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> 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 a

by 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.
- GrifMD 5y ago
  I really liked the iPhone 5c's design. The colors were fun, and the case options weren't super bland. The 5 was there to fill in the need for more traditional iPhone design, but the 5c felt like a little throwback to when phones were a little more fun and weird.
  - quartesixte 5y ago
    Also back to the fun colors of the iPod’s later years. All this brushed silver/gold/black bores me. I am very glad Apple has decided to embrace colors once again.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  I completely agree. His exit signaled the return of flat screens rather than the terrible curved glass edges, slippery corners and the mess of designing for design’s sake. I don’t know if he was responsible for the butterfly keyboard but I wouldn’t be surprised.
- kergonath 5y ago
  It all is debatable. Apple regularly backtracked after having gone too far in one direction. See e.g. the dialling back of translucency after OS X 10.1, and of brushed metal after Panther. The break in iOS 7 was extreme, but the same people whining about Ive were whining about skeumorphism a couple of months before. Jobs had good taste, but was not infallible either. And he could not have designed a computer if his life depended on it. Saying that Ive has nothing to do with the iMac, iPod, iPhone, Cube, PowerBooks and MacBooks is very myopic, to beat the least. Looking back, Apple kept being Apple and not much changed when Jobs died. Well, the keynotes are less interesting now. But product development does not look too different. Occasional mistakes are still made, and occasionally fixed. It was so before both Ive and Jobs, and it will still be that way after them.
hadlock 5y ago
Johnny Ive pushed design deeply into "lowest common denominator" territory, to the point that I've seen a lot of features flat out cut from products simply because the UI/UX team couldn't make enough white space on the screen to hold them all. Ives did not invent "more white space is better" but he certainly embraced it and helped push out complexity at all costs in the name of usability.

by Osmium 5y ago

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.
GrifMD 5y ago
I really liked the iPhone 5c's design. The colors were fun, and the case options weren't super bland. The 5 was there to fill in the need for more traditional iPhone design, but the 5c felt like a little throwback to when phones were a little more fun and weird.
- quartesixte 5y ago
  Also back to the fun colors of the iPod’s later years. All this brushed silver/gold/black bores me. I am very glad Apple has decided to embrace colors once again.
GhettoComputers 5y ago
I completely agree. His exit signaled the return of flat screens rather than the terrible curved glass edges, slippery corners and the mess of designing for design’s sake. I don’t know if he was responsible for the butterfly keyboard but I wouldn’t be surprised.
kergonath 5y ago
It all is debatable. Apple regularly backtracked after having gone too far in one direction. See e.g. the dialling back of translucency after OS X 10.1, and of brushed metal after Panther. The break in iOS 7 was extreme, but the same people whining about Ive were whining about skeumorphism a couple of months before. Jobs had good taste, but was not infallible either. And he could not have designed a computer if his life depended on it. Saying that Ive has nothing to do with the iMac, iPod, iPhone, Cube, PowerBooks and MacBooks is very myopic, to beat the least. Looking back, Apple kept being Apple and not much changed when Jobs died. Well, the keynotes are less interesting now. But product development does not look too different. Occasional mistakes are still made, and occasionally fixed. It was so before both Ive and Jobs, and it will still be that way after them.

hadlock 5y ago

Johnny Ive pushed design deeply into "lowest common denominator" territory, to the point that I've seen a lot of features flat out cut from products simply because the UI/UX team couldn't make enough white space on the screen to hold them all. Ives did not invent "more white space is better" but he certainly embraced it and helped push out complexity at all costs in the name of usability.