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> Steve Jobs’ mythologized demands were in service of the consumer, while shouldering the manufacturing burden inherent in them I think a citation is needed fo

by munk-a 5y ago

> Steve Jobs’ mythologized demands were in service of the consumer, while shouldering the manufacturing burden inherent in them I think a citation is needed for this - my opinion is that in most cases Apple's design choices focused on doing things differently, whether that was an upgrade, sidegrade or downgrade. They tried to make sure their design choices were positive but there are enough examples of Apple changing things for seemingly no reason because they weren't broken. And a lot of other manufacturers followed suit because Apple remains a trend setter and consumers then started to demand the feature. It's less like leading a horse to water and more like leading a horse to a craps table and then assuming that because the horse likes you they'll consider that playing craps in the middle of the desert is a natural state. All that said, being different and being innovators was Apple's brand, so failing to deliver strange design decisions actually would fail to meet consumer expectations... the consumer didn't demand hockey puck mice, but they demanded something different from regular mice and delighted in the new shape (for a while, until the ergonomics of the mouse became clear - but for quite some time people really celebrated those mice, at least where I grew up)

memetomancer 5y ago
In >my< opinion, it sounds kinda like you didn't read the Letter from the Carnation Company, or at least didn't quite grasp the point prior to rushing out your simplistic take and weird analogy about horses. Apple has surely never engaged in change-for-change's-sake as you are asserting. If you step back and consider all the factors in the changes they make - developing high quality materials, reducing size and weight, optimizing yields, durability, integration of technical advances like bus speeds, resolution and energy density, thermal characteristics... on and on, there are probably a thousands more factors that inform the changes they make to any given product. Not whatever hand-wavey dismissal you are asserting here. Sometimes their industrial design misses the mark, such as with the hockey puck mouse, or the charge port on the current mouse, but these are fairly rare when contrasted against the full spectrum of their ever evolving products. And that's the whole point of that letter from Carnation. There is a lot more going on behind the scenes that drive these engineering decisions. Simply writing them off with a simple take totally misses the mark.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  You mean, like with the butterfly keyboard? Or the glued-shut, unrepairable gadgets? Or "Maybe you're holding it wrong"? Or firing the antenna guy after? Or trying to eliminate cursor arrow keys so users would have to always use the mouse? The mouse charge port that makes it unusable while charging is far from an isolated example. Apple changing something to actually benefit the customer at the expense of Apple is almost unheard of.

by munk-a 5y ago

memetomancer 5y ago

In >my< opinion, it sounds kinda like you didn't read the Letter from the Carnation Company, or at least didn't quite grasp the point prior to rushing out your simplistic take and weird analogy about horses. Apple has surely never engaged in change-for-change's-sake as you are asserting. If you step back and consider all the factors in the changes they make - developing high quality materials, reducing size and weight, optimizing yields, durability, integration of technical advances like bus speeds, resolution and energy density, thermal characteristics... on and on, there are probably a thousands more factors that inform the changes they make to any given product. Not whatever hand-wavey dismissal you are asserting here. Sometimes their industrial design misses the mark, such as with the hockey puck mouse, or the charge port on the current mouse, but these are fairly rare when contrasted against the full spectrum of their ever evolving products. And that's the whole point of that letter from Carnation. There is a lot more going on behind the scenes that drive these engineering decisions. Simply writing them off with a simple take totally misses the mark.

ncmncm 5y ago
You mean, like with the butterfly keyboard? Or the glued-shut, unrepairable gadgets? Or "Maybe you're holding it wrong"? Or firing the antenna guy after? Or trying to eliminate cursor arrow keys so users would have to always use the mouse? The mouse charge port that makes it unusable while charging is far from an isolated example. Apple changing something to actually benefit the customer at the expense of Apple is almost unheard of.