Apple Designing More Functional Products Since Jony Ive's Departure, Argues Bloomberg Reporter

[Mousse]

Not always, sometimes those two got carried away a bit.
Hockey puck mouse: at the time called one of the worst mouse in history.

Yarp, the hockey puck mouse. Yeesh. I hand cramps up just thinking about it now.😬

G4 Cube: absolutely beautiful but extremely expensive and prone to overheating, discontinued exactly one year after introduction.
iMac G4: again absolutely beautiful, but prone to so many issues that it was discontinued two years after introduction.

These two machines are ahead of their time. With today's technology, these two designs would be awesome. Apple can finally do these two design justice. Sell some nostalgia/retro machines like how 5th gen Ford Mustang took a lot of design cues from the original Mustang.

If I could get my mitts on a Cube, I would transplant a Mini's components into it and have room to install some SSD drives and a cooling fan. There would be no over heating issues.

 

[macduke]

Jony has always been Jony. What Jony has been missing is Steve.

“The design is not just what it looks like and feels like. The design is how it works”

— Steve Jobs

 

[Heat_Fan89]

So it wasn't Jony Ive who was responsible for the $19.99 cleaning cloth.

 

[Tozovac]

Awfully convenient to blame Jony Ive when there is an entire massive company at work on these machines. Every iteration of these machines.

Jony Ive was not dictating anything to anyone.

Do you think a committee of smart designers drove, say, the iOS 7 interface that was a complete redo top to bottom of most every interface aspect after Ive assumed power over software design?

Do you think a committee came to the conclusion that most every way of doing things on iphone/ipad before ios7 was gimped/broken and should all be reworked completely to “fix” the busts?

Or do you think this was mostly Ive’s brainchild to undo most all of Scott Forestall’s interface design work, using the excuse of “the world now knows how to tap on glass” in order to minimize the interface elements as much as possible towards Jony’s design sense of how an interface should be?

This article did a good job of stating how Jony may not have pushed every button but he was in charge. It was written by the same person who created the Jony Ive soundboard that offended sir Jony to where she decided to take it down after being contacted about it.

Excerpt from the article:

JONY IS NOT SINGLE-HANDEDLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS.​

But he’s the most powerful design leader inside Apple, and it’s his job to fix it.

This design trend is a backslide of epic proportions, but it’s not unsalvageable.

There is a war now between aesthetics and function, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

JONY, YOU HOLD ALL THE CARDS.​

And where you go, so goes the entire software design industry.

Please don’t allow visual design trends to destroy Apple’s — and Steve’s — legacy of excellence in interaction design.

Please, bring back Apple’s legacy of usable design innovations, and strong human-computer interaction.

Please, fix this.

 

[jlc1978]

Ergonomically, the Magic Mouse is a disaster. Sure, it looks nice…

I have Logitech MX3. I think it looks nice. You can charge while using, nice. You have to try hard to see the USB port…


Let’s be realistic, no one is going to look at a mouse and comment that the charging port is ugly. It’s a tool, not a fashion item.

Exactly. I have a Logitech M720 that is perfect for my needs. Scroll wheel, multiple buttons so with USB Overdrive / Magnet I can move windows back and forth bewteen 2 screens, maximize and move the to the left and right half of the screen, bring up Pathfinder, etc.

So it wasn't Jony Ive who was responsible for the $19.99 cleaning cloth.

No. If he was, it would come in different colors, not be foldable to avoid creases and wrinkles, be as thin as paper and look cooll but not real good at cleaning a screen.

 

[groundedUX]

If “Apple has reemphasized function over form” and people think they’re doing a better job because of that, I would argue “they” need to take a better look at their observation skills. And reality.

 

[TheGenerous]

Here are my two cents

 

[poematik13]

with out these extra dongles the laptop is useless if you are using it for anythingelse but browsing the internet

cables aren't dongles lol

 

[Janichsan]

Apple Designing More Functional Products Since Jony Ive's Departure, Argues Bloomberg Reporter

I would argue that Bloomberg reporter is correct.

 

[glsillygili]

Okay. Bring back the headphone jack now.

 

[fuchsdh]

Literally just an opinion. Not reported as fact but I am sure people will go "See? He had to leave for us to get Magsafe back."

🥱​

It also suffers from the classic syndrome of acting like one person in a multibillion dollar company has a singular effect on everything. If Ive is and was a big pusher of the "nice look" over "functional" issues Apple has had, he was enabled by Apple's wider leadership.

The more interesting question is whether the pendulum swinging the other way is what precipitated Ive's departure, I think, rather than treating it as a foregone conclusion that Ive left and then they decided to pivot.

 

[R3k]

Obviously Ive gave us much more good than bad, but I do think he and team went too far and lost perspective a few times. The 2016 macbook pro, making it slim and minimal: regression in keyboard ergonomics just to switch things up, one port to rule them all so the sides were elegant…..The amount of frustration this caused and sacrifice to usability… 😔

 

[makitango]

MacBook Pro lid is 4mm thick. You can’t stack the camera and the LCD on top of each other in such a small space. Therefore you need the notch if you want the small bezel.

iPad Pro is 7.8mm thick.

Strongly disagree. Have you seen the chin down there? Plenty of space to move the display without causing a notch or two.

 

[Tozovac]

If “Apple has reemphasized function over form” and people think they’re doing a better job because of that, I would argue “they” need to take a better look at their observation skills. And reality.

If you look back at certain keynotes & events introducing macbooks from around 2016 on, you’ll hear/see a lot of “this much thinner than last year” content, and close-ups of the sleek-looking and symmetrical usb-c-only port setup that was rather shocking at the time. Arrow buttons sized not in t-shape but full-size, to look more homogenous to the rest of the keyboard and symmetrical.

No talk on Monday about the MBP being thinner or lighter than last year’s model. Just a quick take on the bezels being smaller than before. And instead, mostly talk about power and function and the increased utility of port selection. As God intended.

 

[ToomeyND]

A problem with this conversation is that we are using different products to defend or offend. The charger under the mouse sucks. The Touch Bar sucks. The MBP on the whole is pretty great. The trackpad is great. The AirPods max satchel is a strange choice. So much to consider and everyone is picking what amount to anecdotes.

There are some serious, truly incredible wins under Ive's watch. There are also some very strange decisions that lend to the form over function topic. I'd argue he is a story of continually pushing, and sometimes pushing too far. You want that from a true innovator. If you don't know that you've past the envelope sometimes, how do you know you've pushed to the edge of it?

 

[KPOM]

No talk on Monday about the MBP being thinner or lighter than last year’s model. Just a quick take on the bezels being smaller than before. And instead, mostly talk about power and function and the increased utility of port selection. As God intended.

OTOH, did they go to far in the other direction? 4.7 lbs is pretty heavy. Was anyone really asking for 21 hours of battery life? Given how efficient these chips are, they certainly could have kept the weight the same and gotten better battery life than the outgoing Intel models.

For the Air, they should still focus on portability.

 

[lah]

Apple is where it is today because of Jony Ive. He designed products that not only were functional but also that people actually craved. That is no small feat.

 

[Sowelu]

The arguing reporter doesn't know who actually designs Apple's current products. It could be a combination of internal teams in addition to Ive's new company. And we most likely will never know.

 

[ogawa]

correlation doesn’t mean causation

 

[Ommid]

Functionality is boring,

These Macbooks should have been as thin and sharp as Samurai Swords - Ive would have got the job done like Hattori Hanzo himself.

Form over Function.

 

[Ommid]

The arguing reporter doesn't know who actually designs Apple's current products. It could be a combination of internal teams in addition to Ive's new company. And we most likely will never know.

I agree - plus there is still a lot of Ive and even Jobs in these products IMO

 

[BWhaler]

Now Apple needs to weed out the overly-minimistic design approach (at cost to users) from interface design. The fact that mail has all of its functionality hidden inside of the “Reply” button is comical. Usability and discoverability must be paramount, not screenshots for websites or designer portfolios.

 

[performa_6400]

If you compare the side views of the new MacBook Pros to their predecessors, the new machines simply look older and bulkier. To me this is where Ivy thrived. He created beautiful products that other hardware companies tried to emulate.

 

[anshuvorty]

Now Apple needs to weed out the overly-minimistic design approach (at cost to users) from interface design. The fact that mail has all of its functionality hidden inside of the “Reply” button is comical. Usability and discoverability must be paramount, not screenshots for websites or designer portfolios.

The curse of Alan Dye...aka Dye-gate is forthcoming/imminent.

 

[ChrisA]

Miss you Jony!

No way! As the title of the article ways, Apple is designing more funtional products now they Johny is gone. This is a Good Thing.

The first time I noticed that this "designer" was clueless as an engineer was when a Macbook had the port on the left side ordered by the physical size of the port. Yes it looked nice but what is the chance that size based ordering is the best from a user's perspective? A person who actually uses the computer wants the port that is used the most closer and not blocked by other cables. A competent engineer would have collected data on usage by customers and placed ports based on use data.

Same for making the product thinner. Who cares if that effects battery life. What people want is all day power.

And that Microsoft ad was spot-on when it showed the typical Mac user as needing to carry a load of dongles

Now, it appears Apple is back on track and making two different Macbooks (1) the "air" for the typical user who just needs to read email, browse the web and watch YouTube. And the "pro" for those who create digital content. The later group wants the ports and SD slot and bigger battery. A first group could likely use an iPad but if using a mac would never need four Thunderbolt ports.

I am very happy they fired him.