I was excited where they were going with Lion. I personally loved the textures and real life UI design they had going on, even going all the way back to the Aqua days and the lickable interface they had then. It was a natural progression which I never once questioned. Forstall and Jobs both knew what they were doing. Since both are sadly no longer there bad decisions have started to become common place in terms of their software UI. Now we’re forced to ask for a dark mode to compensate. I mean, I’ll take it but it’s still a compromise.
Ive, Fedirighi and whoever else is currently behind the look and function of their software “just don’t get it”, as Jobs would say. He said that about the folks behind the QuickTime player back in the day, they made it look like any other generic player until Jobs tore out a page of a Swiss Watch from a magazine, handed it to them and said: “just make it look like that”. He didn’t realise though that Jony Ive is one of those people who “just don’t get it”, probably because back then he never had to see his atrocity (my opinion, don’t attack me please guys). He did a few years later though when he saw Ive’s idea of how he would want iOS to look, which is why Jobs had the common sense to have Ive stick to what he was best at, while having Forstall doing what he was best at because Forstall’s vision was vastly superior. Jobs of course chose the superior version of the two because he actually had good taste.
It’s beyond me how Cook doesn’t realise this though. He could’ve saved himself a ton of headache with the mess that iOS has become. Having a hardware guy with zero software experience take over the look of said software is just asking for trouble. And having him replace a guy with years of successful experience since the NeXT days? Just stupid. Clearly Cook “just doesn’t get it”, either.
