flat design but about layers and animation. The idea was to get rid of the fake 3d and instead use layered animation to create the depth.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• kumarvvr 5y ago
  How is it that in a land on Nokia N95 and the likes, introducing the iPhone was not revolutionary? You are cutting short and focusing on the design of the software (which I am sure Ive had a limited say in) while ignoring decades of excellent design work.
• jasonvorhe 5y ago
  Ive would've left Apple way earlier, if someone hadn't convinced him to stay. iirc he moved to London a couple of years ago and everyone was curious if he was still interested in Apple. I'm sure they lured him to stay with the new Apple HQ. To say that it was Steve Jobs keeping him from having too much unrestricted impact on the product is not a convincing argument. Sure, he took over software design as well but skeumorphism, gradients and huge shadows were often heavily criticized before it was cool to hate on a minimalistic flat design.