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Apple Designing More Functional Products Since Jony Ive's Departure, Argues Bloomberg Reporter
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Seems true. The return of ports for MacBook Pro is definitely an indication.
It seems pretty clear now that they’re not designing every product to have a cohesive design language and may in fact be categorizing certain items together that don’t necessarily make sense to me. The rounded look and the use of certain color ways seems to be related to consumer based products, like the Watch and iPods (base, Pro and Pro Max) and the HomePod minis.
Then you have the more squared off iterations of iPad Air, non-pro iPhones and M1 iMacs. It’s possible that the MacBook Airs will follow with the same look as the current iMacs, but that’s yet to be confirmed as accurate. The new MacBook Pros seem to be their own thing, although I guess that could change once we see what a larger professional iMac might be, or the pending Mac Pro, which I would bet will be different than the current cheese grater design.
In regards to the Watch and the rounded design, I think people often forget that most watches produced are not designed with rounded cases, but rather have sharp edged designs and they’re no more prone to catching on clothing or hurting your wrist than any other design. And with the Watch, the back is always going to have the curved shape so that the sensors get pushed more firmly into your skin, so it’s not like a squared off edge design would be cutting into you (again no more so that a traditional watch would).
Exactly. I have a 2018 MBP and I don't know what I'm going to do when the day comes that I need to replace it. I love my Touch Bar, and I don't want to give it up.
Likewise, over the past 3 years, I watched Apple cut 3D Touch out of iPhones, Force Touch out of Watches (even software-disabling it on hardware that could support it), and now stuffing the new MBPs with legacy ports and slots, like SD that nobody's used in 10 years.
It really is mob rule by 18-year-old YouTube nobodies who don't know their you-know-what from a hole in the ground. Meanwhile, the rest of us who actually use our tech for productive work that benefits society, are being forced to choose from clunky hardware options that even Michael Dell would be ashamed to sell today. And every year another Apple product line regresses to an old design and takes something away, instead of improving or making it better.
Disabling Force Touch on a watch that supported it was a dreadful decision alright.
"and now stuffing the new MBPs with legacy ports and slots, like SD that nobody's used in 10 years."
"Nobody"?!
LOL! Just yesterday, I backed up all my cameras via the SD port on my MacBook Air. Do so regularly -- every week or two -- and have been doing that for years. I'm sure there are millions of people out there who use the SD port on their computers.
MagSafe was a brilliant piece of engineering design and deserves to be back. So much easier to use than trying to plug in a USB-C cable. I end up having to pick my more modern MBA or tilt it to get the cable in there. It's also far safer when one, or their children or pets, inevitably trip on a power cord.
"Nobody"?!
LOL! Just yesterday, I backed up all my cameras via the SD port on my MacBook Air. Do so regularly -- every week or two -- and have been doing that for years. I'm sure there are millions of people out there who use the SD port on their computers.
MagSafe was a brilliant piece of engineering design and deserves to be back. So much easier to use than trying to plug in a USB-C cable. I end up having to pick my more modern MBA or tilt it to get the cable in there. It's also far safer when one, or their children or pets, inevitably trip on a power cord.
What? This NEVER happened.
This is all very good - but how about the artists who enjoy form over function, what about us that have a very aggressive eye for detail (like Jobs did) and why we fell in love with Apple in the first place. Every other tech company is utiltarian and designs for function first - what makes Apple different if they stop doing that. Most tech industrial design is diabolical.
No, I think you’ll find the 16 replaced the 15. The same 15 that hasn’t been sold in years since the 16 was released to replace it. The 14 is an upgrade to the 13. And, I guess, by your math, the 13 screen is larger than the 14 screen?
and now that he's gone, i wonder if Apple will start re-embracing the right of repair. i think MS is already doing it. remember how easy was to remove the battery and replace the HDD on the polycarbonate MacBook?
Maybe the rest of Apple’s management deserves some bashing for that. Here’s a case where even I can give JIve the benefit of the doubt, that it wasn’t just he who let things slip thru so badly for the past half decade.
I’m glad I won’t be wincing and shaking my fist at the screen and clouds above for a while like I used to when Tim or Phill would proudly yap on about something being a fraction of a millimeter thinner than the prior year, which was meaningless to me except for I knew there would be some trade-off I wouldn’t be in love with…missed opportunity for battery capacity…missed opportunity for any hardware expansion, etc.
mmm…
in order for humanity to progress we end up doing things we don’t actually need to do to discover new things that we end up needing to do.
There is no real reason to climb a mountain, or there wasn’t much reason to sail across the Atlantic initially. I’m sure people thought it was madness. But ultimately that’s how we discover what we are capable of and how we achieve new things.
without apples obsession with thiness they wouldn’t have created smaller chipsets, better laminated glass, better fan technology etc.. that’s why jobs and Ive continued to push the boundaries, because there is often gold at the end of that rainbow.
however, sometimes you go to the edge and it doesn’t work well so you retreat. That is humanity. It’s a process.
you seem to dismiss the many amazing things that come around via wireless communication. There are literally billions of people that would never go back to a wired headphoned world. there are so many benefits.
what you describe generally are edge cases, that will get ironed out because that is the process. It’s not a bad thing to try and fail. It’s not a bad thing to try and retreat. However, It’s a terrible thing to never try. Apple tries. That’s the difference.
I find it hilarious that four people actually downvoted this comment!
OMG yes! They could literally just change the icon used there from the reply arrow to some sort of multi-function indicator (a gear would work, something else would probably be better). If one is looking to flag a message, or mark it as unread, or throw it away, or print it, there's no way in the world that anyone is going to assume the very specifically labeled reply button is the right thing to tap. If reply (only to sender) is especially vital, fine, have the reply arrow sit next to a multifunction button. But for Hera's sake, don't hide vital features under a button that is telling users that it does one thing and one thing only. The button is basically lying. Might as well make it say, "Beware of the leopard".
The argument against reminds me a whole bunch of the early days of playing widescreen movies at home, with people complaining bitterly about the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, getting outraged that "some of their movie is missing" because they didn't understand the difference in aspect ratios, and that filling in that black part would mean actually losing part of the picture on the sides.
Personally, I probably would have been happier (at least initially) with having them make the top bezel be however tall it needed to be to keep the available screen area completely rectangular (vs sometimes rectangular and sometimes notched), just for simplicity's sake, but with the controls they've added to be able to choose per-app whether or not the menu goes up into the notch, it should work out fine.
I’d be really happy to see the return of lickable stoplight buttons. I really detest the Fisher-Price My First MacOS look of the flat design stoplight buttons. Not only do they look more like information-only indicators, but they are just plain uninspiring to look at.
A polite and appreciative reply on MacRumors? Apple making thicker and heavier devices with enough runtime to survive a 94 page MR debate? Yes, I think the parallel universe hypothesis is the only rational explanation!
Well, I’m off to see if my toaster still burns toast on anything beyond the 1 setting, and if the microwave still beeps at 95 decibels to tell me each time I press a button. Maybe world peace? Who knows, maybe a Canberra driver will even move into another lane to let in merging traffic?! Do I hope for too much?
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It’s a pretty good testament to how many outside of Apple‘s offices consider good design to be more than something that’s thin, sleek, and flat, isn’t it?
Yes. For the record, I’m one of those people who often lamented the obsession with thinness over functional things like ports and battery life. But I still respect Jony Ive as a designer, and I’m still grateful that the unrelenting push for smaller devices gave us lighter, sleeker machines than we might have today if Apple had died back in the 90s. The environment is grateful too. Now if only Apple would make their machines a little more upgradable/repairable—then I’ll know for sure that I’ve slipped into an alternate universe!
again, if YOU look at things from what was read instead of just wanting to hear yourself talk for the sake of a back pat...
if the people for whom this product is marketed towards cannot be held responsible for a single dongle or cable, i'm not sure how they're qualified to do their jobs.
and the "single instance" "being forgotten...misplaced, etc." does *not* support any argument in favor of putting an unnecessary port back on. one occurrence does not establish precedent
One cannot deny that Apple has retreated on some Mac design fronts in an effort to appease pro Mac users (let's just hope the ones banging the drums and making the most noise online on this actually walk the talk where their wallets are concerned), but so long as it doesn't spill over to the wearables front (where products do benefit from being slimmer and lighter and more integrated than ever), that's fine by me.
I think it's more accurate to say that people appreciate design when the functional compromises it entails doesn't affect that particular end user in any meaningful way. Which again, is going to vary from person to person.
I don't hate the statement, but I think it's missing a lot of nuance, and it's attempting to draw a clear distinction between what I see as simply being two sides of the same coin. Design isn't some dirty word to imply that the purpose of a product is to look nice at the expense of being impractical. For Apple at least, it just means a process where designers call the shots, and search for and have technology made to serve the product experience (which again, is something they define and decide on right at the start), rather than simply having engineers being excited about hot new tech and trying to turn it into a product.
We see examples of design working in the form of the iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch and (very likely) the rumoured apple glasses, which are immensely popular. On the flip side, we see more pushback on the Mac side, because of a small but extremely vocal of pro Mac users who want no part of this new world order that Apple is seeking to usher in.
Take the 2011 MBA for example. To some people, it technically lost functionality when Apple removed all the display ports and required you to use an adaptor if you wanted to connect it to a VGA, HDMI or DVI port. But people generally didn't mind because that resulted in a significantly thinner and lighter laptop, which benefited them as well, because it was easier to bring around with you. At the same time, I was never into photography, and I have never bemoaned the absence of a SD-card slot on my MBA either. And wifi was fast enough that I never had to scramble for an ethernet cable. This is clearly an example of design done right, by correctly predicting what users wanted before they themselves realised it, and having the advantages outweigh the drawbacks.
With regards to the new MBPs, I won't be surprised if there are people who end up never using the HDMI port on their new MBPs, because it doesn't support the 4k monitors on their desk, or they already have a 5K LG display from earlier. It's there really for conference room meetings. Or maybe their laptop is already charging via the LG display or a thunderbolt hub and they rarely ever need the fast charging that MagSafe provides, and the longer battery life means they don't have to plug in their laptop as often.
But it is what it is, and this is where we may start to see a growing schism in Apple. A growing emphasis on design when it comes to wearables, and a retread to what is comfortably and familiar with the Mac. But hey, if it means making both sides happy, I guess I shouldn't be one to complain.