'After Steve' Examines the Tensions That Led to Jony Ive's Departure From Apple

[KPOM]

I don't believe we would have the new Apple Studio if Ive were still at Apple. And we would probably still be stuck with the (polarising) Touch Bar on MB keyboards.

It appeared that Ive was more interested in slimming products to the point of uselessness than considering what the user really wanted. I don't need my desktop monitor to be super slim: it sits on a desk and I don't lug it around with me. The MBA yes: it's a form-first premise. The MBP no: I need ports.

I'm glad he's gone.

I’m not sure I fully agree with you. In retrospect, I think the fundamental issue with the 2016 MacBook Pro is that Apple tried to do too many things at once. Going all-USB-C, attempting a keyboard redesign, and adding the Touch Bar, individually, may have been worthwhile, but doing it all at once, and not providing sufficient transitional tools hindered the effort. The butterfly keyboard was flawed and it should not have taken until 2020 to fix it. Eventually we will get to all USB-C (we are mostly there), but Apple should have had better USB-C hubs available with pass-through charging, multiple USB-A, SD, and HDMI ports ready from the start. (Something like this). The Touch Bar could have been useful, but it needed broader support across the Mac (e.g. there was never a desktop keyboard with it), and it would have been better as an additional input rather than a replacement for the function key row. I also didn’t understand why Apple never designed a MagSafe USB-C charging cable, or at least retain an optional MagSafe charger given that they had marketed for years about how great it was.

 

[EdT]

Design?

What design?!

It is a corpse assembled by engineers, you can see a mile away, even the texture of the ventilation is not consistent with other professional desktop Macs.

It’s an stretched out Mac mini, an unspeakable crap.

And if I know a little about the engineers Apple will have heat dissipation problems if used for what you really need, the Mac Pro 2013 had them which was a tube with the fan on it, imagine this dissipating air from one side.

I’ve watched a lot of YouTube reviews about the Studio, and the one thing that I haven’t seen anywhere is that the system runs hot. No matter how hard the reviewer stressed it the temperature didn’t go very high at all. Usually not as high as Apple reported in its March product announcement when they were showing how fast the Ultra versions were. The other thing most reviewers note is that they aren’t getting the speed increases with the Studio that Apple said they got, but that’s a separate issue for people editing 8 or more 4K or 8k videos streams simultaneously with graphics and sound overlays before those speed problems even start to show up and I am definitely not someone in need of that level of performance.

Heat does not seem to be a problem at all with any Apple Silicone series computer. You might think it’s ugly but I don’t think anyone is have thermal throttling problems. They are having ‘the compiling time isn’t scaling so that spending twice as much on a Studio Ultra cuts your editing time to 1/2 the time that a Studio Max takes to do the same work’.

 

[Xand&Roby]

Of course it has a design. It's a desktop computer. What do you expect it to look like? The Venus de Milo? And the texture of the ventilation? Really? It's on the underside for Christ's sake. Who cares?

It's a mountain of ****, it's exactly what it sounds like, a saving job done by a stupid engineer.

And those who exalt it deserve exactly that: a mountain of ****.

Only Apple since Jobs returned decided that mountains of **** weren't for her.

So of the two choices one: did Jobs not know what was right for Apple or do you know what is right for Apple?

 

[RadioHedgeFund]

The removable batteries with the built in LEDs were great.

If anything Apple is going back to the way Ive did things before he was removed from his role as a designer. His DNA runs through everything they sell at the minute.

 

[troublador]

It's a mountain of ****, it's exactly what it sounds like, a saving job done by a stupid engineer.

And those who exalt it deserve exactly that: a mountain of ****.

Only Apple since Jobs returned decided that mountains of **** weren't for her.

So of the two choices one: did Jobs not know what was right for Apple or do you know what is right for Apple?

So you know better than Apple's engineers, do you? What qualifications do you have?

 

[RadioHedgeFund]

Agreed. The butterfly keyboard machines were a nightmare, but people's tendency to pin them on Ive has always seemed unfair. None of us know who made those bad decisions, but we do know the man was involved in some iconic designs.

Not just iconic but genuinely better. I might berate all phones looking the same and Apple's current totalitarian methodology but they became the top dog by taking other people's ideas and genuinely making them better, better integrated and easier to use.

Ive had a huge part in that.

If the current Apple brought out the iPod they'd be in a battle with the EU over the right for consumers to 'sideload' their own MP3 collection. And we'd probably have just as moronic forum posts defending that very idea.

"I don't want my iPod getting malware from some MP3's from Kazaa or Limewire."

 

[Xand&Roby]

I’ve watched a lot of YouTube reviews about the Studio, and the one thing that I haven’t seen anywhere is that the system runs hot. No matter how hard the reviewer stressed it the temperature didn’t go very high at all. Usually not as high as Apple reported in its March product announcement when they were showing how fast the Ultra versions were. The other thing most reviewers note is that they aren’t getting the speed increases with the Studio that Apple said they got, but that’s a separate issue for people editing 8 or more 4K or 8k videos streams simultaneously with graphics and sound overlays before those speed problems even start to show up and I am definitely not someone in need of that level of performance.

Heat does not seem to be a problem at all with any Apple Silicone series computer. You might think it’s ugly but I don’t think anyone is have thermal throttling problems. They are having ‘the compiling time isn’t scaling so that spending twice as much on a Studio Ultra cuts your editing time to 1/2 the time that a Studio Max takes to do the same work’.

I think the miracle is because of ARM processors, Apple Silicon, not how the cooling was engineered, because it was really badly engineered.

If you put an X86 in that toilet, it's on fire, as has already happened with Mac Pro 2013 and earlier, with iMac Pro, MacBook Pro and Mac mini Server.

I used Mac Pro 2008/9 for rendering on a national TV, every Mac had a special cooling room.

Mac mini Servers worked until you had to finalize the product, then it felt like you were at an airport runway.

ARM is the success (not Apple’s, which came to us after abandoning PowerPC), certainly not a box assembled by an engineer.

 

[Xand&Roby]

So you know better than Apple's engineers, do you? What qualifications do you have?

I am a customer who has lavished enormous liquidity in Apple coffers, for work and in my private life, I know the defects in the products and how those who put them up for sale work (often without testing them). I think I’m even the only inhabitant on the planet (apart from those who wrote them) to have read AppleCare contracts, to have read their practically daily update dates, so much so that I'm not afraid to say that where I live those contracts are, according to the law, scams.

I am also one who knows something about design, and also about pricing logic.

Need more?

Now ask yourself why the phone you make in your hand despite having 3 months warms up to write a message on Macrumors.

 

[EdT]

I think the miracle is because of ARM processors, Apple Silicon, not how the cooling was engineered, because it was really badly engineered.

If you put an X86 in that toilet, it's on fire, as has already happened with Mac Pro 2013 and earlier, with iMac Pro, MacBook Pro and Mac mini Server.

I used Mac Pro 2008/9 for rendering on a national TV, every Mac had a special cooling room.

Mac mini Servers worked until you had to finalize the product, then it felt like you were at an airport runway.

ARM is the success (not Apple’s, which came to us after abandoning PowerPC), certainly not a box assembled by an engineer.

I guess I’m a ‘the end justifies the means’ in this case. If it doesn’t overheat even when you run the system hard for a significant amount of time and it’s still not very hot I don’t care if it’s because the chip naturally runs cool or because the cooling design carries the heat away efficiently. In either case the heat isn’t causing problems.

:Edit-I mostly edit photos and I use either LightRoom or Affinity photo. If I have multiple photos open and I am doing corrections I KNOW when my 27 inch iMac hits its thermal point because the afterburners kick in and warm air streams out and if I don’t back off for a while then everything slows way down. I usually don’t have that many pictures open and I usually don’t hit the point where the cooling fans really kick in but it’s not just a couple of times a month occurrence either. And I limit how many programs and files that I have open so I don’t run into it.

I also have an older iMac.

 

[troublador]

I am a customer who has lavished enormous liquidity in Apple coffers, for work and in my private life, I know the defects in the products and how those who put them up for sale work (often without testing them). I think I’m even the only inhabitant on the planet (apart from those who wrote them) to have read AppleCare contracts, to have read their practically daily update dates, so much so that I'm not afraid to say that where I live those contracts are, according to the law, scams.

I am also one who knows something about design, and also about pricing logic.

Need more?

Now ask yourself why the phone you make in your hand despite having 3 months warms up to write a message on Macrumors.

Those aren't "qualifications" that mean a thing, dear. They're meaningless next to the huge team of qualified professionals who had a hand in designing and making the Mac Studio. Armchair engineers are typically arrogant and angry, aren't they?

 

[Xand&Roby]

I guess I’m a ‘the end justifies the means’ in this case. If it doesn’t overheat even when you run the system hard for a significant amount of time and it’s still not very hot I don’t care if it’s because the chip naturally runs cool or because the cooling design carries the heat away efficiently. In either case the heat isn’t causing problems.

This is not known.

We know that youtubers had no problems, I would like to know if the TV studios had the same results or not.

But it’s not the elongated Mac mini that’s the problem: it’s a product that covers a market segment, it’s made in economics for people who don’t give a damn (today, professionals of yesteryear cared more, perhaps because the company saved it when it was in bankruptcy), it has a reason to exist.

If anything, the problem is believing that the maximum evil in Apple was Ive or the design team: trust me, they suck the same, it's not that hunting Ive and the design team the hw and sw problems are gone, unfortunately.

Instead there are people who would like all Apple products like Apple Studio, and the results can be seen: happy shareholders, customer satisfaction index down sharply from 5 and 10 years ago.

 

[Xand&Roby]

Those aren't "qualifications" that mean a thing, dear. They're meaningless next to the huge team of qualified professionals who had a hand in designing and making the Mac Studio. Armchair engineers are typically arrogant and angry, aren't they?

Qualified professionals deliberated for the sale, in order:

- MacBooks crumbling;

- MacBook Pro with faulty graphics cards;

- batteries that swelled;

- screens cracking;

- Mac Pros setting fire;

- MacBook Pros that weren't worth what they cost for dissipation issues;

- MacBook Air of the lowest quality until 2018;

- in 2022 they sell an iPhone 6 with an A15 and an Apple Watch 2 with an S3.

Professionals.

 

[ethanwa79]

I personally am GLAD Ive is gone. He was great for most of his time at Apple, but at the end the design REALLY started to overtake function (thinner thinner thinner, more basic more basic), and that is when things started to go south.

Apple didn't lose "Its Soul" with his departure.

 

[ackmondual]

"lost its soul"? Even big Apple fans I know will say that was never really the case. They were always not unlike any other soulless corporation. They just did a better job of hiding it back then was all!

 

[troublador]

Qualified professionals deliberated for the sale, in order:

- MacBooks crumbling;

- MacBook Pro with faulty graphics cards;

- batteries that swelled;

- screens cracking;

- Mac Pros setting fire;

- MacBook Pros that weren't worth what they cost for dissipation issues;

- MacBook Air of the lowest quality until 2018;

- in 2022 they sell an iPhone 6 with an A15 and an Apple Watch 2 with an S3.

Professionals.

Yes, and armchair engineers know less than they do. You should remember that.

 

[MacGekko]

They would be super niche products for apple. Selling far less than the Apple TV

Yes but the reports suggest from the so called insiders that Apple will be releasing foldables over the next five years, do you believe those reports?

 

[MacGekko]

There’s also a very large amount of people in this very thread who have a fundamental misunderstanding of who Ive was and his role at Apple. Literally, on every page of this thread, there’s somebody chiming in that has no idea what they’re talking about.

It is fine that you are commenting on this, fair to say I think most people here know this entire thread is an excercise in fun speculation, unless there are anonymous high level Apple workers commenting, nobody knows exactly what went on behind closed doors, for all we know Ive is out because he tried to engineer a faction to take over the company, there you go HBO, I just gave you your new show, we know Apple TV won't touch it.

 

[chucker23n1]

I’m not sure I fully agree with you. In retrospect, I think the fundamental issue with the 2016 MacBook Pro is that Apple tried to do too many things at once. Going all-USB-C, attempting a keyboard redesign, and adding the Touch Bar, individually, may have been worthwhile, but doing it all at once, and not providing sufficient transitional tools hindered the effort. The butterfly keyboard was flawed and it should not have taken until 2020 to fix it. Eventually we will get to all USB-C (we are mostly there), but Apple should have had better USB-C hubs available with pass-through charging, multiple USB-A, SD, and HDMI ports ready from the start. (Something like this). The Touch Bar could have been useful, but it needed broader support across the Mac (e.g. there was never a desktop keyboard with it), and it would have been better as an additional input rather than a replacement for the function key row. I also didn’t understand why Apple never designed a MagSafe USB-C charging cable, or at least retain an optional MagSafe charger given that they had marketed for years about how great it was.

Yeah, "too many things at once" is a good summary.

With Thunderbolt 3, there was clearly the intent of having a forward-thinking, powerful new connector. Leaving aside MagSafe, I can see what they were trying to do. But the previous MBP didn't have USB-C at all, and this one only had it. Contrast the Power Mac G3 Blue and White: it added USB and others, but still retained ADB, and you could put an SCSI card in there if you wanted to. Yes, you can argue that people can bring virtually all of the connectivity back through dongles and docks, but as you say, there wasn't that much of a selection at the time, nor was there even a clear signal yet that most of the industry was moving to a USB-C-only future. Even today, it's certainly not the case that a typical external display is HDMI. So I think the 2021 makes the better tradeoffs here.

With the Touch Bar: yep, they definitely thought of this as a power-user feature first (and maybe wanted to eventually roll it out to the lower end as well). I gotta say, some of the choices are puzzling. Why was there never a Touch Bar 2 with a Taptic Engine, so you get some kind of feel for the virtual buttons? Why was there never any option whatsoever to use the Touch Bar externally? Why did it take almost five years for even Touch ID on an external keyboard?

With the keyboard, I don't know if they had really told themselves that this was a better keyboard, but I don't quite buy that. Instead, the keyboard seemed driven mainly by the constraint of a thinner overall laptop. Which I think would've been fine on the 2015 MacBook (where they introduced it) and the 2018 Air. But that they brought it to the Pro? That was hubris. Even if you ignore the reliability problem, a lot of people simply didn't like to type on this. Too little travel.

 

[MacGekko]

It's silly season again in Apple reporting because the holidays have been over for months and WWDC isn't for another couple months. There's no notable news, so it all has to be bad news to keep the clicks coming. This Tripp Mickle book isn't even the worst of it. Jason Snell is over on MacWorld preaching doom and gloom because of supply chain issues, 9to5Mac was posting clickbait garbage all weekend, and the iPad is apparently doomed again, but this time it's because of supply constraints. Like the old Yogi Berra joke about the restaurant that nobody goes to anymore because it's too crowded. Except in this case Apple said "The iPad is severely supply constrained right now" and everyone else said, "Nope, it's because iPadOS sucks."

The articles and editorials and books written by half-wits that don't know anything about Apple are just a small fraction of the problem. The sites that run with them ad nauseum just to drum up anger and arguments just feed the machine. It could be argued that I'm feeding it right now with this response. Best to NOT do what I'm currently doing and ignore all of it. Stock price of any given company is mostly nonsense. Speculation on rumors and entire novels being written based on one anecdote are not even worth reading for the most part.

OK, OK, but will you acknowledge that Apple has a high percentage of media in their hip pockets, the amount of free positive media this company gets is off the charts, fanboys and fangirls are all over the place, CNBC/Bloomberg, the three major network news sites, the magazines, the Engadget type of sites, Tim Cook is Jesus to many in the media, Apple can rarely do wrong in most of the coverage.

 

[MacGekko]

Personally, I think trying to market the Apple Watch as a high-end fashion accessory was a far greater sign that Apple was losing its soul, and was completely antithetical to the company that was founded to create "the computer for the rest of us" or "a bicycle for the mind."

Ive is a brilliant industrial designer, there's no questioning that. The problem was, he was given responsibilities that fell well outside his areas of expertise, such as setting the marketing direction for products or even overseeing software UI/UX.

I can live with relatively boring Apple ID for a while and enjoy the rapid innovation being produced by the Apple Sillcon team. I can't say the Mac Studio is a terribly inspiring design, but the bang for the buck it provides is excellent, so I will be buying quite a few.

Was Apple ever meant for the rest of us, the prices have been insane from Day 1, they always pursued the upper middle class, I'm not knocking that high profit margin strategy, they are in the top 5 of most profitable companies or market caps or however you measure it, but come on, in 2022 if you want a 15" Macbook Pro and stay in the Mac OS ecosystem, you have to pay a minimum of $2500, that is one expensive bicycle.

Many people mention the high end Apple Watch, they took a swing for the fences and failed on that end, no big deal.

 

[dannys1]

I think the new MBP is minimalistic and functional. It has a clean profile that is pleasant to look at, comfortable in the hand, its chassis designed to accommodate ports, features and operation that customers have been calling for. It is the a good balance. Personally, I think it looks much better than previous designs. I wouldn't change a thing.

It's definitely not minimalistic. It's chunky, clunky and bloated. It looks like it was designed by committee. It's definitely not "ugly" compared to the PC comparisons but it's one of the ugliest devices Apple has ever made. Mostly I assume the size is to accommodate the cooling for the higher end M processors rather than to accommodate ports - thankfully they didn't go as far as to bring USB-A back, the SD card reader was enough, that would have been a step too far.

To be honest it's the first MacBook Pro i've not bought on launch since about 2009 because I was 'meh' about it as a bit disappointed they went back on the vision. I did make the quick change to M1 though buying the MacBook Air which is great but I tend to do very very heavy multi-tasking and it can struggle but i'm reluctant to even move the 14-inch size and weight in crease, especially as I do a lot of work in the bath ? - I will move over eventually it's just the first time in a long time the biggest MacBook Pro hasn't been a must buy for me.

 

[Xand&Roby]

Yes, and armchair engineers know less than they do. You should remember that.

What you don’t understand is that for me the insult is “engineer”, not “armchairs”. ?

Like you swallow so bitter if Ive’s hunting backfires on you.

 

[troublador]

What you don’t understand is that for me the insult is “engineer”, not “armchairs”. ?

Like you swallow so bitter if Ive’s hunting backfires on you.

That's the problem, dear. It seems you don't even know what an engineer does.

 

[Macative]

It's definitely not minimalistic. It's chunky, clunky and bloated. It looks like it was designed by committee. It's definitely not "ugly" compared to the PC comparisons but it's one of the ugliest devices Apple has ever made. Mostly I assume the size is to accommodate the cooling for the higher end M processors rather than to accommodate ports - thankfully they didn't go as far as to bring USB-A back, the SD card reader was enough, that would have been a step too far.

To be honest it's the first MacBook Pro i've not bought on launch since about 2009 because I was 'meh' about it as a bit disappointed they went back on the vision. I did make the quick change to M1 though buying the MacBook Air which is great but I tend to do very very heavy multi-tasking and it can struggle but i'm reluctant to even move the 14-inch size and weight in crease, especially as I do a lot of work in the bath ? - I will move over eventually it's just the first time in a long time the biggest MacBook Pro hasn't been a must buy for me.

LOLOL. It looks exactly the same as every other other one.

 

[dysamoria]

I'm one of the few who liked the small size. Could control it just with finger tips.

Not sure why people had trouble using it...like every other mouse, you hold it on the end without the cord.

I’m glad you liked it.

Yes, we know which “end” to hold it from, but the hand holding it would have to constantly be in contact with the cord to sense that positioning. I don’t think that’s a reasonable or comfortable way for most users to hold a mouse.

The mouse’s perfectly round shape left no ability for tactile awareness of its positioning. Users would eventually find the mouse had rotated in their grip, leading to mouse pointer motion being offset from expectation, resulting in needing to frequently look down at the mouse and change how it was being held.

The goal of good design is to reduce friction between user and usage of something, and not to leave room to blame users for not using the designed object correctly.