4 ms·

Aesthetics. Short stem looks sleeker. Form vs. function

by cj 24d ago

s3r3nity 24d ago
Or, you know, design trade-offs like every other hardware ever made. I don't want to feel like I'm wearing one of those customer support head mics. I'm ok with shorter stem, and never had a problem.
- throwup238 24d ago
  > Or, you know, design trade-offs like every other hardware ever made. Or different SKUs. Just saying. Not that hard for the most profitable trillion dollar company on the planet.
  - kenferry 22d ago
    You want there to be separate lines for "how long do you want your stems"? Looking forward to your 18 SKU product matrix of decisions people have to make that they don't know what answer to choose.
- stackghost 24d ago
  Apple are king of form over function. Have we already forgotten that hack Jony Ive and his fetish for removing usefulness in favor of a few mm of thinness? Or the stupid fucking Touch Bar keyboard? I still have a touch bar MacBook and the keyboard is unusable now.
  - grvbck 24d ago
    The touch bar was not a bad invention. Apple just neglected it and never gave it the software support it deserved. With some proper development it could have been great.
    - bigyabai 24d ago
      The touch bar was a terrible invention. Apple had no shortage of money to fix the software side, they just recognized that it wasn't a "Pro" feature. Consider the most basic usage of the touch bar, displaying function keys. The tactile feedback of a physical function row enables most people to touch-type the function keys from home row. For IDEs, NLE/DAW workflows, UNIX terminal setups and cross-platform software, the touch bar had nothing to offer but downsides. And even in apps that supported it, there was no unified mnemonic standard that enabled you to use the touch bar strip without looking away from the monitor and losing sight of your content. Apps that copied the content into the touch bar were even more hilariously cornered into bad UX, displaying a postage stamp-sized status for whatever you're working on. The common defense of the touch bar says it needed hardware reworks and greenfield HID architectures to succeed. But I think Apple realized it was a totally flawed concept, and iterated on it internally to the point that they realized it was a sunken cost fallacy.
      - PlunderBunny 23d ago
        I’m sure I’m not the only programmer that developed a habit of resting my finger on the F5 key at a certain point in my workflow, and then had to unlearn it just because of the stupid touch-bar (Still using my 2019 Intel MBP with stupid touch-bar).
    - labcomputer 23d ago
      The real problem is that they tried to replace the function keys (and especially the esc key) instead of supplementing them.
cco 24d ago
Do they? I don't think so. Makes them look stubby and more like a hearing assistive device (not particularly fashionable). They looked sleeker and more balanced with the longer stem and in the ear more like jewelry.
raverbashing 24d ago
Honestly the stems always looked kinda dorky to me

Aesthetics. Short stem looks sleeker. Form vs. function

by cj 24d ago

Aesthetics. Short stem looks sleeker. Form vs. function

Or, you know, design trade-offs like every other hardware ever made. I don't want to feel like I'm wearing one of those customer support head mics. I'm ok with shorter stem, and never had a problem.

throwup238 24d ago
> Or, you know, design trade-offs like every other hardware ever made. Or different SKUs. Just saying. Not that hard for the most profitable trillion dollar company on the planet.
- kenferry 22d ago
  You want there to be separate lines for "how long do you want your stems"? Looking forward to your 18 SKU product matrix of decisions people have to make that they don't know what answer to choose.
stackghost 24d ago
Apple are king of form over function. Have we already forgotten that hack Jony Ive and his fetish for removing usefulness in favor of a few mm of thinness? Or the stupid fucking Touch Bar keyboard? I still have a touch bar MacBook and the keyboard is unusable now.
- grvbck 24d ago
  The touch bar was not a bad invention. Apple just neglected it and never gave it the software support it deserved. With some proper development it could have been great.
  - bigyabai 24d ago
    The touch bar was a terrible invention. Apple had no shortage of money to fix the software side, they just recognized that it wasn't a "Pro" feature. Consider the most basic usage of the touch bar, displaying function keys. The tactile feedback of a physical function row enables most people to touch-type the function keys from home row. For IDEs, NLE/DAW workflows, UNIX terminal setups and cross-platform software, the touch bar had nothing to offer but downsides. And even in apps that supported it, there was no unified mnemonic standard that enabled you to use the touch bar strip without looking away from the monitor and losing sight of your content. Apps that copied the content into the touch bar were even more hilariously cornered into bad UX, displaying a postage stamp-sized status for whatever you're working on. The common defense of the touch bar says it needed hardware reworks and greenfield HID architectures to succeed. But I think Apple realized it was a totally flawed concept, and iterated on it internally to the point that they realized it was a sunken cost fallacy.
    - PlunderBunny 23d ago
      I’m sure I’m not the only programmer that developed a habit of resting my finger on the F5 key at a certain point in my workflow, and then had to unlearn it just because of the stupid touch-bar (Still using my 2019 Intel MBP with stupid touch-bar).
  - labcomputer 23d ago
    The real problem is that they tried to replace the function keys (and especially the esc key) instead of supplementing them.

cco 24d ago

Do they? I don't think so. Makes them look stubby and more like a hearing assistive device (not particularly fashionable). They looked sleeker and more balanced with the longer stem and in the ear more like jewelry.

raverbashing 24d ago

Honestly the stems always looked kinda dorky to me