Apple's Product Design Has Improved Since Jony Ive Left (bloomberg.com) 125
Bloomberg: There was a sense that, without the moderating influence of the late Steve Jobs, perhaps Jony Ive started to prioritize aesthetics a little too much. Since he stepped down as chief designer at the end of 2019, Apple seems to have reemphasized function. From the iPhone to Apple TV to the Macbook, gone are the days of "The user be damned, we think this looks cool." Monday's unveiling of a new Macbook Pro lineup of laptops provides evidence of the shift. Headline features released five years ago under Ive's aegis have been scrapped. Gone is the so-called "butterfly" keyboard, which rendered the device thinner but whose clunky mechanics made typing more difficult; farewell too to the Touch Bar, a touch sensitive strip display along the top of the keyboard which could show functions for the web browser one moment and mixing tools for music apps the next, but was almost impossible to use without looking; back are HDMI ports, which let you plug the computer into high-definition displays without using an adapter. Perhaps this would have happened under Ive, but Evans Hankey, who now heads the industrial design team, has overseen plenty of other tweaks that seem to indicate a change of philosophy.
[...] But there is merit in sometimes listening to your customers, particularly when the pendulum has swung too far away from function and towards form. After all, you're liable to lose professional customers -- architects, musicians, film-makers -- if they can't plug their laptops into external monitors. And professional users can afford to pay for the top-of-the-range devices that are more profitable to Apple. Dieter Rams, a significant influence on Ive, compiled 10 principles for "Good Design." Number three was "good design is aesthetic." Apple seems to have remembered numbers two and four: "good design makes a product useful" and "good design makes a product understandable."
[...] But there is merit in sometimes listening to your customers, particularly when the pendulum has swung too far away from function and towards form. After all, you're liable to lose professional customers -- architects, musicians, film-makers -- if they can't plug their laptops into external monitors. And professional users can afford to pay for the top-of-the-range devices that are more profitable to Apple. Dieter Rams, a significant influence on Ive, compiled 10 principles for "Good Design." Number three was "good design is aesthetic." Apple seems to have remembered numbers two and four: "good design makes a product useful" and "good design makes a product understandable."
A little bit unfair about the strip (Score:4, Insightful)
"a touch sensitive strip display .... but was almost impossible to use without looking"
Well yeah, but then its a *display*. Its almost impossible to use a touchscreen without looking too but thats hardly a design fault.
Now whether the strip was a useful addition or not is another matter.
Re:A little bit unfair about the strip (Score:5, Insightful)
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there is no escape key without the strip. It was not bad design, but horrible design.
TBF, macOS has never been reliant on the ESC key. Sure, it has been supported, mostly as a shortcut for "Cancel" in Dialogs and Menus, and in some Applications; but, other than by Coders, its constant use just isn't as ingrained in the "muscle-memory" of most Mac users, like it is with most Windows and almost all Linux users. So, in a Mac environment, relegating it (and other Fn keys) to an auxiliary interface seemed like a reasonable trade-off, considering the very real potential for some unique and useful
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Have to disagree with it not being muscle memory for Mac users There are at least a dozen times a day I curse its omission on my iPad keyboard when trying to do actual work.
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Apple has suffered from form over function issues on and off for nearly its entire existence. We used to blame Steve Jobs, but then couldn't explain it after he left Apple, came back, took it to the top, then passed away. Without hardly an change to that weird cycle of showy tech designed around having a good press release. I doubt Jony Ive's departure will alter this either, because I believe it's something baked into the company's culture. It may have more to do with their commitment to Apple Event and WW
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Doesn't iPad != 'actual work' in most peoples minds though.
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I can do about 90-95% of my work on or from my iPad Pro with keyboard folio. My limitations are GNUCash and an occasional Windows app I need to use a VM at work for.
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First class apologist at work here!
Funny how, as a long time Mac user, the ESC is certainly "ingrained" in my "muscle-memory". Maybe Mac users like you reference should move on to iOS instead.
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First class apologist at work here!
Funny how, as a long time Mac user, the ESC is certainly "ingrained" in my "muscle-memory". Maybe Mac users like you reference should move on to iOS instead.
Not Apologizing, just Opining.
And you conveniently ignored that I actually preferred that the ESC and Fn row stayed put, and a secondary touch display (Touchbar or TouchPad+) be added.
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First class apologist at work here!
Funny how, as a long time Mac user, the ESC is certainly "ingrained" in my "muscle-memory". Maybe Mac users like you reference should move on to iOS instead.
Myself, the location of the 'escape' is ingrained mainly because I am also a developer and command line user. I'd suspect which action keys get the most attention will really depend on what you are using your computer for.
I wasn't a fan of the touch bar on the 16" MBP at the beginning, but have got used to it. Maybe if they added as an extra row above the function keys it would be more appreciated?
Re: A little bit unfair about the strip (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, a constant user of ESC on MacOS here, too. A quick way to back out of many things, I use it all day long.
Since Apple walked away from following the HIG, [Command]+[.] doesn't seem to work as many places, and ESC is my first bang on the keyboard.
Apple usability is fast going down the tubes. Take it from someone who "does" usability for a living.
(That said, I don't hold out my keyboard dominance as some example of usability - we evaluate usability against tested results and long-time widely-known heuristics, not against my personal preferences and biases)
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macOS has never been reliant on the ESC key...Personally, I would have liked them to bring back the Fn row
You don't like the escape key, but you want the Function keys? Really?
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macOS has never been reliant on the ESC key...Personally, I would have liked them to bring back the Fn row
You don't like the escape key, but you want the Function keys? Really?
I never said I did of didn't like the Escape key. I just said that it has historically not really been as important to Mac UX as it has on certain other Platforms.
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macOS has never been reliant on the ESC key...Personally, I would have liked them to bring back the Fn row
You don't like the escape key, but you want the Function keys? Really?
Apple absolutely should have kept the function keys. They allow muscle memory for things like volume controls without having to look. But more importantly, they are infrequently used, and approximately never used while holding down modifier keys (except, ostensibly, Fn, if you're using them as function keys, which nobody does), so you're not as likely to hit them at an angle that would cause you to accidentally touch the touch bar.
Apple made two fatal mistakes in designing the touch bar, both of which sho
escape woes (Score:2)
Pretty much the first thing I do on a new machine or other install is fix the function of the key to the right of the A to its proper Control function, instead of the moronic capslock.
On this MacBook Pro, I then the little key labeled control to be escape.
Problem solved.
Over forty years of typing leaves me dependent upon the control key being where God Meant it to be, but, for whatever reason, I'm much more flexible about where escape goes . . .
That said, cool as it seemed when I ought the machine, the stri
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Except for the ESC key being a shortcut for every single cancel button across the entire operating system and every application, and has been going back to the 1980s, I guess yeah macOS hasn't been reliant on the ESC key...
If you learn to read, you will see that I acknowledge that shortcut.
But it is also not used by many Mac users; particularly those who first learned computers on Macs.
That was never true (Score:2, Interesting)
there is no escape key without the strip.
ESC was always present on the strip unless and application chose to do something specifically different with that area.
How is that bad design? ESC was always present when expected.
I was fine with it as a *EMACS* user, so the rest of you have no right to complain at all.
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I was fine with it as a *EMACS* user, so the rest of you have no right to complain at all.
The almighty has spoken, we unwashed will never complain again without permission. /s
Fuck off. Complaining is what gets at least *some* companies to *sometimes* undo really stupid changes.
See: SD card + HDMI port returning on MB Pro.
See: MS walking back the worst UI changes from V8 to V8.1
See: Ubuntu removing Amazon search
You're such a pathetic Apple bootlicker.
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You're such a pathetic Apple bootlicker
Or perhaps he was just expressing his observations and experience in an obviously sarcastic way.
Lighten up!
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OK so it is agreed that we here in this Macbook design meeting know everything about every application that every user will ever want to run, and none of them would benefit from having a touchscreen. Moving on to the next item on the agenda... Adding a touchscreen to the Macbook keyboard. Sounds cool! Thoughts?
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Adding a touchscreen to the Macbook keyboard. Sounds cool! Thoughts?
Yes, I have one.
Howabout making the TrackPad into a secondary MultiTouch Display? We can even use up all those spare ForceTouch iPhone displays we couldn't cancel delivery on!
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Ye olde 80s and 90s Apple dev documentation warned against the evils of modality. Would probably have been worth a quite read of them prior to release.
Re:A little bit unfair about the strip (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the model nature, not fact of being a touch screen, that really killed its use for me. I was quite interested in it and thought it would be great to use at first, including usage on things like Logic Pro X etc.. In reality...the model nature meant I was constantly switching back to get basic volume control.
It's not the modal nature so much as the fact that the modal nature caused you to lose functionality that should never be modal, like volume control and screen brightness. There once was a time when Apple had actual physical buttons on the side of the screen for these things. Such luxury. Now, it's all about making laptops ultra-thin, no matter what you lose in the process. The keyboard-based controls were an okay compromise. The touch bar wasn't. Had they put the touch bar above the existing function key row (even if that meant making the absurdly oversized trackpad smaller) instead of in place of it, the touch bar would have been a much better design, and people would have loved it.
Ye olde 80s and 90s Apple dev documentation warned against the evils of modality. Would probably have been worth a quite read of them prior to release.
Apple needs to make the original (pre-NeXT) HIG required reading for every new employee. Approximately nobody at Apple seems to understand why things were done the way they were done, so they think, "It would be better if we did it this way," believing that their ideas are new and novel, and not realizing that those ideas were rejected twenty years ago for really good reasons. And this keeps happening over and over.
The pinnacle of iOS development was iOS 6. The pinnacle of macOS development was 10.6, though things were okay until *maybe* 10.8. Everything since then has been a slow descent into chaos, with too many bells and whistles that don't really work, icons that all look alike, and no real significant usability improvements to make up for it.
Apple really needs to take a step back and have a design Renaissance.
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Apple needs to bring back Steve Jobs to fix this mess up. Oh wait... :(
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"Its almost impossible to use a touchscreen without looking too but thats hardly a design fault."
As someone who can touch-type, I have to say yes, it is. It's an unavoidable design fault which most people regard as being more than compensated for by the advantages, but it is most definitely a fault.
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"Its almost impossible to use a touchscreen without looking too but thats hardly a design fault."
As someone who can touch-type, I have to say yes, it is. It's an unavoidable design fault which most people regard as being more than compensated for by the advantages, but it is most definitely a fault.
You actually touch type Function Keys?
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I have a Windows system so I touch-type CTRL+ALT+DEL all the time. I also touch-type ALT+F4 a lot when I'm not rebooting.
There’s an observation there, if you reboot your Windows system often enough that you don't even have to look at your keyboard to type a 3 finger chord!
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CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't reboot your system. That was a thing roughly two decades ago in DOS / Win 9x days. And even in early Windows, the first chord would bring up a window, and the second would soft boot. Windows NT used to have to press that combo before logging in or unlocking their screen.
The more you know...
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CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't reboot your system. That was a thing roughly two decades ago in DOS / Win 9x days. And even in early Windows, the first chord would bring up a window, and the second would soft boot. Windows NT used to have to press that combo before logging in or unlocking their screen.
The more you know...
You are correct, of course.
The Three Finger Salute is also used to Log On, and to invoke the Task Manager, IIRC.
Re:A little bit unfair about the strip (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:A little bit unfair about the strip (Score:5, Informative)
Its almost impossible to use a touchscreen without looking too but thats hardly a design fault.
It is if you position the touch screen in such a way that it's hard to see.
Remember, the Touch Bar is part of the keyboard. It's where the function keys are. When using the keyboard, your hands will tend to block parts of the Touch Bar. To actually use it, you need to essentially take your hands off the keyboard, look at the bar, and then carefully press the elements on it.
And it's not sufficiently more useful than regular function keys. It does two things "better" than just function keys: it updates to show what the keys do, and it lets you slide along it. It's too narrow to really do anything else that might work on a touch screen like zooming or rotating gestures. Not to mention that its proximity to the top row of the keyboard meant that it's far too easy to accidentally hit the edge of the touch screen and do random things.
So I'd argue that those are design flaws. Placing it where they did means you have to either move your hands or crane your neck to actually view what's on it in normal use, and making it the same height as the function keys it replaced means that about all you use it for are replacement buttons and slide controls. Because it's a touch screen and not real keys, it's way too easy to accidentally brush it and do something unintended when simply typing. All of those are inherent design flaws.
Re: A little bit unfair about the strip (Score:2)
I don't know why people hate the bar. I personally love it. My only grip is that many apps didn't properly support it; not even Apple's.
Apple should have made it a giveaway default on all models so it was just standard. That would have given incentive to support. And allowed for heavy customization.
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I think the obvious thing has to be said,
Under Jony Ive, we were heading to a dual-screen touch laptop where the "keyboard" was just another touch screen. No more touchpad. This might have been fine for a medical or industrial environment (where an iPad already does better), but ultimately laptop keyboards have been ultra-crappy from all vendors, and the right kind of keyboard is a mechanical keyboard. Not squishy low-profile keys.
Likewise, things like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch all have insufficient
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Under Jony Ive, we were heading to a dual-screen touch laptop where the "keyboard" was just another touch screen.
It would have been really cool if each individual key was a touchscreen.
Also, the inability to control the touchbar programmatically was super frustrating.
Apple is never wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure after hearing how 100% right they were to remove HDMI, we'll hear how 100% right they were to ut it back but they were never wrong in the first place. Lack of HDMI was annoying. Lack of USB-A is also annoying. Yes I can carry dongles, no I'd rather not have the faff.
Also the touch bar was a massive gimmick.
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USB-C 3 and 4 support hdmi.
They might support HDMI but they are not HDMI.
1 port type to rule them all.
Great idea, but until USB-C are... universal, I don't want my laptop to piss me off.
Apple should just include more usb-c ports and some free dongles since they are cheap to buy.
Yay more dongles. Something to forget, lose and faff with. Just what I want from a $3000 laptop: extra work.
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While I do like the idea of having ports, however USB-C currently handles nearly all of our IO functionality. and Dongles are not that bad of an idea. Especially as particular technology is going to be phased out normally during that products lifespan.
That said, I have good number of USB-A products that I don't plan to get rid of anytime soon. Also HDMI isn't going away in the next few years either.
However, the headphone jack, you can probably deal with a dongle, that you keep attached to your headphones,
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That said, I have good number of USB-A products that I don't plan to get rid of anytime soon. Also HDMI isn't going away in the next few years either.
Well exactly. Every new TV and monitor (except Apple ones?) today ship with HDMI, and a lot of conference room kit (which tends to be long lived) uses it too. Not only will it take a while to vanish once it's obsolete, it's still active for the forseeable future.
USB A might start to go, but even new mice and keyboards are predominantly A, for example. Type C f
USB-A ? (Score:2)
USB-A is a moot point now, sure, it wasn't when apple removed those ports, but that's something they always do - try and usher in "new things"... er, and yeah, proprietary things.
Thing is, some of the those proprietary things were actually better ... some not.
The pain barrier with Apple and these port shenanigans, has been having to add docks and adapters - and so many docks are just ... shit. ... arguably ... stunning macBook, that looks wonderful, super portable, powerful - and then pro users
You have this
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And yep, MacBooks have absolutely become the go to device for many coders - for the same reason, it just works. It's slick, it's fast, the OS is, without doubt, the absolute best of breed hands down. I'll argue that point till the cows come home, if I can be bothered.
[...]
Nothing can match macOS for slickness and just keeping out of your way.
I'll bite. I don't like OSX very much. I mean, being unixy is better than nothing for sure but it's not a very good kernel, and I rather dislike the GUI. I greatly pref
Re:Apple is never wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole thing about minimizing the number and variety of ports was the triumph of aesthetics over function. You say it's as easy to bring a USB C to HDMI cable as it is to plug into HDMI, but it obviously isn't. It's one more thing to bring and one more thing you might forget. And, of course, it undermines the simplicity of having nothing but USB-C ports, since it means you have to carry a dongle instead of being able to plug stuff in natively. It's great for you that your use case worked with the USB-C only design, but that doesn't mean Apple can or should ignore all the other use cases where it didn't work.
And no, the HDMI cable is not only beneficial to right holders. It's beneficial to users who just want to be able to connect to TVs, which commonly include HDMI ports but not DP or DVI. Since TVs are now a very common alternative to projectors for displaying stuff in conference rooms- and even a lot of projectors are HDMI-only- that's a really important application.
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Is having a native port more convenient? Of course, but everyone has their own different sets of needs and you can't satisfy everyone. It's somewhat ironic that it was Apple that wanted to standardize on one port and kill everything else off, but it doe
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I congratulate you on being perfect and also basic enough to always be prepared for every eventuality in your life.
I on the other hand currently am typing this on a Surface Pro. I just finished watching a movie, on the surface screen. Why? Because my HDMI dongle is in my briefcase which is at home and not here right now.
I'm sorry I'm not perfect like you. I do strive to be better.
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You usually use the HDMI cable you find at the venue where you are giving your presentation or hot desking.
There's no point removing ports. There is no benefit. It doesn't make the laptop appreciably thinner or lighter, it doesn't make the battery last longer. It's just marketing wank, look at how minimalist it is.
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Chromecast is probably the most popular. Does Mac support that?
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I mean I get it, you have to carry a bunch of extra crap for your super cool, svelte, and overpriced laptop, then fiddle with it. For superior machines, you don't.
Strange as it may seem, I do actually know how to use my macbook pro. I have a collection of dongles for things like HDMI and USB-A. It's not like I care that my charging cables are A or C in principle, but most of them are A, which is makes using the mac annoying. And my monitor has usb-B in (who has a C-B cable. Anyone ever?). So yes I have dong
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I mean I get it, you have to carry a bunch of extra crap for your super cool, svelte, and overpriced laptop, then fiddle with it.
You apparently don't "get it" because for the newest laptops you don't need to carry anything extra. It has HDMI, SD cards, and USB-C ports aplenty so uo don't need a dock. You carry charging cables like you normally would, but you carry USB-C charging cables instead of A and you get the win of it all being simpler to plug in than A cables.
I carry some adaptors but they are more
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You apparently don't "get it" because for the newest laptops you don't need to carry anything extra. It has HDMI, SD cards, and USB-C ports aplenty so uo don't need a dock.
Gosh it's almost like I was complaining about machine I have, not the one that's been out basically 2 days and I don't have yet. So yes I do get it.
You carry charging cables like you normally would, but you carry USB-C charging cables instead of A
Right, so I buy a bunch of new cables. Rather than use the ones I have. Cool.
I carry some ad
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I want enough so I don't have to play hunt-the-cable whenever I want to plug something in.
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I'm inclined to agree. USB-A, whether people like it or not, is common as dirt and will continue to be common as dirt for many years to come. USB connections also tend to be pretty transient. Digging out the port replicator so you can plug in a thumb drive for a minute to copy a file is annoying. I've found the lack of HDMI to be less annoying because if I'm plugging it into HDMI, it's probably going to be plugged in for at least an hour. (That, and the USB-C connector is a huge upgrade to the MiniDP connec
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I have a good, and expensive at the time Mechanical Keyboard, that is USB A, Also my Mouse, while wireless, needs a custom radio receiver that is USB-A.
I don't get new technology because it is just new, but only if it offers me some real advantage. I don't see the need to replace a mouse and keyboard that has been working for many years now, with a new device, just because they decided to change the ports.
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Well... I am currently Not a Mac user. The last Mac that I owned was a Core2 Due Macbook Pro. My current laptop (System76) is jammed with ports and stuff. However, what Apple does, often means the other hardware makers will follow shortly.
As even the "Hacker Friendly" System76 Laptop doesn't have a User Replaceable Battery, DVD R/W, and a VGA Port.
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SD card was never a big thing for me because Apple's SD card slot has always been crap. I've never had a MBP that didn't require you to reinsert the card several times before it would see it. So that's dongle anyway.
OTOH, I have LOTS of USB A stuff, and virtually no USB C stuff. Having a USB A port is a HUGE deal for me, and means I get to carry dongles if I'm not using my best MBP, the 2012 15".
HDMI is kind of meh for me, I have no shortage of desktops with multiple screens, I never do presentations, so
Lol (Score:2)
Whatâ(TM)s even changed in design? What was the last phone design he had influence on?
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trypophobia
Fashion over function sucks (Score:2)
Oh so brave Apple engineers. (Score:1)
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The Purple Heart [wikipedia.org] is awarded for being either wounded or killed. Other medals [medalsofamerica.com] are awarded for bravery.
Walled opinions. (Score:2)
From the iPhone to Apple TV to the Macbook, gone are the days of "The user be damned, we think this looks cool." Monday's unveiling of a new Macbook Pro lineup of laptops provides evidence of the shift.
People still complain about "walled gardens" no matter what shift occurs. To the outside world it's our way or bust.
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Walled or not, the latest MBPs run rings around every other laptop there is right now in both CPU and GPU, not to mention heat. It would be nice if someone else could make an ARM chip that could be used on the desktop that could compete with Intel i9s or even i7s.
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The reason it's true that they are better than every other MacBook is simply because Apple is still on multiple generations old Intel processors.
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Every other macbook out there, yes. Every other laptop? Nope.
The reason it's true that they are better than every other MacBook is simply because Apple is still on multiple generations old Intel processors.
But you have to resort to "portable in name only" 10-pound, AC-bound "laptops" from MSI and CLEO to get meaningfully better performance than the new MacBook Pros.
Hardly what most people actually want in a laptop.
Don't just listen to your customers (Score:2)
You need to not only listen to your customers, you need to look beyond your customers to see where your new customers are going.
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You need to not only listen to your customers, you need to look beyond your customers to see where your new customers are going.
That's what Apple did back in 1998, when they adopted USB (A) and dropped floppies from the original iMac, and what they did in 2016 when they went all-in on TB and USB-C, to mention a few on-topic examples.
Unfortunately, the danger of speculating is incorrect-speculation. But we really would still be fighting with N-8-1, DTR vs. RTS, pin 2 TXD vs pin 3 TXD, et fucking cetera, if everyone just played it safe, I/O-wise.
And yes, it does take courage; especially when there are potentially BEELIONS of dollars i
I've Ire at Ive, it's is all I've Got (Score:3)
The ire I have at this Ive person, now that I know who to blame, is high. We only use very few Apple laptops, but dealing with visitors at our office and all the dongles is complete hogwash. We have one 3rd party dev who has yet to figure out how to output from his apple laptop to our TV via an HDMI and as many converters as you want. We are forced to use workarounds. This is unacceptable. Reintroducing the HDMI and actually useful ports would be the way to go.
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The ire I have at this Ive person, now that I know who to blame, is high. We only use very few Apple laptops, but dealing with visitors at our office and all the dongles is complete hogwash. We have one 3rd party dev who has yet to figure out how to output from his apple laptop to our TV via an HDMI and as many converters as you want. We are forced to use workarounds. This is unacceptable. Reintroducing the HDMI and actually useful ports would be the way to go.
PEBKAC.
Or your TV is barely compatible with the actual HDMI standard. Happens.
Obviously it isn't a common problem.
without the moderating influence of ...Steve Jobs? (Score:2)
Steve Jobs a moderating influence? Quite the revisionist history there. Was the author alive at the time?
Steve Jobs is the one responsible for "damn the user", not Ives. Ives was overrated, of course. He was a ripoff artist and Jobs henchman. Apple product design may have improved since Ives left, but it would not have gif Jobs were not already gone. It just took a while for the other goon to leave.
Wrong (Score:2)
Steve Jobs is the one responsible for "damn the user", not Ives.
Totally incorrect. He just didn't trust committees of Users.
Steve was ALL about the user, however those users he were all about were him, and others carefully selected for aesthetics. Then they would test the hell out of something and see if it was annoying to use.
Generally Apple did a really good job of that under Jobs, most UIX was pretty decent and very usable in a way that made sense.
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The movie/game version of "committee of users" is a focus group. Just look at what it's done for AAA games and movies. At least with open-source UI it's everything but the kitchen sink and let the users sort out the kitchen.
There is hope? (Score:2)
That with Jobs dead and Joni gone that someone at apple will make a proper desktop Mac with a least one expansion slot and its not a Mac Pro?
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That with Jobs dead and Joni gone that someone at apple will make a proper desktop Mac with a least one expansion slot and its not a Mac Pro?
You mean a beige tower from 1990?
Touch Bar was good idea, done badly (Score:5, Insightful)
I lament the passing of the Touch Bar, even though in practical terms it's probably better that it goes.
The thing is the fundamental idea is very useful I think - a whole row of keys exist at the top of your keyboard that canonically swift function between applications, yet most users hardly use because it's not clear what they are.
So why not make those keys be able to change display so that it's way easier for users to discover what they do?
The problem was the way they went about trying to implement the idea. The first mistake I think, was making it a purely touch only continuous bar. While that sounds cool and more flexible in theory, as we saw most people just wanted real keys there - so it should have been separate real keys each with a custom display on the cap (maybe that would have been too expensive even for Apple, although I think other keyboard makers have done it).
But even with that flawed base I still think the Touch Bar could have really caught on in terms of use, if Apple had ever done one simple thing - release an external keyboard that had the Touch Bar for desktops. I begged Apple for this, talking to whoever I could asking for this. When such a thing didn't ship with the iMac Pro, I honestly figured Touch Bar was doomed at that point.
Without desktops being able to use the touch bar features also, what developer was every going to spend any time on support for it? And so the Touch Bar languished, and has now died.
So a bit sad or see it go, but at least Apple is making excellent keyboards again.
I do agree with the thought that without Jobs moderating influence of practicality and usability, Apples tending to lean kind of design heavy without toning some stuff down as much as they should have.
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So... it was more an inappropriate touch bar?
Hmm.... actually, that sounds like a really great name for a BDSM club.
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So... it was more an inappropriate touch bar?
Hmm.... actually, that sounds like a really great name for a BDSM club.
You mean a NAMBLA Bar.
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I lament the passing of the Touch Bar, even though in practical terms it's probably better that it goes.
The thing is the fundamental idea is very useful I think - a whole row of keys exist at the top of your keyboard that canonically swift function between applications, yet most users hardly use because it's not clear what they are.
So why not make those keys be able to change display so that it's way easier for users to discover what they do?
Because most of those keys already had a real purpose that wasn't app-specific. That top row had fourteen keys:
Out of those fourteen keys, only three (marked with asterisks) are even potentially reusable for other things depending on what app you're in, and for the subset of users who listen to music in iTunes whi
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I think quite a lot of people do not want that in a laptop because they want to have to pay $20 for a screen cleaning cloth and/or clean the screen all the time.
Heaven forbid that a $1 microfiber cloth come in contact with your screen instead of an officially authorized Apple cleaning cloth. :-D
proper multitouch touch screen support in macOS
I and a lot of other people are with Apple on this one - do not want. You can get an iPad already if that is your thing.
If you still don't understand why it is needed, then you must have missed a key part of my post. I'm advocating adding the API support so that you can have a better experience when using an iPad as an auxiliary input device for your Mac.
Right now, if you want to use your iPad as a set of faders in Logic (for example), someone has to build a custom iOS app that provides a wh
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Other than the esc key, I don't think anybody ever really gave a shit about physical function keys. I mean, I use them for brightness, volume, and NOTHING ELSE. I stopped caring about them for software control in 1991, not coincidentally the same year I stopped using WordStar.
If Apple had left a physical esc key, I don't think more than a few dozen people would have ever complained about the touchbar.
On the other hand, a GIANT NOTCH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MENU BAR is a dealbreaker for me. If I had to choos
Wow (Score:2)
Just imagine how much it would improve if kooky Tim left! We could even have industry standard connectors again!
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Just imagine how much it would improve if kooky Tim left! We could even have industry standard connectors again!
Tim is far from kooky, he is a world-class Logistics expert. Just a bit tame of a personality when compared to Jobs. But then, a good portion of the planet is a bit tame compared with Jobs!
And, besides the much-lauded MagSafe connector, exactly what non-industry-standard connectors does any currently-shipping Apple product have? On Macs at least, the answer is, "none".
Lightning doesn't count. Not only has it never appeared on a non-mobile product, It was a (vast) improvement over the indefensibly-shitty mic
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Just imagine how much it would improve if kooky Tim left! We could even have industry standard connectors again!
USB-C just plain sucks.
1) Backwards compatibility constantly confuses people into failing to get the best out of the connector
2) Plug it into something moderately heavy that is also portable (laptop) and unless you're super mindful, you can snap off the connector (bend just enough that at least one lead dies)
3) REALLY good cables are still expensive
4) Multi-port "smart charge" devices are arbitrarily implemented
-sometimes it's acting as a hub and you can see other devices
-some flat out say that when
prioritize aesthetics a little too much? (Score:2)
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Apple has always been a form over function company, even with Mr Jobs at the helm.
The new MacBook Pros are all about Function.
Even the M1's on-package RAM and soldered SSD have massive performance gains due to Apple's Design decisions.
That's function specifically enabled by form.
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Well, not always. It only started going down that particular path in the late 90s when the iMac demonstrated that designer mindset rewarded them more than their technical focus had. If Apple had remained focused exclusively on functionality, they would have slid into obscurity as a boring computer that was workable enough, but incompatible with most of what other people had.
It's not to say their technical efforts didn't deserve better but the market demonstrated what would or would not work in the face of
Who is working on awful remote? (Score:2)
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They did.
Of course, they made it worse, but they did redesign it.
The mouse charging port says it all (Score:2)
Ive's basic sentiment seemed to be "usability be damned". Sometimes it almost seemed as if he *actively* tried to make things unusable - perhaps to keep our grubby fingerprints from soiling his oh-so-beautiful devices.
The placement of the magic mouse's charging port captures this in spades:
https://www.iphonehacks.com/20... [iphonehacks.com]
Apple TV+ (Score:2)
Clearly whoever wrote this has not tried to navigate Apple TV+ before. Shittiest interface out of all the streaming platforms.
LTT (Score:2)
My go-to laptop has always been Lenovo Thinkpads, but my next would have to be Frameworks. Well, at least once they get bigger screen and keyboard sizes, and my current Thinkpad dies.
The worst thing about Macs... (Score:2)
The Most Astonishing Ive Problem Not Mentioned Yet (Score:2)
The comments here have focused two weird problems Ive created almost exclusively - the lack of ports/jacks, and the weirdly implemented touch strip - and i cannot gainsay any of those complaints.
But the weirdest obsession Ive had was thinness for everything. Up to a point thinness is a useful feature for a portable device, but after that point (which was reached some product cycles ago) no one other than Ive actually cares. One is tempted to wonder if he has a thing for anorectic partners.
The loss of most o
The comparison is out of context (Score:2)
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there are about outside dying. All major vitality. Like an to get some eye too much formality under the GPL. duty to be a big committerbase and website. Mr. de comprehensive is part of the And she ran Me if you'd like, obsessed - 6ive the deal with you OS don't fear the architecture. My All major surveys If *BSD is to Company a 2
Someone's random prose generator needs some serious work!