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Former Apple TV Engineer Claims New Apple TV Interface Discarded 5 Years Ago [Updatedx2]

kdarling said:
The "four year plan" was a story started by a UK tabloid paper, The Daily Mail, the day Jobs died.

The only "evidence" of such a plan was some analyst's guess, but of course lazy reporters immediately repeated the article as gospel.
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While it's true that the farther out from his death we are, the more likely it would've been that Steve would have continued input into the design of a particular product, the fact is that lead times on design, particularly hardware, are set in stone by technology and production capabilities years before they hit the store.

Before Steve died, he knew what Apple was planning for the hardware design of the iPhone 6th gen, 7th, and probably 8th gen. And the same goes for every other annual upgrade.

Now, when it comes to things like software UI/iOS elements, I'm sure the process is one of constant input and feedback, so his voice will be missed much sooner, but there are, again, basic roadmaps in place. Apple doesn't wait until one product is released to decide how they're going to improve on it for next year. Design and development are multi-year processes. Being the CEO and de facto head of the company after he resigned, Jobs was at the front of these decision processes.
 
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tkermit said:
parish said:
This is my first ATV so I don't know what the old UI - which seems to have a lot of fans - looked like. Anyone got a link to some screenshots?
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http://web.archive.org/web/20110719173741/http://www.apple.com/appletv/

hero_tv20100901.png
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Thanks! I can see why people liked it, it does look cleaner. I guess that if the rumours of apps becoming available for ATV come to be then the new UI would work better - provided you can move the icons around a la iOS which you can't atm
 
mikes63737 said:
Like most things, this should have stayed in the trash.
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So well said, but the problem is that with Apple not allowing the removal of apps you don't want they had to go this way. Steve I miss you, every time I see something like this. Which unfortunate I now have to use. Lets hope that we see Apple return to thinking before putting out.

I personally do not like the new interface though it makes sense why we are stuck with it. But to learn this bloatware is 5 years old says a lot about how fast things may unravel at Apple. I hear OS X 10.8 is going to feel more Windows like which I hope NOT NOT NOT.
 
kdarling said:
Question: Were there a lot of complaints about this UI change _before_ the tweet that claimed Jobs didn't like it five years ago?
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Not really most people did not like it before but we had no choice to change it back, once done your out of luck for better or worse. UI reminds me of Samsung interface which does not impress me. Older interface was better in everything, it just needed more options to remove things, which is where we are going to get into trouble in the future. If you think there are to many apps on it now, wait till a few more companies pay apple to put stuff there. :rolleyes:

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parish said:
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Thanks! I can see why people liked it, it does look cleaner. I guess that if the rumours of apps becoming available for ATV come to be then the new UI would work better - provided you can move the icons around a la iOS which you can't atm
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So clean and readable oh well Steve is gone and so will the old Apple like it or not. :eek: lets hope this UI is all that goes south.
 
zweigand said:
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"now there is nobody to say 'no' to bad design"

Uh, yeah there is. They are called consumers.
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ROFLMAO how has that worked in the past, not well. You miss the part of our alternative is bloatware Microsoft if that is the option you where thinking that not much of an option for consumer.
 
I don't like the new interface either, but it's not unworkable, and for the most part they just replaced the list items with icons now. As others have guessed, it's probably a first step towards adding more 3rd party "apps" (though I wouldn't be surprised if they only open it up to some preferred partners - I'm hoping to see an NFL app added before the next season starts).

The problem I have with it is that, as others have mentioned, icons make sense when your clicking or tapping on them, but not so much with a remote-control-based UI. But I was thinking about it, and the one way I could see excusing this is if they create a new version of the Remote app that mirrors the look of the new UI (complete with finger-tappable icons), so my prediction is to look for that soon.

One other complaint I have (unrelated to the UI) is that I really like their super-simple remote control, but it needs a TV power on/off and volume up/down buttons.
 
Steve never approved anything that was in poor taste.

Oh, wait.
hockey_1.jpg


Not even the greatest tech visionary of our time batted 1.000.
 
URFloorMatt said:
You say this like the old Apple TV design was genius and in the few months since Jobs' death, Apple completely revamped the design by committee.
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I didn't say this at all. Anywhere. I wasn't commenting on the AppleTV interface design... rather responding to someone else's remark about Steve Jobs
 
I don't see why everyone hates the new interface.


It's clean, it's super easy to use, it's nice, it's pretty. Way better than all the other versions. Almost every other similar device has a clunky interface.

I really truly believe most (keyword being MOST) of the baggage is because Steve Jobs didn't like it.
 
acslater017 said:
If you read Steve Jobs' biography, you'll see that he was far from perfect. He certainly provided the vision for Apple and made the right decisions the majority of the time. Nobody can dispute that. But he also wasted time and money on unimportant aesthetic details.
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I did read it. I agree he wasn't perfect. But I'm not so much talking about his own ideas as I am talking about his design sensibilities overall and how they interplayed with the people around him to, especially on his comeback as a more mature and insightful person, bubble the right ideas to the top most of the time.

In other words, I don't have any idea that Scott Forstall can look at another person's concept and in thirty seconds make a decision, right or wrong, about it... without even second guessing himself.

Very few people are as right as often as Steve was... and engineers like Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson from the old days will concede that he was a maniacal jerk but also pushed them to do the best work of their careers.

Without someone capable of being as right about design as he was as frequently as he was, Apple will still have moderate success but I'm not certain they'll be hitting it out of the park as frequently as they have the past 14-15 years.
 
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It's funny reading these forums because if you really think about it youre all complaining over nothing. How do you even know Steve didn't finally approve this before his passing anyway? If the blue aura around icons was bigger and easier to see you'd be complaining that it bold and garish but instead you complain you can't see it easily enough. With the previous design, if you thy contined to add more internet apps I know you'd be complaining it was annoying to scroll through them all.
I already saw someone complain it was to simplistic... Are you serious?? That's what apples UI is all about its supposed to be simple

Give apple the benefit of the doubt guys. Just because Steve isn't there doesn't mean they'll crash.
 
Why are people believing the word of an ex-employee? The AppleTV UI is ****, as old Steve would say.

Also, Steve wasn't the be all end all of design and perfection. He was OCD about that stuff yes, but he was far from god. He was a horrible cry baby of a man. Sorry to break it to you.

You all seem to have this post Snow Leopard memory. You all forget that OSX has looked **** since 2000. Metal + Aqua at the same time? Anyone? Hellooooo.

Mac-OS-X-10-3-Panther.jpg


Take off your rose tinted glasses.

The new UI is fit for purpose. As much as it can be. Yes the old one was better, but it was hardly gold standard.
 
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So what if steve jobs didnt allow this to come out five years ago. He is dead now so nobody has any issues.

People do need to remember jobs isnt always right or perfect. I dont see why there is need for any noise to be made with this.
 
this is indeed sad...

Apple should hire me to to be in charge of design. I don't have a degree in desingology but I do have to taste. This Apple TV UI is laughable. Steve must be turning in his grave as we speak. I kind of saw this coming. I think OS X Lion was pretty much where the lack of care began. I hope this is not the future of Apple.
 
Kilamite said:
I hate it. They should buy Plex.

What I hate most about it, is the whole iOS appearance. The glowing blue for a selected item, iOS style icons. It is boring and looks childish.

This is the opposite of sleek.
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Too bad this is being so down-voted. It's a good thing to have constructive criticism here, even if it's not entirely constructive. Though Apple should NOT buy Plex. Third party developers are so important to the Apple ecosystem, as they add variety, options, and the ability to do something other than what Apple intend. If Apple were to buy up every developer I'd jump ship (to PC) in a heartbeat.

If you don't like the new UI (and neither do I), just wait until there is an update of Plex et al, then hopefully you can simply 'Overflow' everything into a little folder and allow the AppleTV to do what it wasn't designed for, but is oh so good at: letting Plex run.
 
It's the worst UI I've seen from Apple

It's really difficult to see what is highlighted/selected.

Also, they did not improve the lower level UI, which in my opinion were more in need of an update.
 
bedifferent said:
I agree, I do not like this new UI. It looks unpolished and unintuitive.
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What's so unintuitive about it? I looked at the picture for 3 seconds, and could tell exactly what does what. That's the very definition of intuitiveness.

It could be better, I guess. As far as aesthetics are concerned, the icons have a little too much shine to them, and it isn't the usual bright but soft look Apple seems to go for. But hell, it could be considerably worse.
 
the new UI is fugly. Its a halfassed attempt at looking like the normal iOS grid, but with ugly rectangular icons.
 
Apple design has started suffering before this. Little things which in the '80s Apple wouldn't have shipped because they are objectively wrong – like the terrible kerning of the battery level indicator which appeared in iOS 4 and is still there:
ios5_kerning.jpg

But bigger things also, which although subjective, just look tacky. Like Steve's obsession with skeuomorphic interfaces which started with the brushed metal on OS X and now has gone wild on iOS with all kinds of leather textures, stitching, felt and veneered wood. It's not elegant. It's tacky and trying too hard. But the designers at Apple seem to love it (there was a WWDC 2010 session about iOS design, and I've never heard such smug self-satisfaction from art directors about their work).
 
As much as I love Steve and hate to agree with statements by tkermit, URFloorMatt, & kdjohn3.

I have say that the current iTunes logo is still the most dreadful icon I've seen for any Mac application in a long time, which was Ok'd by Steve.

Now I'm not sure about user-friendliness, but the previous Apple TV UI did indeed look cleaner.
 
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