
Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design - mnm1
https://onezero.medium.com/jony-ives-errors-why-ugly-isn-t-always-bad-design-but-beautiful-sometimes-is-9c5fde886263
======
bangonkeyboard
_" That vague hostility towards humans keeps peeping through."_

A story recounted here last year [0]:

 _During the development of the first iPhone, Ive and his team became enamored
with the look of an extruded aluminum prototype. Even though it was
immediately apparent that the model 's sharp edges made it physically painful
to use as a phone, they persisted in trying to push the design and paper over
its principal practical problems. It took Steve Jobs to finally step in, point
out the obvious, and check Jony Ive's worst tendencies. [1]

Steve Jobs is gone, and nobody is left to fulfill his roles._

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17056930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17056930)

[1]: [https://www.cultofmac.com/488008/jony-ive-book-excerpt-
iphon...](https://www.cultofmac.com/488008/jony-ive-book-excerpt-iphone/)

~~~
thomasjudge
This. As CEO, one of Steve’s key functions was to serve as chief product
officer. Design is an element of great products, and at Apple it has been a
key element and key differentiator. As has been oft-noted, Tim is in no way a
product person, and so without Steve we have seen design imperatives
(thinness) unchecked

~~~
idlewords
Jobs had plenty of design failures on his conscience, like the G3 cube, the
skeuomorphism fad, and the hockey puck mouse. We should not pretend the guy
had irreplaceable design sense.

~~~
scarface74
Skeuomorphism wasn’t a failure. The iPhone and the touch interface were new to
the market. Making the interface look familiar was important at the time even
though it went too far. The iPhone did well from iOS 1 - iOS 6 and I don’t
remember too many complaints until iOS 6.

~~~
kerng
Ipaq had touch 3-4 years before iPhone came out. Obviously not as slick.
People seem to always forget that the iPhone was just an evolution not some
kind of magically unexpected or unanticipated device.

~~~
darkpuma
I remember CRT touchscreens being used as cash registers in the late 90s. It's
true, touch was nothing new. What was new was the combination of capacitive
touch _and_ a slick responsive UI. Previous systems had unresponsive GUIs or
inferior touchscreen technology like resistive, IR or lightpen.

Getting both right _at the same time_ was the big first for the iphone, not
the bare concept of touchscreens as input devices.

~~~
WoodenChair
What both you and grandparent are missing is the biggest iPhone touch
innovation of all: multitouch. Multitouch was invented largely by a one-person
startup that Apple purchased, and the iPhone became the first device to mass-
produce it. The book The One Device covers its development well:
[https://amzn.to/2lrbKA7](https://amzn.to/2lrbKA7)

~~~
duncanawoods
IMHO multi-touch is really overrated in significance. The only multi finger
gesture I use is pinch zoom and it’s like once a week. If that was a widget or
triple tapping or something, I wouldnt notice.

The improvements to touch that made it magical was the super responsive typing
and momentum scrolling and it’s all just one fingered.

~~~
nicoburns
Super responsive typing actually does depend on multitouch, because if you
type fast then you will have multiple fingers touching different keys at the
same time.

~~~
duncanawoods
It's a stretch to call that multi-touch. The key press events are still a
serialised stream of single finger touches. When people have spoken about
multi-touch features and patents they have invariably been referring to chords
and gestures.

~~~
scarface74
From the app standpoint it is, but not from the actual implementation
algorithm.

------
piinbinary
I think it's good to draw a distinction between visual design and functional
design. Design that focuses on function can sometimes (but definitely not
always) result in designs that are also visually appealing, but design that
focuses on the visual rarely produces a very functional result.

I'd much rather look at a mac book pro than a thinkpad. Next to the minimalist
design of the mac, a thinkpad looks like you ripped out part of a server and
started carrying it around.

But, I'd rather type on a thinkpad than on a mac. The keys are better (if not
as good as they once were), the surface is neither too cold nor too hot to
rest my wrists on, and the edge of the laptop isn't sharp like the edge of a
mac pro. Once you start using a thing, the visual details melt away and the
functional details take over.

~~~
tachyonbeam
I've owned multiple Thinkpads, and have a MacBook Air at home. I'm a
pragmatist, so I don't mind that my work Thinkpad is all black and looks like
it's from the 1990s. I enjoy that it has a built-in Nvidia GPU (which I use
for machine learning). What makes me sad that with a fresh Ubuntu 18.04
install, my work Thinkpad can't even do two hours of battery life.

My MacBook Air at home is 3 years old, but it's thin and light. I take it with
me when I travel, and the battery will last through a whole trans-atlantic
flight. I don't actually care about the visual design, but the 2016 MacBook
Air's keyboard feels very comfortable to type on, and the battery life is
awesome.

Unfortunately, when this MacBook Air dies, it will probably get replaced by a
PC. I don't really want to shell an insane amount of money on a new Mac,
especially in an era where you can't get one without a touchbar, and I won't
get the convenience of a non-USB-C port.

~~~
jeswin
> What makes me sad that with a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 install, my work Thinkpad
> can't even do two hours of battery life.

This has everything to do with the unresolved problems of Linux power
management. I use Ubuntu on Thinkpads too, and battery life is decent after a
bit of configuration. Windows meanwhile gives all day battery life on
Thinkpads.

~~~
nextos
I have managed to achieve the same battery life, down minute differences in
the single digit either side, between macOS and Linux on a MacBook Air (which
is a simple all Intel machine).

I think the problem is that most distributions ship with no Powertop or udev
rules, plus lots of unnecessary services and devices on by default.

One really nice thing Apple does is optimizing Safari for battery life. My
comparison was Firefox on macOS vs Linux. With Safari, I'd get 20-30 min more.

I bet Firefox and other programs would benefit from some black-box GCC/LVM
flag optimization to improve battery usage.

~~~
nicoburns
Firefox on Mac's big battery life problem is apparently lack of integration
with the system compositor. There's a fix in the works for this. Although I
expect safari will still be better in this regard. Safari is pretty
impressive.

------
dwaite
While it is obvious that the 2013 "Trashcan" Mac Pro was not a successful
design, it seems a lot of people don't get what Apple was going for.

Their goal was a computer heavily focused on multithreaded and OpenCL loads,
as most vendors were still preaching to developers that the single threaded
performance increase ramp was dead, and workload would have to scale out
instead.

At the same time, it is quite easy to point to the Mac Pros before and after
it and say that they have a lot of wasted power and space. The new Mac Pro
design has a 1400W power supply and is mostly empty space to accommodate the
"fully loaded" expansion options that most buyers quite frankly will not
purchase.

As Thunderbolt is basically an externalized PCIe interface, there is certainly
a case to be made that extensibility is better served as a separate unit. This
allowed the design of the core system to forgo modularity, and have an
extremely compact design. This also allowed them to have a reduced parts cost.

But the reality was: \- Component thermals did not stay balanced, with GPUs
using far more power and giving off far more heat on the high end. This meant
that there was a shortage of pro-level parts usable without redoing the core
design. \- As Apple didn't upgrade the core design, it wound up having dated
thunderbolt support. \- There is certainly an argument to be made that
extensibility within the case is a cleaner, more manageable design for the end
user \- Intel's licensing for Thunderbolt has been guarded, and thus the
market has been sub-par. For example, eGPU took ages to become available.
Another example - Intel forbid RAID assemblies to be sold without disks.

In the end, I personally see what they were trying to go for, but in a lot of
ways the way they thought technology and needs would evolve were missed by the
2013 pro. I don't see an issue with the design based on where they thought
things were going - the issue IMHO is that it took them six years to react
with a new product.

(FWIW, I was planning to buy the second rev of the trashcan pro - which I
slowly realized would never happen)

~~~
Shivetya
The trashcan was a bad design from day one. It was more oriented towards the
pretentious developers instead of the professional developer. I suggest the
new Mac Pro is as well. It is more about being seen with it than being able to
use and considering its price point that exclusivity seems to have been an
Apple goal, as in you are not worthy of our hardware if the price makes you
flinch. Same for that monitor.

The new Mac Pro's modular feature ties you completely to Apple for GPU
improvements, I did not verify if it also ties you to them for CPU upgrades.
Simply put, they designed a system by which you are stuck with them that added
cost but no value.

I am hoping that with Ive gone that we leave the pretentious era of Apple
behind, the era that resulted in the trashcan, designer bands for a watch let
alone a gold 10k watch, and even to the point of their new headquarters.

~~~
kalleboo
The trashcan wasn't oriented towards developers of any kind. In 2013,
developers had no need for the dual AMD GPUs that you were forced to buy. It
was oriented to people using Final Cut Pro (a pretty small market)

------
pkamb
I for one quite like the Apple TV 4 remote.

It has one major issue in that it's symmetrical and you sometimes pick it up
the wrong way.

But other than that I love it. The touchpad is great with the Apple TV,
especially once you figure out that you can single-tap the edges like a D-Pad
for precision.

It lays flat, so you can tap the play/pause button on your coffee table rather
than picking up the remote.

There are just enough buttons for the Apple TV functions, all of which are big
and easy to press and work with a satisfying click. No mushy rubber.

I wouldn't want a game controller designed with the same sensibilities. That's
something you're holding for hours at a time and needs to be designed for your
hand.

But I don't need a "comfortable" cable remote. I'll take the nice objet d'art.

~~~
buzzerbetrayed
It drives me crazy that you can’t hold the Apple TV remote while watching tv
for fear of accidental input. As soon as I turn something on, I set it down.
Then, when I need it, I slowly reach for it, being careful not to
inadvertently hit any buttons or swipe the touch pad.

When you’re using it, it’s fine. No complaints. But any time you’re not using
it, it feels like a ticking time bomb waiting to mess up your show.

~~~
Vinnl
I love how these different usage patterns can make the same thing great for
some and terrible for others. It reminds me of my experience on quite a few
websites:

I'm one of those people who likes to select the text they're reading - or at
least the first line or so of the paragraph I'm in. It helps me not lose track
of where I am.

However, that means I'm often continuously selecting/double-clicking lines of
text in an article. Unfortunately, some websites now show a popover menu next
to text you select, e.g. to tweet that line of text. That popover menu often
obscures the text I'm reading.

That's something that would go completely unnoticed when the design is tested
on people that simply scroll down while they're reading.

~~~
roelschroeven
Similarly but yet completely different I always positon the mouse cursor away
from the text I'm reading, since I find the cursor distracting. Nowadays that
sometimes has an annoying side effect: some news sites have video thumbnails
in side columns. If the mouse cursors hovers over one of them for a few
seconds, the browser opens the page with the full video. Gone is the article I
was reading.

I don't understand what problem the developers were trying to solve with that
feature/bug.

------
Glyptodon
In my opinion the hated puck mouse is far and away better than the current
Magic Mouse, which will will pretty much destroy your hands and give you
carpal tunnel guaranteed. The puck mouse had an orientation trough on the
button that was easy enough to get used to and, more importantly, was huge
enough to be substantive and supportive under a hand. As far as I'm concerned
the magic mouse is a class action lawsuit in a box. I used one daily for a few
months once and it took years for my hand to recover.

~~~
bangonkeyboard
I honestly don't know how the Magic Mouse is meant to be used for extended
lengths of time. The touch surface means that not only do your index and
middle fingers need to be held hovering above it, but the rest of your fingers
also need to claw in from the sides to keep overhangs of skin from triggering
stray cursor movements. It is truly painful to use.

~~~
_ph_
You don't need to hold the non-clicking fingers over the mouse for longer
time, just lift them slightly when clicking, so a click becomes one finger
pressing down, the others slightly moving back in parallel.

~~~
beezischillin
Indeed, I never really had to develop a strategy, just started using it and
used it since. Only thing I did was install magicprefs to make it slightly
faster and never thought about the rest. Compared to the generic Microsoft-
branded wireless mouse I used about 8 years ago with my PC, the difference is
night and day. That mouse, designed for both left and right-handed people
messed me up so much that my pink went numb for months even after I stopped
using it. The magic mouse is much more comfortable than it looks, strangely
enough.

------
pier25
I don't know why, but Apple has constantly had bad mice.

The hockey puck is mentioned in the article which is probably the worst mouse
Apple has made.

Then came the Apple Pro Mouse (the transparent one) which didn't have a scroll
wheel and IIRC didn't have a right click either. In the early 00s those
features were super common. I remember having a Microsoft's Intellimouse with
a scroll wheel in the late 90s.

Then came the Mighty Mouse. Apple added the scroll ball and right click but
the scroll ball was prone to failure. Mine died after 6 months of use because
the ball got a bit of dirt. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to open the mouse
to clean the ball without breaking it.

Then came the Magic Mouse 1. Apple added the touch functionality but the mouse
was pretty heavy including the weight of the batteries and IMO the noise of
the click was quite annoying. Apple worked on the weight problem with v2 by
adding their own battery, but they added the charging port at the bottom of
the mouse (facepalm). Not sure if the noise of the click was solved, I didn't
personally try v2.

~~~
asark
> they added the charging port at the bottom of the mouse (facepalm).

I thought this was incredibly stupid until I actually used one. The battery
lasts so long and charges so fast that it's not a problem, to the point that I
wouldn't pay so much as a dollar to "fix" it by moving the port to the edge.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I dislike the inconsistency where the corresponding keyboard is a USB keyboard
with a cable connected, but the mouse isn't (and physically couldn't be).

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The big difference is you don’t drag your keyboard around the table putting a
strain on the connector.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Mice seem to have handled that fine for decades?

------
milemi
I don't understand how Apple TV remote ever came into being, let alone how it
still exists. Even when you somehow break the symmetry, in my case by sticking
an ugly address label on the bottom part, skating around the screen with the
touch pad is a game of skill that you are forced to play when all you want to
do is just select a damn thing on the screen. Not to mention having to undo
whatever I've done by touching the touch pad every time I grab the thing.

~~~
mhh__
I don't have one personally but every time I use one at a friend house it just
feels crap in a way that I've never felt with an apple product before.

It's obviously well made but it just feels pretentious compared to a phone or
remote than you can actually type with.

~~~
saagarjha
> remote than you can actually type with

Wouldn't that be a reasonably large remote?

~~~
mhh__
[https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/31xFU74uJ6L...](https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/31xFU74uJ6L._AC_SL1500_.jpg)

It doesn't even need letter/number buttons, just some proper tactile feedback
rather than this smooth hello-my-owner-has-more-money-than-sense rotating
action thing i.e. the scroll wheel on an iPod classic from the mid 2000s was
miles better.

------
WheelsAtLarge
All the designers I've worked with have all put beauty over function. That's
just who they are. I suspect that if they emphasized function their career
would have been greatly impacted towards the negative.

One big project that comes to mind is The Getty Museum in Los Angeles -at a
billion dollar cost. The architecture is beautiful but it lacks function.
Getting around the museum as a visitor is like entering a mase. I'm sure you
could not convince the architect that he should have changed it. I don't have
the know how to know if it could have been designed with an emphasis towards
function. But I do know that it's beautiful so in my mind, the architect was a
genius.

Ives should get the same consideration.

~~~
SirLuxuryYacht
I have never been to the Getty, but from my experience going to plenty of
other museums it has always seemed like getting "lost" was the whole point.
You can remove yourself from the real world for a bit and have total focus on
the exhibition.

Designers should tend to put emphasis on beauty, otherwise they would just be
called engineers. I'm not a designer either, but I think the secret sauce is
convincing users (of hardware, software, no matter) that form followed
function. Ive is most certainly a designer so the changes he made, e.g.
removing ports, were driven by aesthetic rather than function. Without the
checks and balances named Steve Jobs these were allowed to ship, and is a
reason why Apple is getting a bad rap.

------
paranoidrobot
The article points out some very high visibility things that Ive was either
responsible for, or at least signed off on. The author though misses what I
think is the one that has had the most impact on people - Apple's insistence
on removal of strain relief on cables.

Apple's cables have for generations now been fraying and cracking all because
someone decided that strain relief was an unsightly and unnecessary thing.

It could be forgiven if it was on one era of products, and learned their
lesson when people started getting electrical shocks, devices started dying,
and things being set on fire - but no, they persist.

Even today they've only made the most minor of attempts at introducing strain
relief.

~~~
ghostpepper
I'm afraid I can't picture what a cable with strain relief would look like.
Can you post an example photo?

~~~
CaliforniaKarl
For an example, see [http://www.blogquail.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/pic-1.jp...](http://www.blogquail.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/pic-1.jpg)

The part circled in red is the strain relief, separate from the cable itself,
and from the connector.

Image taken from [http://www.blogquail.com/strain-
relief/](http://www.blogquail.com/strain-relief/)

------
treve
There's lot of focus in this article on failure. I enjoy Apple bashing as much
as the next guy, but one has to assume in the same 20 years Apple's head of
design would have had as many, if not more successes?

I've seen a bunch of anti-Ive comments and articles here recently. Is everyone
just picking out all failures and attributing them to him and design successes
to Jobs? Is that really representative and based in truth? The article reads
as conjecture which makes me wonder about the authors motivation.

~~~
killjoywashere
Jobs made Ive, very publicly, which made Ive untouchable. I think what you're
hearing is a mix of catharsis and a hope that someone in Cupertino will
actually take note of some of it. The 2012 retina MacBook an the various
iPhones were probably the high water mark for the Jobs-Ive collaboration. It
is well known that Ives proposed and Jobs disposed. Lacking the disposer, the
increased rate of fails was just half a notch higher, but that was the half
notch that sent a lot of folks over the edge.

~~~
skohan
I think this reading appeals to our human desire to interpret things as
personality-driven narratives, but I'm not convinced it's accurate. I think
many of "Ive's missteps", and the behavior of Apple post-Jobs can be
adequately explained by market forces and changes in the incentive structure
driving Apple's product development.

During that period, Apple went from being a somewhat niche player for digital
artists and enthusiasts to being one of most valuable brands on the planet.
They went from having to work very hard to convince consumers that they were
worth taking a risk on, to being a coveted status symbol which some customers
would pay virtually anything for. I don't think it's surprising that during
this period they would push their product line toward higher-margin, less
utilitarian products you might want to replace more often for their various
flaws.

I also don't think it's surprising that we're seeing Apple signaling a shift
towards their old, pro-consumer ways now that the smartphone market is
weakening.

Yes it's compelling to think about things in terms of the interplay of a few
individuals, and the hubris of a rouge designer, but in general understanding
the behavior of corporations through the lens of incentive structures is much
more accurate.

------
minimaxir
I'm surprised the article didn't mention the Lightning-charged Magic Mouse
given the infamous memes.

(IMO, it's not bad design; you're not _supposed_ to be using it plugged-in
24/7, you're supposed it to plug it in for occasions when you aren't using the
mouse anyways)

EDIT: it was mentioned, I missed it

~~~
idlewords
Gratuitously making a mouse unusable during charging, where there was an easy
and obvious way to make it usable during charging, is bad design.

~~~
leoc
But there's no easy and obvious way to make a _good_ cable connector that will
make the mouse usable during charging. You could add a connector that works
somewhat poorly, on the theory that those shortcomings don't matter since the
mouse will only be plugged in occasionally and briefly. But if you do that
then many users will in fact leave the mouse plugged in permanently, "just in
case", effectively transforming it, in their experience, from a nice wireless
mouse to a dodgy wired mouse. (It's much the same story if you add a connector
which is mechanically robust and doesn't make the mouse feel horrible to use
while in use, but makes it laborious to plug and unplug the cable.) Now you
could argue that the decision to avoid that is patronising design, or
manipulative design, or design that doesn't respect the user's authority. But
it's not an obvious _mistake_ , at least.

~~~
idlewords
Of course it's an obvious mistake. That's why people laugh out loud when they
see the photo of the thing charging.

~~~
leoc
> That's why people laugh out loud when they see the photo of the thing
> charging.

That's why it's an apparent mistake. It's only an obvious mistake if there's
an obviously—and really, not just apparently—better solution.

------
mrandish
I think the best observation in the article is the one about "as simple as
possible, but no simpler", but Apple under Ives too often forgetting the
second part.

I've come to dislike the copycat trends that Apple's stringent design ethos
has unleashed. Sure, it's occasionally been brilliant but the article does a
good job outlining the significant errors - and other posters here fill in the
blanks.

I'm glad the end of the Ives era seems to be sparking some healthy
reassessment and introspection in the industry.

------
stock_toaster
> Given that the yields are said to be worse for the “butterfly” keys than
> normal scissor keys, and that they’re more expensive to make, one can only
> think that either Apple is stubborn as hell at the executive level, or so
> tightly constrained by its design goals that it can’t figure out a way to
> reintroduce scissor-switch keys because that would mean designing an
> entirely new body and case for the whole line.

I think the author underestimates large scale production pipelines, where you
may be many years out (due to things like design, test, assembly creation,
assembly optimization, backchannel buildup, etc). Most products are several
years in development before they are released.

------
js2
The thing that drives me crazy on the remote is that the buttons aren't
backlit. I can't think of a better use of backlit keys. A $5 rubber case fixes
the ergonomic issues, but in a dark room, not being able to see the buttons,
which are impossible for me to memorize, pisses me off.

~~~
scarface74
I use the remote app exclusively for both my AppleTVs and the Roku app to
control my Roku TVs for that reason.

------
infosecdude64
My wife, kids and I have slowly been replacing all our Apple products over the
past couple of years. We've replace the kid's MacBook Airs with MS Surface and
my MBP was replaced with an MSI laptop with proper dedicated GPU.

The decision to change was quite natural. The kids like the Surface and how it
was a touch screen, but could also be used as a laptop that they could do
school work on.

Moving to Windows was easy for me once WSL was introduced. I no longer needed
OSX to do development as I am now able to do everything I was doing on my MBP
on my MSI in WSL.

I still can't believe that Apple has yet to come out with a laptop with a
touch screen that isn't an iPad. The touchbar is very clever, but I never use
it.

The last couple of straws for me for moving off of Apple at 10+ years was the
MBP. Touch Bar, shitty keyboard, and no proper USB ports....I hate having to
keep dongles at the ready.

For me, at least, the magic that was Apple died when Steve died. Now they just
push out product and services and nothing that can be considered "magic" or
unique.

------
unstatusthequo
I've always wondered why the camera sticks out in the more recent iPhones. Do
they hedge bets that people will put a case on? Without a case, it bothers me
that it can't lay flat on a table, desk, etc...

~~~
kmlx
i never put a case on my iphone x. the biggest problem? it keeps sliding
everywhere. the glass surface is so smooth that it never catches grip. this is
a major design flaw. their solution? put a case on (facepalm)

------
intopieces
I read this article from start to finish. It never gets off the ground, so I
don't recommend bothering. There are much more interesting critiques of Ive's
design.

------
jdofaz
In my opinion the fruit flavor iMacs and the clamshell iBooks were incredibly
ugly.

Same feeling towards the original versions of MacOSX with the “lickable” candy
color theme.

~~~
meddlepal
The colorful iMac and iBook were a fun for the times reaction to the banality
of mostly beige and sometimes black boxes most 90's computer users were used
to seeing.

You have to kind of look at and consider them in the context of their time.

I do kind of miss fun colored devices. We're in a new era of beige with all
this brushed aluminum and glass. I really would love some funky colored
electronics again.

------
andy_ppp
The article contains here-say mixed with facts about how bad Apple’s design
process. It’s worth pointing out that while there have been some failures
there have been some beautiful successes too. I love how the author blames the
design team for complicating the touch wheel in one design, who knows if this
is true it just fits with the narrative that is trying to be told.

My guess is that all of this is a lot more complicated than the author thinks
and the road to simplicity is a very difficult one that has changed our
technical devices for the better (overall). We’d still have plastic phones
with “ergonomic” slide out keyboards if it was up to the author.

------
wastedhours
I'm not usually an Apple apologist, but I appreciate their tenacity in trying
to turn beautiful visual design into genuinely functional design.

They might fail at it, but it feels like they put a stake in the sand, and
then run to get there. Sometimes they trip up and don't get there (Magic Mouse
2, "you're holding it wrong"), and sometimes they do (MBPr, Watch, several
iterations of iPhone).

I don't have the disposable income to fund said tenacity at the bleeding edge
(in case they do trip), but my iPad Mini v2 and MBPr are both examples of a
product they doubled-down on and got right from both ends.

~~~
Technetium_Hat
Macbook pro right from both ends? I guess we're ignoring that \- the keyboards
don't work \- the touchbar exists \- all the thermal issues it has had

~~~
wastedhours
Sorry for my shorthand, but "MBPr" is usually used to refer to "Macbook Pro
Retina", so the c.2015 model. That one they very much got right from a
usability and aesthetic perspective.

------
gdubs
I love a lot of Apple’s design, but there is one particular example that
frustrates me often: the mouse that comes with the iMac Pro. It perfectly
illustrates Jobs’ mantra that design isn’t just about looks.

The problem is that in order to produce the beautiful silhouette, they put the
charging port on the bottom. I never seem to remember to charge the thing, so
it’s always needing to be plugged-in. And then you can’t use.

What I find bonkers about this is that mice were wired for the majority of
their existence, so it’s not like this was a hard one to figure out. They just
chose to go with what looked nice.

It is pretty, though.

~~~
specialist
Ya, the belly port is ridiculous.

After long distain, I finally adapted to the Magic Mouse:

Movable trackpad.

I now nudge it around a bit and then take my hand off to do the gestures on
the top surface. Previously, I tried to continue holding it while doing
gestures, and it's way too small for my hands.

I still prefer the trackpad, but now the Magic Mouse feels usable.

------
Animats
Usability and beauty often clash. See Bang & Olufsen audio equipment from the
1980s and 1990s. They're works of art, but a pain to use.

------
teekert
“In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating.
It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be
further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-
made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the
product or service” Steve Jobs

------
tus88
I think Job's visionary pragmatism is what made Apple products awesome (past
tense) rather than Ive's design chops.

------
product50
I really like the Apple TV remote. It takes some time getting used but once
you are, you can navigate within any app so very quickly. Even in this comment
thread, I can see this is a polarizing topic - but I am going to disagree that
it is a terrible design.

------
gigatexal
The iPhone 4 and 4s were the best looking iPhones ever made in my opinion.

~~~
skohan
Agree. The back glass was not completely practical, but mine survived plenty
of drops, and the whole thing had a nice weight/density to it, and a very
premium feel.

~~~
Technetium_Hat
The closest thing I have felt to its just solid feel is my essential phone.
don't get me wrong - it is not a good phone, but the build quality is
unbelievable.

------
_Codemonkeyism
I loved my cube which I tuned with new graphics cards, processor cards - there
was a whole community around extending cubes with hardware without active
cooling.

------
xhgdvjky
you're basically saying ive over prioritized visual design over all else

but remember that a picture is usually your first impression. their goal is to
sell.

------
tomger
I think the author of this article thinks a design team is run as some sort of
isolated dictatorship. In reality design teams balance stakeholder feedback,
technical constraints, timelines and so on.

~~~
mwfunk
That's how it works when different teams within a company have an ideal
balance of power. When everything's correctly balanced, the right people make
the right decisions, and help to correct each other's wrong decisions.

I bet at most companies though, there isn't an ideal balance of power between
teams, or between the different divisions of a company. I don't think that
balance happens naturally. It might even become harder to maintain that
balance, as a company becomes more successful.

Supposedly Microsoft during the Ballmer years was known for political conflict
between the Office and Windows divisions. Sometimes what would be good for one
(putting Office on as many platforms as possible) might be bad for the other
one (the Windows people might want Office on as few platforms as possible).
Conflicts like that are inevitable, but resolving them can be a crap shoot. If
there's a lack of executive leadership, or a political power imbalance between
the groups, the wrong group can win sometimes.

------
leejcarol
[https://www.yourteaminindia.com/hire-java-
developer](https://www.yourteaminindia.com/hire-java-developer)

------
ricardobeat
There are so much better choices to critique than the Apple remote. That Sky
remote is awful regardless of how you slice it.

------
omershapira
10 points for resisting the temptation to call it "Ive Made a Mistake".

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blunte
"Keep the story going. Sign up for an extra free read."

Why, why, why do people create content and give it to Medium to wall it off?

~~~
lacampbell
Same issue here. It's not a dialog I can close off, I've reached my monthly
limit.

------
m3kw9
This article is perfect for submission to The Onion

~~~
dang
Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments here?

