4 ms·

This video exemplifies why Steve Jobs absolutely nailed it when he came back to Apple and simplified the product lineup and started selling out of Apple stores.

This video exemplifies why Steve Jobs absolutely nailed it when he came back to Apple and simplified the product lineup and started selling out of Apple stores. These customers are confused with all of the available options and different processors and peripherals. Jobs simplified it to one device for consumers, the iMac, making it very easy for consumers to understand.

prox 3y ago
I also think part because he wasn’t thinking “computer” , he was thinking “appliance” , with the skeuomorphic interface to match. I would love to see more of that instead of the flat designs we see now.
- throwaway5959 3y ago
  Skeuomorphic designs made sense when people didn’t understand how things worked in the context of computers. Try asking a teenager what a Rolodex is or how to operate a tape deck now. :)
  - selfhoster11 3y ago
    I like skeuomorphic designs much better, personally. There’s an argument to be made that they also offer more affordances than the normally featureless flat designs.
- trws 3y ago
  I agree aesthetically, but watching my daughter trying to learn interfaces with skeuomorphic design has been illuminating. Trying to explain to her that the save button is a blue rectangle with some gray stuff on the bottom for some reason (she has no idea what a “floppy disk” is) or the symbol for an inbox being a physical inbox, or contacts as a Rolodex or address book is starting completely from scratch. All of these things make intrinsic sense to me, because I learned those concepts when those physical objects existed in a meaningful form, but to her they’re completely meaningless. A desk calendar for a calendar interface would be just as opaque. So perhaps we need to reconsider what is or is not used for inspiration. An app that shows a drawing pad and tools is immediacy intuitive even to her, but when the corollaries are gone, where then do we go for the same effect?
  - prox 3y ago
    Haha, I can imagine! For kids, you usually design different, including skeuomorphic. I am not a specialist on kids interface design, but I have seen some impressive demonstrations. Big buttons that speak, color coding, friendly characters guides and so on.
dopeboy 3y ago
This is true to this day. Ask me how I know, as a Lenovo laptop buyer for the past decade...

prox 3y ago

I also think part because he wasn’t thinking “computer” , he was thinking “appliance” , with the skeuomorphic interface to match. I would love to see more of that instead of the flat designs we see now.

throwaway5959 3y ago
Skeuomorphic designs made sense when people didn’t understand how things worked in the context of computers. Try asking a teenager what a Rolodex is or how to operate a tape deck now. :)
- selfhoster11 3y ago
  I like skeuomorphic designs much better, personally. There’s an argument to be made that they also offer more affordances than the normally featureless flat designs.
trws 3y ago
I agree aesthetically, but watching my daughter trying to learn interfaces with skeuomorphic design has been illuminating. Trying to explain to her that the save button is a blue rectangle with some gray stuff on the bottom for some reason (she has no idea what a “floppy disk” is) or the symbol for an inbox being a physical inbox, or contacts as a Rolodex or address book is starting completely from scratch. All of these things make intrinsic sense to me, because I learned those concepts when those physical objects existed in a meaningful form, but to her they’re completely meaningless. A desk calendar for a calendar interface would be just as opaque. So perhaps we need to reconsider what is or is not used for inspiration. An app that shows a drawing pad and tools is immediacy intuitive even to her, but when the corollaries are gone, where then do we go for the same effect?
- prox 3y ago
  Haha, I can imagine! For kids, you usually design different, including skeuomorphic. I am not a specialist on kids interface design, but I have seen some impressive demonstrations. Big buttons that speak, color coding, friendly characters guides and so on.

dopeboy 3y ago

This is true to this day. Ask me how I know, as a Lenovo laptop buyer for the past decade...