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Former iOS Chief Scott Forstall Serving as Snapchat Advisor
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I'm with you on this one. I'm not a senior yet but I love skeuomorphism that for a long was the landmark of Mac OS X. Won't be too wordy but I feel post-Jobs releases beginning with that awful metal Dock without clearly visible active apps indicators in Mountain Lion with this aesthetical trend finding its logical refinement in Yosemite is completely lifeless and unperceivable. I lived with Mavericks for like 15 months and then for several reasons reset to factory and God, how I feel lucky that I bought a Mac with Lion pre-installed! It has its own downfalls but overall it feels very Jobs-like and I love its skeuomorphic warm look. It taught me a lesson, though: when a new OS X is released run it from external drive, so that you could have a choice between several OS's X without the hassle of downgrading. And I know that Lion will be my main OS for a long while. I find it to be extremely stupid to follow the declared fashion that "skeuomorphism is obsolete" because it's not about functionality, it's all about fashion.
If you find an investor paying $150 million for one percent of the company, then it is assumed that 100% of the company must be worth $15 billion. On the other hand, _you_ would think that some investor paid much too much money, and I'd kind of agree with you.
Just read that Slack is valued at $2.8 bn. I use it, but they won't get a penny out of me.
How can anybody claim that Maps is a usable service? Unless you type in the exact address, search is horribly broken.
This morning I searched for the train station in Brussels. Nothing. In Google Maps I got a list of all stations and a list of public transport options with time tables to get there.
Looking for a place rather than an address and Apple Maps becomes useless. Also, you need the exact street address. In Europe, streets names can be complex (references to historic figures) and the names can be written with abbreviations, dashes, prefixes, ... Apple Maps cannot help you with this.
And yes, Maps in iOS 6 was beautiful. Now, with the flat look l, it looks cheap and unfinished.
This morning I searched for the train station in Brussels. Nothing. In Google Maps I got a list of all stations and a list of public transport options with time tables to get there.
Looking for a place rather than an address and Apple Maps becomes useless. Also, you need the exact street address. In Europe, streets names can be complex (references to historic figures) and the names can be written with abbreviations, dashes, prefixes, ... Apple Maps cannot help you with this.
And yes, Maps in iOS 6 was beautiful. Now, with the flat look l, it looks cheap and unfinished.
I just did a search in Maps for "brussels train station" and got the Central station along with 8 other results, i have no idea if they're accurate but the central one seemed legitimate
I have no issues at all with Maps in my area, in fact the app works better when plugged in my car stereo than Google Maps, so I've uninstalled google entirely from my phone
As for Scott Forstall himself, I don't much have an opinion one way or the other.
But he certainly made the presentations on stage more interesting than the complete snooze fests we've had for the past 2 years.
Ive didn't **** up maps. The software was good, the data was bad. So he shouldn't have apologized.
Apple doesn't need saving.
As opposed to the a$$ki$$er$ running the show now.
btw, so was Steve, along with many other visionaries.
Many have tunnel vision to achieve their goals. Imagine Charles Babbage or Alan Turing not having had this type of arrogance that makes them "jerks", the invention of the computer might have been delayed or taken on very different forms.
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He stole your g/f by the sounds of it ?
And your job ?
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Enjoying life in the self-deluding tech bubble ?
Just because some visionaries were horrible people doesn't mean all people with bad personalities are visionaries.
I get your opinion. I, however, do feel like skeuomorphism design is a little dated in some cases. The need of calendar stitches and note paper tears seemed unnecessary. That meaning said most icons for both iOS 6-1 and OS X 10.5-10.9 were killer to my eyes. I'm red-green color blind. It took roughly 10-20 seconds to figure out how to distinguish between the App Store app and iTunes app. The colors were so bland and actually hurt to look at them. Why I still used it? Because it works for me better than other OSs as far as functionality. I been designing my own icons on OS X for a while to make them flat long before it became a fashion trend. When the iOS 7 and OS X Yosemite design came, I actually found more functionality from it because it was simpler to me and from there I started doing more advanced stuff.
It is all down to personal preference about what works best for you. People who been with Apple for more than 10 years probably don't like this change but that doesn't mean it is necessary a bad thing. My uncle still plays CDs because he doesn't like digital music. In about 5-6 years, I'll probably be on these forums complaining about the future versions of OS X and iOS as well while praising Tim Cook (if he is not working anymore) over the new CEO. That's how life is unfortunately.
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This. Also, notice how none of the other senior leaders have left or been fired. Only change really is Bob Mansfield moving into a special projects role. Seems pretty clear the rest of the team works well together and he was the odd man out.
So why is safari still chrashing and the looks is somewhat like a working sketch in progress?
I admitt some funktions are quite cool but the looks take away the premium overall feel. I guess some of the hazzle were not only the maps but also the sad look of the apple OS'es. When people buy a premium product they want it looks like a premium product. Just look at the world of cars, mercedes/audi/BMW versus discount brands.....
Tbh I probably go with linux(not android though)in the future
Oh, yeah, of course, you're right, "bad", "good" are subjective notions, here I agree. So judge the most of people, including CEOs and execs of Apple. For instance, Apple's CEO Jobs and his trustee Forstall that had influenced aesthetics, design of Apple products, also were subjective, as were Johny Ive, who hadn't such an ability to push his ideas to be fully realized, who had being counterweighted by Jobs and who finally took his chances under Cook, and Tim Cook himself. Yes, it's all subjective, and even technological process is highly subjective, depending on how philosophy and strategy is being formulated to engineers by higher authority. And, let me tell you, when the shift happened they were thinking of people with visual problem the least. My point was that the paradigm "the more flat the more modern" is utterly far-fetched and represents just new philosophy of design confessed by the current authorities at Apple. Had Jobs been alive it's unlikely that Apple would ditch skeuomorphism and its champions. I'm for one point was absolutely indifferent about iOS, because I was interested in Apple's computers, not mobile devices. I wasn't following closely all the changes in Apple mobile market, but seeing iOS in its current state it was hard for me to realize that pre-iOS 7 versions looked completely different! And I remember all these chatterings arousing by degrees (considering the look of OS X as well, iPhoto) that "the overall design of .... looks inconsistent", "we expected to see more changes into GUI of iPhoto, alas, the new upgrade to Mavericks hasn't coincided with visual revision of its interface" and so on. Regardless of whether these talks were intentionally sown (who were/are these "we"? Bunch of experts from a group of the same internet media sources?) or came out in a natural way the adoption of a new paradigm looked as a natural response to "the needs of masses". So it's not about philosophy of life or natural conservatism: I love all the novelties brought into by Mavericks (I loved iBooks and Notification Center!) and Yosemite (though haven't tested on my own but suppose that the blow-out of new features like iCloud Drive, better integration among devices, better sharing, Hand-off are the killers), I don't care who is at the head of Apple, Cook or somebody other. I just resentful to the flat design philosophy and of course technically it was possible to accomplish the same goals with "older" look but not with recent heads. I suspect that the segment of Apple's market that grew up witnessing the parade of iOS, not giving a **** about Apple's computer roots accepted that shift easily.
So "dated" or "unnecessary"? Dated doesn't mean unnecessary and vice versa.
Unfortunately, in the name of the Universe, I have no power to force Apple to revert back to what I liked whatever my preferences are.
Imagine that, although I had been an admirer of Apple for a long time, I actually bought my first Mac 1.5 years ago. And I'm in my 30s
Ummm..... no.
This comment is so insane it makes my head hurt.
Steve was one of the most charismatic businessmen of this century. They are writing books about him & making films about him. To equate the whiny kid that was chummy with him, and lorded that fact over other workers at Apple is insulting to a great man's legacy.
Apparently Scott used to annoy even the most easy going Apple employees with his "Steve would never do what you're doing" comments. They resented it, of course. We are talking about long time employees. This new kid show up & starts pretending he is the be all, end all of knowing how Steve thinks... What a joke! Then he pushed Bob Mansfield (you know, the portly, quiet hardware engineer that used to talk on the product videos) out the door with his acerbic attitude. That was the last straw... Tim tried to get Bob back. It was only possible by getting rid of Scott.
I hear on that day at Apple.... there was a collective sigh of relief.
He was NO Steve.
Think Forestall still uses a Mac and an iPhone? Or do you think he's switched to Windows 8 and Android? Although Android is even less skeuomorphic than iOS (or at least was).
And just to interject my 2¢, I think the skeuomorphism in iOS was far too dated. For example, the younger iOS user likely has never used a hand written desk calendar where pages get torn off each month. Such UI references were (are) no longer needed.
And just to interject my 2¢, I think the skeuomorphism in iOS was far too dated. For example, the younger iOS user likely has never used a hand written desk calendar where pages get torn off each month. Such UI references were (are) no longer needed.
I'm thinking the same. Although I'll see what Apple does with skylake and their next osx release to see what kind of plans and philosphy they have then. But if its this fashion over function thing as of late, then linux for me too.
And this flat design cancer is spreading to Mac OS...
If I wanted an ugly POS looking Windows, I would have bought a Windows machine...
Finally, some first hand information, thank you for that
. But aren't all of them jerk in some way? i doubt ive does it any other way.What symbol do you suggest it gets replaced with? You could pick any abstract symbol, that you then need to learn means "save", then also hope that every other software vendor use the same abstract symbol.
Finally, some first hand information, thank you for that
I have seen both the black knight and white knight win in this valley. To me, the biggest white knight win I got a piece of was with Jeff Hawkins, the founder of Palm Computing. He and Donna Dubinsky cashed out just right before everything imploded. Ran into Donna at a reunion party a few years ago. Both her and Jeff are doing fine and keep on rolling.
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The best metaphore I have seen for load / save / run / stop / redo have been progressive arrows. IMO, we are in the middle of a UI transition very much akin to the Paul Rand era of logo minimalism that started in the early 70's with the IBM and Westinghouse logos and the Olympic sport event icons.
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And your job ?
I'll take the bait. Been in the tech business most if my career and have done quite well for myself. Been in and out of the Apple camp for years but refused to drink the Kool-Aid. From that won an equal amount of respect and disrespect around Cupertino.
One thing I love about Silicon Valley is the lack of a net in the industry, you **** up, you hit the ground hard and it's up to yourself to get up and keep on going. I know people that headed back to their mid-west home towns after just one crash out here instead of learning from it. Fortune still favors the brave.
Yeah, I have no issue with style, but there are other aspects to it as well. You could simplify a floppy disk into a symbol that still technically is a floppy disk and also be in line with a more minimal design for example.