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“It’s the small things” has driven Apple design for decades. And it’s a cultural thing, not just the “design department”. I remember back in the mid-90s when I
by wrs 3y ago
“It’s the small things” has driven Apple design for decades. And it’s a cultural thing, not just the “design department”. I remember back in the mid-90s when I left Apple to work at Microsoft and realized how rare it is to have software developers who view everything through the lens of the end user experience, even if they’re working on the file system or the boot sequence.
Random example: One of the first things I asked when I got there was “why, when you turn on a Windows PC, does it start your user experience by filling the screen with scary gibberish?” That got fixed, but it took many years, partially because of all the coordination needed in the PC ecosystem to do anything, but mostly because nobody really cared all that much.
- ryandrake 3y agoThat ingrained cultural attention to detail is probably the only thing I miss about working there. Too many other tech companies I've worked at just don't care about things they consider "edge cases". Make the "key customer journey" (in other words the happy-path) work and you're done. Is "making it beautiful" in the contract? No? Then don't work on it! Oh, the software doesn't work in landscape mode? P3 bug, we'll fix it later--just ship ship ship. Cheap out and make the casing plastic instead of metal so you can save $0.30 on each device. KPIs! OKRs! metrics! That's all the rest of the industry runs on.
- apantel 3y agoThis is the nature of lower price points: economization, doing only what is needed, not what would be nice.
- nextos 3y agoThe key is that Apple's product lineup is relatively small. Compare that with e.g. Lenovo, who offer a mindblowing amount of SKUs. Too many SKUs tend to be correlated with lack of polish and attention to detail. And this comes from someone who prefers Linux, and hence ThinkPad. Even basic user experiences, such as buying online, are vastly better at Apple. For instance, lenovo.com is handled by a third party in many markets, including the EU.
- inglor_cz 3y ago"Too many SKUs tend to be correlated with lack of polish and attention to detail." So true. Back a decade ago, Nokia had an enormous amount of SKUs. The firmwares were usually crap, and even the hardware was often subpar. You were obviously not expected to keep the same Symbian smartphone for 5+ years, with the possible exception of the Communicator. Blackberry, on the other hand, had much fewer SKUs and much better quality.
- nextos 3y agoYeah, Nokia was the other example that came to mind. They were really capable. When they had a small team focused on a single thing, the Nokia N9, the product they developed was outstanding. However, as an organization, they were totally dysfunctional. Lots of internal fights, politics, etc. I sadly know that well as I interacted a lot with Nokia during the mid 2000s.
- inglor_cz 3y agoI programmed Nokias back then. The technical talent of their R&D was top notch, and it was sadly wasted by a dysfunctional decision making culture. People here on the HN tend to value engineers highly and look with disdain on mere managers. They may be right when it comes to the Pointy-Haired Bosses, but good management is a large force multiplier when it comes to the capabilities of any org. And bad management will easily drag a good engineering corps into an endless mire of meaningless work.
- nextos 3y agoHard to disagree!
- BtM909 2y ago> filling the screen with scary gibberish?” What scary gibberish was that again? It's been too long ago for me :')
- staticfish 2y agoNot OP but they are almost certainly referring to the BIOS POST self-health and status messages.
- mock-possum 2y agoAw I find that gibberish reassuring, it means the magic is working!
- wrs 2y agoYou used to be able to get the scary gibberish on Intel Macs by setting an NVRAM boot arg. Not sure that works anymore on the Apple Silicon ones.