Not only that but the design was just fine and liked by many for a long time. People just got bored more or less, which doesn't make something bad or wrong, despite what those bored people might refer to it now or basically when they got bored.
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Former iOS Chief Scott Forstall Serving as Snapchat Advisor
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Not only that but the design was just fine and liked by many for a long time. People just got bored more or less, which doesn't make something bad or wrong, despite what those bored people might refer to it now or basically when they got bored.
Classic design rules state that when you have a technology that is very original, you need to use skeumorphic objects and other metaphors to educate the user base. Once the market adopts an idiom for its form and use, you take the skeumorphic elements away.
For example, the first generation automobiles had huge skeumorphic elements to relate to what it was replacing, that is a horse drawn carriage. The chassis looked like a carrage, placement of the instruments -- specifically a steering wheel parallel to the floor was used to educate the user to turn the vehicle like they did a team of horses. There were even some where pulling back on the flat steering wheel applied the breaks. After a generation of automobile drivers, the car controls started to move where they addressed the technology at hand and not a horse and carriage metaphor.
But unlike a car, software can be anything, beyond the shared system UI, it's not one form. The interface is also not directly related to "the machine" it's artificial, so part of the interface needs to explain the system, or map to it in some way.
The best abstraction I have seen for "save" is that of a downward arrow pointed to an ellipse inferring you are looking at a circle viewed in an acute angle. Thus, it infers an action toward a disk. An upward arrow from the same ellipse is the "load" action. Tapping on the icon animates the arrow toward or away from the disk.
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To a developer a software can be anything. This is putting yourself in the position of a mechanical engineer where raw materials can be anything.
However we are talking about "out of the forge" or "out of the compiler" with a finished product where abstractions have effective use for the object / data at hand.
I was thinking more in terms of how the function of the pedals on a bike can be inferred from the machine it self, as the overall mechanics is visible to the eye, an example also given in Don Norman's excellent book, The design of everyday things.
If you like Don Norman, I highly suggest you get a read of Paul Rand's "Thoughts on Design." This gem is back in print and finally hitting eBooks. I'm sure there was a lot of working with his estate to get this back out.
Visits over at Apple through the years, I remember seeing the abacus art inspired cover on the shelf in many offices in Cupertino. Some were signed by Paul himself.
Yeah, I somehow feel that Don Norman is a bit more relevant to interaction design specifically though, and that discussions like these tend to end up being about style.
What exactly made Forstall Jobs successor? And since Tim Cook is Apple's
CEO what exactly did Ive win? Inquiring minds want to know.
I obviously can't comment on other users experience. I travel a lot and you just can not compare google maps with apple maps. It would be great to get some stats on how often - on iOS devices - the two maps are used.
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Once again, thank you for first hand info Sir
Maybe one more question.....do you think steve would fire forstall? General consensus here is that jobs really liked forstall....but that could be some myth
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Well, apperantly ive can serve cook a steaming pile of poo and tim would happily present it in next keynote. Is it because tim doesnt have upper hand on ive or just is affraid to, we will never know.
This has to be the most redundant post I've ever seen. It's a forum. Ideas are shared. If you don't care so much then why did you reply?
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Once again, thank you for first hand info Sir
Maybe one more question.....do you think steve would fire forstall? General consensus here is that jobs really liked forstall....but that could be some myth
IMO, the only thing that kept Forstall at Apple for so long was his relationship with Steve. While I have no hard evidence, my hunch is that the relationship was beyond professional and made a hidden standard in Steve's world that was not well known.
A lot of corporate America is like that, while there are dozens to thousands of people that qualify for a position, the upper echelon of a company has a hidden standard to make that level. This is where the "right" school or "right" charity or "right" life philosophy comes into play. I know people that have hired PIs to dig into executives personal and political lives so one can position themselves of an executive post. In fact, I have been told European corporations are worst where they are straight-up saying you need to be a specific social class and schooling to even consider a position beyond that of a middle manager.
What that hidden standard between Scott and Steve was, I have no idea. When Steve passed away, my guess is those those hidden standards also went away. This is only conjecture but the executive guard that elevated with Apple's return to greatness may have viewed NeXT alumni as a liability. With the Apple Watch out and hitting the vanguard, who knows what is next.
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The "soul of Jobs" has been split between Ive with the design eye and Cook having the corporate shrewdness. It is nearly identical to what happened when Walt Disney died and two of his right hand men took the reigns.
Been told that Steve's Jobs office at the top floor of Infinity Loop One is under lock and key to this day with nothing changed from the day of his death with the exception of the occasional record search and archive of his iMac. That whole building will probably become a historic landmark and mothballed when the Mothership comes on line.
You should go back to 8.2 then. Better act fast though as I suspect about to be stopped any day now.
But Ive probably had the closest relationship with Steve of anyone at Apple - he was at Steve's bedside when he died, he's very close to Steve's wife, etc, - and he's still at Apple with arguably as much power as he's ever had.
My feeling is that Forstall kept certain tendencies in check when Steve was around and that no longer happened after Steve died. After Forstall was let go rumors claimed he'd often play the "Steve wouldn't have" card. I can see where that could cause issues with Cook and others especially if they were focused on moving forward and Forstall was stuck in the past, or came across as though he was speaking on behalf of Steve.
Probably. Scott had a longer history with Steve than Johnny. Ive was native Apple while Scott was a NeXT transplant. That could also have come into play. Many of the long time, like twenty years and more, Apple employees still view the existing NeXT transplants as invaders and outsiders.
The Loop can get very introverted. Surprised they don't have a nursery and school there to raise the next generation to Apple employees. Maybe that is planned for the Mothership.
I am surprised that Jobs liked Coock at all, since him being Compaq guy...aka PC...aka mortal enemy. I was under impression, that Jobs would not give you a second of his time if he thought you were enemy. And PC was one of the biggest.
I still see Cook as sellsword. I bet (to bad there are no videos) when he was at compaq, during his speech he would say "when i see mac os x.....it sends shivers down my spine".
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While there are of course rich people here in Europe we don't have class system. Sure, we use term middle class, but it is just a reference. But your point still stands......people give high positions to their peers and it is nearly imposible for new comers to get high positions. For example, if i could to better industrial design that Ive and run circles around him.....i doubt i could get job at apple....let alone some higher position. That is sad reality of big companies. I like that Woz said, that he or Jobs could not get a job at Apple this days because haven't got collage degree. Even with collage degree is probably next to impossible to get a job at apple. Or am i mistaken?
Forstall and Steve probably spoke the same language. And if Fortsall was sacked because he used "what would steve do"...that is bad because maybe he would save us from loosing some of the apple trademarks (glowing logo, mag safe etc).
I still see Cook as sellsword. I bet (to bad there are no videos) when he was at compaq, during his speech he would say "when i see mac os x.....it sends shivers down my spine".
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While there are of course rich people here in Europe we don't have class system. Sure, we use term middle class, but it is just a reference. But your point still stands......people give high positions to their peers and it is nearly imposible for new comers to get high positions. For example, if i could to better industrial design that Ive and run circles around him.....i doubt i could get job at apple....let alone some higher position. That is sad reality of big companies. I like that Woz said, that he or Jobs could not get a job at Apple this days because haven't got collage degree. Even with collage degree is probably next to impossible to get a job at apple. Or am i mistaken?
Forstall and Steve probably spoke the same language. And if Fortsall was sacked because he used "what would steve do"...that is bad because maybe he would save us from loosing some of the apple trademarks (glowing logo, mag safe etc).
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The story I hear about how Scott and Steve clicked was a classic corporate retreat when NeXT was starting. The whole NextStep architecture was drawn on the back of a pizza box in a cabin up in Lake Tahoe that Steve owned going back to the early Apple ][ days. Was told that pizza box is now framed and at Scott's house after too many people got sick of seeing it at Apple.
No need for nurseries. They will just install Clone Replicator chambers to copy the most talented employees. The next generation of Apple gurus won't be their children. It will be their clones! The Mothership makes sense after all.
Scott might have had a longer history but Steve was clearly closer to Jony. Let's not forget the first iPhone phone call on stage was to Jony; same with the first FaceTime call. Considering Scott went straight from college to working at NeXT perhaps he viewed Steve more as a father figure or there was a bit of idolatry going on. And then there's this from the New Yorker piece on Ive:
Perhaps Scott and Jony never really got along because Scott was jealous of Jony's close relationship with Steve?