

Clarification on Jobs' Apple TV UI Rejection - martingordon
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/jobs-apple-tv-margolis/

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kenjackson
His whole explantation seems to ignore the controversial part of his tweet:
"Now there is nobody to say "no" to bad design."

He was clearly referring to "now" and indicates the design is bad.

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dasil003
I'm one of the first to call bullshit anytime someone attributes a current
Apple issue to the death of Steve Jobs. But to me the controversial part isn't
the tweet, it's the firestorm of blog coverage that it generated. As far as
I'm concerned this guy just post a quick mini rant as most people are wont to
do on Twitter. Then out of nowhere a bunch of desperate bloggers latched on
and dialed the sensationalism up to 11.

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tsunamifury
Steve Jobs said yes to the iPod Hi-Fi, the Nano fatty (I was fine with this
design but others were not) the Apple TV Take 2 UI (Again widely disliked),
and several other small and larger 'missteps' in hind site. The reality is
that Apple made many other far better choices which overshadow these errors.

Honestly I don't think in 5 years we are going to have an Apple thats in
shambles and we'll point back to the AppleTV3 UI as the turning point.

This was a statement made by a man with some influence that hits on the
misinformed fear that Jobs was the only one doing all the management, design
and engineering work at Apple.

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joezydeco
The saddest thing about this episode is that we will probably never, ever, see
a complete inside story about the design and making of the iPhone like we got
with the story of Macintosh. It _has_ to be epic.

Even little things like <http://www.folklore.org> are fascinating and preserve
the history. How will we get the true history of future projects without layer
upon layer of analysis, hand-wringing, and legal threats?

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gpcz
Apple was also very secretive about the early Macintosh when it was being
developed, but time passed and eroded the necessity of the secrecy compared to
the entertainment value of the story. Archive.org records show that Folklore
started hosting Macintosh stories for the first time around January 26, 2004.
The Macintosh 128k was released on January 24, 1984. That means it took 20
years for the early Mac stories to accumulate into the critical mass necessary
for Revolution in the Valley to be written. As time passes, we'll probably
start hearing the juicy stories of the iPhone's development.

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joezydeco
Apple was just a different company back then.

When the Mac launched Apple made all the key guys available for interviews. We
knew their names, we knew what they worked on. Sure, we didn't get the dirt
until long after the fact, but the Mac didn't just drop from the sky with
Steve Jobs standing on top of it.

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forrestblount
I woke up today to friends posting on facebook about getting out of Apple
stock "at the top" because of these SJ UI rejection posts. Even if the ui is a
mistake (and I'm not sure it is, I haven't played with it yet), Apple has made
other missteps in the past 5 years without meaningfully impacting the growth
in their share price.

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ak217
Sounds like Margolis backpedaled on his statement once he realized his social
repercussions.

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nchlswu
Definitely why he issued the in depth statement, but I don't think he's
backpedaling necessarily. I took a brief look at his Twitter feed and it
looked consistent with his opinions.

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jemeshsu
Quoting from tweet always runs the danger of out of context. I suspect the
grid in the UI is to prepare for apps on AppleTV in iOS 6, when Apple launches
a Thunderbolt Display with built in AppleTV, or what you might call iTV.

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nextparadigms
Sounds like an excuse after they realized that the comment might have an
impact on their Apple TV sales, not that they were incredibly large to begin
with.

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rubergly
Who's "they"? TechCrunch? Or the engineer that hasn't worked at Apple since
2008?

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hristov
It is interesting to watch a giant PR machine go into action. I hope Mr.
Margolis' legs are ok.

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runn1ng
Huh. I am glad I am not the only one who found the new Apple TV GUI terribly
ugly.

