4 ms·

Initial iPhone was anything but simple! First gen iPhone was YEARS in the making and rests upon decades of Cocoa engineering. Gruber is completely off the mark

by nickb 18y ago

Initial iPhone was anything but simple! First gen iPhone was YEARS in the making and rests upon decades of Cocoa engineering. Gruber is completely off the mark in that regard and is overplaying his hand. Every company iterates. Even MS iterates and evolves an initial product and you can see that with Windows 7. There are lots of reasons for success of Apple but the thing he stated isn't one of the major ones. Apple loves to work in vacuum with no user feedback whatsoever since SJ likes to say that 'people don't know what they want until they see it.' To have a truly evolving system, you need to have a user feedback loop and Apple has one of the worst feedback loops in the industry since they almost never act on feedback and when they do, it takes them years.

ashot 18y ago
agreed, this is not a good metaphor
cubicle67 18y ago
Prior to the unveiling of the iPhone there were a large number of people who attempted to guess what an Apple phone would be like. Loads of high quality art was produced by lots of very talented people. And guess what? Nobody foresaw anything like what the iPhone ended up being. Most people couldn't get past trying to fit a phone into a click-wheel iPod. Do you seriously think the iPhone would have been better if Apple had asked people what they wanted?
- nickb 18y ago
  >Do you seriously think the iPhone would have been better if Apple had asked people what they wanted? That has nothing to do with the article's argument that Apple's secret is evolution of simple systems. As for your point, each approach has its virtues. What works for Apple probably won't work for the rest of us. Apple has hundreds of brilliant designers that create three different pixel perfect designs for each piece of new UI. Three different teams (and all brilliant at what they do) working against each other... how many of us can afford something like that?! I still contend that Gruber's argument about Apple's secret being simplicity and evolution is bullshit. He probably came across Gall's law and decided to spin it into an article about Apple.
  - unalone 18y ago
    So you think that Apple makes good designs just because they're a large company? I've got news for you: the companies they compete against are much larger. Dell and Microsoft could easily afford more designers than even Apple has. The products they churn out are still comparatively worse. You'll notice that Gruber mentions the period in the 80s where Jobs was still an employee as a period which saw similar results. This is not something that requires a huge team. Back with the original Macintosh there was a similar effect. I would hope you've seen the computer's initial unveiling - it's on YouTube - because that's a video that inspires me to this day. Younger, tuxedoed Jobs reveals it, begins using it, and the audience begins half-screaming, in a near-frenzied way. They can't believe that they're seeing what they're seeing. And that's the startup Apple, that's the two-man operation. Back when they didn't have as much in terms of resources, they still focused on creating that simple core, because that's what people care about. You think simplicity and evolution is a bullshit concept? Not that I know anything about you or the stuff you've worked on, so apologies if this sounds ignorant and facetious, but that's at the core of making anything. That's a "secret" that I stumbled upon independently. I know a lot of programmers who came upon that - and I find that I respect their work much more than I respect the work of people who don't "get it". Look at NewMogul. Do you think that if that site was started by Paul Graham it would be as small as it is right now? No, not because Paul Graham necessarily has a publicity advantage, but because if he were making it he'd most likely go about making it tied in with Hacker News. HN is his simple core model, and NewMogul could be seen as an expansion of that initial concept. As a concept of its own, it's failing - if you wanted to make a huge site for business-interested people, cloning Hacker News is not a smart idea. So the failure comes down not to the design, because the design is quite pretty, but to the concept, which is not simplistic enough to work.
- wallflower 18y ago
  As someone who loves design (and is not very good at it): it's interesting how simple the iPhone appears after seeing it - but to design something like it before seeing it is something else... http://appleiphone.blogspot.com/ http://appleiphone.blogspot.com/ http://www.mobilegadgetnews.com/index.php?showtopic=11533 http://www.mobilegadgetnews.com/index.php?showtopic=11533
jhy 18y ago
Well, it was simple relative to other smart phones. Not simple relative to a phone phone, sure.
- nickb 18y ago
  Simplicity and sophistication of the UI/UX has nothing to do with the simplicity of the overall system. Underlying system is probably more complex because the UI/UX is simpler. So maybe Gruber should have said that UI is simpler, but not the iPhone. If iPhone is so simple, why aren't other big companies as successful at creating new phones? Clearly, things are not as simple as some people would make you believe. Also, a jump from Razr or Palm (for example) to iPhone is much bigger than that of iPhone 1.0 to 3.0. Had Apple released a Razor-like iPhone and then iterated to iPhone 1.0 system over a year or two, I'd buy Gruber's argument. But iPhone was clearly 'from the future' when Apple presented it and everyone else was scrambling to catch up. So Gruber's argument is not really serious.
  - unalone 18y ago
    You can't "iterate" to the iPhone. That is his point. The iPhone is a core concept that you can't get from iterating. It's a basic phone model that didn't exist before. Other companies aren't as successful at making new phones because they're reluctant to abandon everything they have to create new systems and models. Their minds are stuck in a single pattern. Nobody making those mock-up sketches for the iPhone thought that Apple would get rid of a numberpad. Nobody. Every indie designer making a mock phone kept the numpad there. You can't necessarily throw lots of people at a concept and expect it to be better. It takes a certain moral bravery to get rid of everything and start anew.
10ren 18y ago
The article uses Microsoft as an example of iterating (from Windows 3.0 to Windows 95).
10ren 18y ago
I think Gruber's main point is that it could have been much more complex - people could think of dozens of extras, for both the mac and iPhone. "So where do you draw the line?" he asks. Add everything essential for it to be its basic cool thing, and stop. The features serve one purpose; they aren't an end in themselves. It's a kind of integrity. Apple went Exupery on the shuffle too, reducing it to the minimal feature-set.

by nickb 18y ago

ashot 18y ago

agreed, this is not a good metaphor

cubicle67 18y ago

Prior to the unveiling of the iPhone there were a large number of people who attempted to guess what an Apple phone would be like. Loads of high quality art was produced by lots of very talented people. And guess what? Nobody foresaw anything like what the iPhone ended up being. Most people couldn't get past trying to fit a phone into a click-wheel iPod. Do you seriously think the iPhone would have been better if Apple had asked people what they wanted?

nickb 18y ago
>Do you seriously think the iPhone would have been better if Apple had asked people what they wanted? That has nothing to do with the article's argument that Apple's secret is evolution of simple systems. As for your point, each approach has its virtues. What works for Apple probably won't work for the rest of us. Apple has hundreds of brilliant designers that create three different pixel perfect designs for each piece of new UI. Three different teams (and all brilliant at what they do) working against each other... how many of us can afford something like that?! I still contend that Gruber's argument about Apple's secret being simplicity and evolution is bullshit. He probably came across Gall's law and decided to spin it into an article about Apple.
- unalone 18y ago
  So you think that Apple makes good designs just because they're a large company? I've got news for you: the companies they compete against are much larger. Dell and Microsoft could easily afford more designers than even Apple has. The products they churn out are still comparatively worse. You'll notice that Gruber mentions the period in the 80s where Jobs was still an employee as a period which saw similar results. This is not something that requires a huge team. Back with the original Macintosh there was a similar effect. I would hope you've seen the computer's initial unveiling - it's on YouTube - because that's a video that inspires me to this day. Younger, tuxedoed Jobs reveals it, begins using it, and the audience begins half-screaming, in a near-frenzied way. They can't believe that they're seeing what they're seeing. And that's the startup Apple, that's the two-man operation. Back when they didn't have as much in terms of resources, they still focused on creating that simple core, because that's what people care about. You think simplicity and evolution is a bullshit concept? Not that I know anything about you or the stuff you've worked on, so apologies if this sounds ignorant and facetious, but that's at the core of making anything. That's a "secret" that I stumbled upon independently. I know a lot of programmers who came upon that - and I find that I respect their work much more than I respect the work of people who don't "get it". Look at NewMogul. Do you think that if that site was started by Paul Graham it would be as small as it is right now? No, not because Paul Graham necessarily has a publicity advantage, but because if he were making it he'd most likely go about making it tied in with Hacker News. HN is his simple core model, and NewMogul could be seen as an expansion of that initial concept. As a concept of its own, it's failing - if you wanted to make a huge site for business-interested people, cloning Hacker News is not a smart idea. So the failure comes down not to the design, because the design is quite pretty, but to the concept, which is not simplistic enough to work.
wallflower 18y ago
As someone who loves design (and is not very good at it): it's interesting how simple the iPhone appears after seeing it - but to design something like it before seeing it is something else... http://appleiphone.blogspot.com/ http://appleiphone.blogspot.com/ http://www.mobilegadgetnews.com/index.php?showtopic=11533 http://www.mobilegadgetnews.com/index.php?showtopic=11533

jhy 18y ago

Well, it was simple relative to other smart phones. Not simple relative to a phone phone, sure.

nickb 18y ago
Simplicity and sophistication of the UI/UX has nothing to do with the simplicity of the overall system. Underlying system is probably more complex because the UI/UX is simpler. So maybe Gruber should have said that UI is simpler, but not the iPhone. If iPhone is so simple, why aren't other big companies as successful at creating new phones? Clearly, things are not as simple as some people would make you believe. Also, a jump from Razr or Palm (for example) to iPhone is much bigger than that of iPhone 1.0 to 3.0. Had Apple released a Razor-like iPhone and then iterated to iPhone 1.0 system over a year or two, I'd buy Gruber's argument. But iPhone was clearly 'from the future' when Apple presented it and everyone else was scrambling to catch up. So Gruber's argument is not really serious.
- unalone 18y ago
  You can't "iterate" to the iPhone. That is his point. The iPhone is a core concept that you can't get from iterating. It's a basic phone model that didn't exist before. Other companies aren't as successful at making new phones because they're reluctant to abandon everything they have to create new systems and models. Their minds are stuck in a single pattern. Nobody making those mock-up sketches for the iPhone thought that Apple would get rid of a numberpad. Nobody. Every indie designer making a mock phone kept the numpad there. You can't necessarily throw lots of people at a concept and expect it to be better. It takes a certain moral bravery to get rid of everything and start anew.

10ren 18y ago

The article uses Microsoft as an example of iterating (from Windows 3.0 to Windows 95).

10ren 18y ago

I think Gruber's main point is that it could have been much more complex - people could think of dozens of extras, for both the mac and iPhone. "So where do you draw the line?" he asks. Add everything essential for it to be its basic cool thing, and stop. The features serve one purpose; they aren't an end in themselves. It's a kind of integrity. Apple went Exupery on the shuffle too, reducing it to the minimal feature-set.