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Former iOS Chief Scott Forstall Shares Intriguing Story of His Interview With Steve Jobs at NeXT
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Fair enough if that’s your desire, but is the iPhone’s function to entertain the user and change occasionally so as to stay fresh, or to provide intuitive and efficient function in an attractive and engaging package as best as possibly can be? Once a ”best” way of doing things is found, there’s not much sense IMHO to change and “freshen things up” for the sake of something new. Change for the sake of change (aka iOS 7) was the biggest blow to my respect for the Apple franchise yet.
Yes?
Is that really mutually exclusive with the previous sentence you wrote as you're implying?
It's certainly a massive assertion to say iOS as it was between iPhone OS and iOS 6 is the best a touch based OS can possibly be...
Say that when you’re trying to find a local business!
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I disagree. The OS is supposed to “get out of the way”, when it’s doing its job well you should barely be conscious of it.
I think is it. It sounds like for you the OS is something that you don’t want to get out of the way, you want to be aware of it, to find it novel, interesting, fun. That is mutually exclusive with it being something you’re barely aware of.
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Going out on a limb here. I won’t be surprised if he is in on iOS 14
I'd be shocked. He's not needed.
The whole vid is interesting to watch from the start. There's a funny part where, at the beginning, he asks Macklemore about the importance of education, and he dutifully replies about how important it is. Then later on, he asks Macklemore for some adjectives and nouns to fill out for a game a kid made, and Macklemore confesses that he doesn't know what an adjective and noun are. I had to laugh. A man who made a fortune from language (song writing), but didn't pay any attention to it at school, and tries to tell kids education is important 
PS - I'm pro-education, I hold a Bachelors degree in Engineering, but I recognise that it's not for everyone.
PS - I'm pro-education, I hold a Bachelors degree in Engineering, but I recognise that it's not for everyone.
I wouldn't say a zero chance of Forstall returning. Remember, it was Jony Ive who hated him and who made the ultimatum to Tim Cook. Incidentally, Jony is no longer at Apple.
Steve Jobs used both of their talents in ways that worked. Without Steve there to keep them in their own boxes and act as the glue for their talents, it no longer worked.
I didn't personally care for the skeuomorphism but Steve Jobs saw something in Forstall that he liked so much that he kept him around for decades. I wouldn’t want him in charge of UI but someone with that kind of a rare long term insight into Jobs’ mind, will forever be valuable to the company.
Not strange at all.
In my opinion I think he feels going to Microsoft would be like a betrayal to Apple, mostly to Steve as he holds his friendship dear in his heart, not something to keep Mac fans feeling good at presentations or product launches or a yearly seance as Tim seems to portray (in my opinion; but that maybe Tim's way of holding Jobs in his heart).
Forstall had an early passion of theatre when he met his wife and chose to pursue that, probably as a way of self healing after all the emotions he felt after being ousted by Tim and top gang. I'd love to see what he can contribute if he does return to Apple. Maybe he could fix iMessage/SMS sync on WatchOS which Federighi and team after 5yrs of promising iMessage in the Cloud STILL cannot fix!!
Then again maybe we'll never know. Who knows ... maybe his first step is to patch old wounds with Jony Ive first. Or maybe he'd just like to get that special cafeteria pay card that nobody knows is paying for free lunches lol
Not necessarily. A good designer *could* do both. A designer with little sense of industrial design might lean too hard to the functional side while an egotistic self-thinking “genius” designer on a personal mission might lean too hard to the stylistic/freshening side. I think the way Apple leaped from iOS6 to iOS7 is as good an example as I could give of prioritizing the “fresh and new“ first and foremost but with much less regard to robust, time-tested interaction/function. With iOS7, most every interaction method was changed wholesale overnight, most of it drastically cut down in detail to the extreme. So what was the reason? Looking beyond the green felt and woodgrain that bothered many, was most everything about the UI/interaction methods in iOS6 broken and in need of radical fixing? I contend the many quick changes after iOS 7’s debut that undid a lot of the arbitrarily reinvented interface methods proved that much of Jony’s iOS 7 out of the box contained an awful lot of unnecessary plastic surgery.
It might be if I were saying that, but that‘s not what I said.
I meant: any iOS should evolve into greater greatness, not be reinvented overnight just to freshen things up for the sake of freshening things up.
Since most of us, including myself got off topic for a while there ... I thought it was nice to see the brother and sister team from Calgary, AB not only re-imagine the home screen of a future phone but ALSO design the hardware entirely: screen projection, power, and lighting choice of materials as well. VERY cool.
Aqua was change for the sake of change. Brushed metal was. Making the iMac colored and translucent was.
So you must have lost a lot of respect around 1998.
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You must have hated iOS 6 with its gaudy animations and effects, then.
Like, come on. No version of iOS had a style that was plain.
No, it’s true. They would send it as warning against trying to send live fish in ice.
Tell me about it. I'm tired of all the money Tim's bringing to Apple and investors like myself. Sooo frustrating
Nope. It's more likely Scott doesn't want that. Microsoft had tried really hard as you can read in the article. I think no one doubts he is a brilliant guy, otherwise Steve never used all his charms to make Scott work for him. Scott, like Steve had, has a difficult personality. Primadonna's like Jony Ive, Tony Fadell and Bob Mansfield could not get along with him. They are all out at Apple. Perhaps Bob still may or may not working on the Titan project.
I am sure the comradery at the Apple cafetaria is really great without Scott. When Steve was around, it was filled with brilliant people who hated eachother. Together they made amazing products...
But that philosophy came in with iOS 7? It wasn't part of iOS 6 and before, which was designed to make things appear like physical equivalents. Look at the design video around the 3 minute mark:
I made no comment about whether the OS should be obtrusive or retreat with use. What I said was that because iOS didn't evolve enough through its first 6 versions, it felt like it needed a change by 2012/13. Ultimately you can't create a totally invisible OS, you see it each time you interact with the phone even if it's not the focus of your attention, it's there. Most commentators around the time agreed it was looking stale. Tastes, styles, designs change with time. That's why 1940s flowery and 1970s psychedelic home design looks awful today. It's part of human nature to get bored of the same thing over and over again. Try eating your favourite meal every day, you'll be surprised how quick you get sick of it and want something different. That's also why a lot of furloughed/ quarantined people are going stir crazy at the moment.
What really functionally changed between iOS 6 and 7 which bothers you? As far as I remember it, 7 was largely a new skin on the familiar functions of iOS, with a few new useful features like control centre. It wasn't a radical change in how iOS worked, just how it looked. They got rid of things like button outlines, but the text was in the same place so you already knew that tapping it would take you back or whatever its function was.
To this end I agree iOS 7 primarily focused on a fresh new design - because that's what was most desired at the time.
To the latter, I also left that door open, by saying if iOS had evolved more boldly between 1.0 and 6.0 the really radical shakeup with iOS 7 probably wouldn't have been necessary all in one go.
Tim may deliver great numbers for shareholders, but I’ve yet to hear or see anyone at the modern Apple speak with the passion and glint in their eye that Scott does.
Cook has made Apple too “safe”.
Cook has made Apple too “safe”.
I don’t get bored of the cutlery though.