It’s a complex organization. Personally, Apple hardware (minus the all usb-c MacBooks) and their software interfaces are more useable to me than Android or Lin

It’s a complex organization. Personally, Apple hardware (minus the all usb-c MacBooks) and their software interfaces are more useable to me than Android or Linux. If it was easy, Google would have found a better Jony Ive. There are probably better product designers out there, but to succeed in a big org, it’s also political prowess and story telling ability. Jony Ive is at the top because he’s good at what he does, and that’s not necessarily being a product designer. It’s being Apple’s chief product designer, and that is not the same as being a product designer. His skill is convincing enough decision makers that he is the best chief product designer in the org. Is material design good? Having worked at Google as an engineer and working extensively with designers, then also attending design school and coming from a family in the creative field, I don’t respect Google design org for their aesthetic sensibility. I have never met a single designer at Google that impressed me with their aesthetic / photographic eye ( arguably a proxy measure for good designers in the same way logical reasoning abilities are for engineers ). The skill set of a Google designer is not that of an artist. Is creative director Virgil Abloh of Louis Vuitton a good designer? Most people who studied fashion design would say no. But he sells products, and that’s what the Louis Vuitton’s of the world needs. The fashion designers who have the most street cred aren’t the ones leading fashion brands you’ve heard. Michael Kors is a pretty mainstream and commercially successful brand, but he’s a laughing stock among fashion designers. The ones who know how and when to balance commercial and artistic are the ones who rise to the top in our economic system. Same with mainstream musical artists. It’s not their music abilities, it’s the whole package. Their style, their album art, their public image. As for whether Apple products are badly designed or not. We don’t know what Apple’s higher level games are. It’s plausible they intentionally alternate back and forth every few years from disappointing to exciting products. Maybe this is the most profit maximizing. A kind of forward looking planned obsolescence or planned disappointed. We wouldn’t be as excited for the latest MacBooks if the prior generation wasn’t a flop. What we know is Apple is a trillion dollar company, and their stock has consistently done well irrespective of bad industrial design.