After looking at that picture I would say Ive needs a B-Cup bra.
In all seriousness (did I say that?), he's become a pretty diva, more focused on image and being seen at big fashion and design events and getting written up in gossip columns. My first Apple product was a Iici computer and I've been with them ever since. I am disappointed and beginning to get disenchanted. Not going over to the dark side, but my unshakable faith is getting wobbly.
I loved that thing! Very ergonomic for me, and I never had the mysterious issue with it turning askew and not knowing which way is up. Heck, I get my Magic Mouse turned upside down every other month or so and fear for a few seconds that I'm tripping balls.
Let's say this is true. Did it happen long enough ago that the design of the next iMac and Mac Tubular Pro will be influenced? I sure hope so.
Another thing I've been thinking about. I've pretty much decided not to get any Apple product until everything in the pipeline is on the table. I'm not going to second guess design tradeoffs from one category to another until I know what I'm getting myself into. (And until the glitches are worked out of things like the Touch Bar. Pretty much every new Apple product I've had has been defective in some minor way, later fixed).
As the saying goes... Small minds discuss people, you know the rest...
A fellow who didn't educate any of her/his subordinates doesn't deserve that fellowship already. The design department is a team and Ive is a high-level executive. Such an executive is not expected to ride mouse on AutoCAD after so many years of brilliant service. Expecting that Ive would design by his very own hand is a layman's thinking that has nothing to do with any business or corporate reality. Apple has a design tradition and Ive is the guardian of that tradition, that's it. Just like some other executive being the guardian of the software tradition or another the guardian of sales and marketing tradition, another of the production and manufacturing tradition...
Indeed. Indeed. It's certainly time Apple gave a few of those designers a freer hand.
I loved that thing! Very ergonomic for me, and I never had the mysterious issue with it turning askew and not knowing which way is up. Heck, I get my Magic Mouse turned upside down every other month or so and fear for a few seconds that I'm tripping balls.
I think to many people use there mouse as a hand rest and that's why they hated the hockey puck. I think this is main reason people dislike all Apple mouses as they aren't designed to be used that way.
To me it's better to not grip instead throw the mouse a round with a fairly loose hand and the puck was great for that. I'd really love a magic hockey puck as the current mouse is just a bit on the heavy side to be as agile* as the puck was.
*Well felt like it was at the time. I mean it was a ball mouse not very accurate and didn't track well so fully aware that I'm romanticizing the past.
As the saying goes... Small minds discuss people, you know the rest...
A fellow who didn't educate any of her/his subordinates doesn't deserve that fellowship already. The design department is a team and Ive is a high-level executive. Such an executive is not expected to ride mouse on AutoCAD after so many years of brilliant service. Expecting that Ive would design by his very own hand is a layman's thinking that has nothing to do with any business or corporate reality. Apple has a design tradition and Ive is the guardian of that tradition, that's it. Just like some other executive being the guardian of the software tradition or another the guardian of sales and marketing tradition, another of the production and manufacturing tradition...
then to what do you attribute all the design goofups lately ?
So John Gruber responded to this on his blog. People clearly misconstrued what he said. Probably to fit the narrative out there that this $300 design book was evidence of his pending retirement or something.
Importantly, I’ve also heard from well-placed sources within Apple that there is nothing to this — that while Ive is devoting much of his time and attention to architecture recently (both for the new campus and Apple retail), every aspect of every new product remains as much under his watchful eye as ever. That his chief design officer title isn’t the least bit ceremonial, and instead is an accurate representation of his increasedauthority.1 Some of this I’d heard a while back. Some of this I’ve heard just in the last few days, in the wake of last week’s episode of the show and the ensuing misconstruing of my remarks.[2]
Obviously Ive is a unique figure within the company in the sense that he doesn't have a large staff (he may not even have any direct reports right now) and probably doesn't interact with large swaths of the company. He's not listed as an executive officer in SEC filings and therefore his salary and stock options don't have to be disclosed. But if you read Gruber's full blog post he doesn't think Ive's promotion to a C-level title was ceremonial as he doesn't think that's something Tim Cook would do.
As the saying goes... Small minds discuss people, you know the rest...
A fellow who didn't educate any of her/his subordinates doesn't deserve that fellowship already. The design department is a team and Ive is a high-level executive. Such an executive is not expected to ride mouse on AutoCAD after so many years of brilliant service. Expecting that Ive would design by his very own hand is a layman's thinking that has nothing to do with any business or corporate reality. Apple has a design tradition and Ive is the guardian of that tradition, that's it. Just like some other executive being the guardian of the software tradition or another the guardian of sales and marketing tradition, another of the production and manufacturing tradition...
then to what do you attribute all the design goofups lately ?
A design goofup is the one that prevents a device from selling in millions. Remember Ginger? Steve Jobs' first saying at the presentation was "the design sucks". That is a design goofup.
There is something much more important than plain design: functionality. Sometimes Apple forgets that For instance, back ports on Mac instead of much useful frontal ones, lack of disk and CPU activity lights on Mac, misleading black screen while shutting down Mac not yet turned off (imagine catastrophic effects when unplugging external booting disk in a hurry), lack of matte display as previously available, lack of power button on keyboard as was previously possible, etc.
You had to dig deep to find those examples of missing "functionality." Disk and CPU activity lights? Really?
I'm interested in your "black screen when shutting down" example. I would have said "that's not how my Mac behaves" but perhaps there's a scenario when that is true? Having said that, I "shut down" a Mac maybe once a year, so I can't say I care.
Its pretty obvious by recent designs that Ive is bored, fat, lazy, and not motivated.
We need new leadership that is exicted, hungry, and willing to take risks.
Few examples of design that is below the Apple standard:
1. Same iPhone shell for 3 years. Unacceptable. Even cheap POS China companies come out with yearly shell changes.
2. Mouse.
3. Pencil
4. Battery case
5. Smartkey board, non flush design
6. Camera bump & ugly antenna lines
These may seem like nitpicking. Small details. But that was what made Apple great. The details.
That is a nice summary of recent disasters. I agree that design at Apple is past it's best. The trash can Mac Pro wasn't innovation at all, it was an exercise is doing something different - for the sake of doing something different.
They had honed the Mac Pro very well then released an abomination.
They spent nearly two years getting the plastics right for the Flower Power and Dalmatian iMacs. Then they died a death
Sunflower iMac? It went away never to be seen again.
The Cube was another example of doing something different for the sake of it. It never came back either (not even when aluminium became all the rage)
Hockey Puck mouse?
Always white cables for iDevices?
Is the front of the phone the best place for the fingerprint sensor?
Etc.
Then you have the things they took away. The little practical details. Taking the power button off the keyboard. Or the little but not practical things like the illuminated Apple logo.
In the quest for thinness we lost accessibility. We lost the option for user upgrading of RAM and storage. We got glued on batteries instead. We lost a decent keyboard and got a hard, loud one instead. With keys so thin that they feel cheap. On the machine I tried for a long while, the space bar wobbled BUT it was optically 'cleaner'. Much less light bleeding through the keys. I hated it but I mean absolutely hated it. Then people will say 'you'll get used to it'. That's not the issue. The question is: what was wrong about the old one? The answer is nothing, but to reach the size they wanted it was the only way to go.
Can someone tell me why I need to take off the screen to change a hard drive on an iMac if the result is 20 minutes to replace the drive and an extra 30 making sure the screen and glass cover are dust free. And why the special dust removing kit is even exists? Was it really two much to design access from the rear?
Why did iMacs get thinner (and thermally compromised) if they are rarely moved and almost always looked at front on. Just so you Can admire their thinness at the store?
Why can't iDevices have microSD support?
Why can't my wife Bluetooth a file directly to another device. Why is AirDrop so flaky?
On the MacOS/iOS front, why is the design so unintuitive? Shake to undo? Hold down the refresh but to to load the desktop version of a page? I challenge any user to figure out how to bring up an email draft with out help.
Why are there no arrow keys on the keyboard? Why are certain interface elements almost microscopic? Close tab in Safari, for example.
Why did OSX on an Air have zero colour contrasting on key interface elements (sidebar contents).
How did they manage to bloat iTunes so much and royally screw up the interface so often?
Why is it that whenever Apple touches cloud computing it screws up so much. iCloud is STILL the worst cloud service to trust your documents to?
Lots of great design but lots of trash design too.
Lots of hideous design in the interfaces of both iOS and Mac OSX. Bad design that also goes against Apple's own thinking.
So what's happening? Millions are being spent on store re-fits to make what was already a decent (if utterly boring) design more hip!
So Apple was at it's "best" just before the dalmation and flower power iMacs? Ok, so now we know your point of reference (and can safely disregard your opinion). As for all the random examples you've spewed up, many are excellent design choices (that you don't understand) and others are decisions that were subsequently changed/fixed. Is your argument that Apple isn't perfect in EVERYTHING it has ever done? Ok, I can agree with that earth-shattering conclusion.
He's obviously still involved in the latest Apple designs, else they wouldn't be pandering to Ive's OCD in striving for even more thinness over function.
As the saying goes... Small minds discuss people, you know the rest...
A fellow who didn't educate any of her/his subordinates doesn't deserve that fellowship already. The design department is a team and Ive is a high-level executive. Such an executive is not expected to ride mouse on AutoCAD after so many years of brilliant service. Expecting that Ive would design by his very own hand is a layman's thinking that has nothing to do with any business or corporate reality. Apple has a design tradition and Ive is the guardian of that tradition, that's it. Just like some other executive being the guardian of the software tradition or another the guardian of sales and marketing tradition, another of the production and manufacturing tradition...
then to what do you attribute all the design goofups lately ?
Well, I attribute them to an opinion you picked up from the internet echo chamber.
Ive has been overrated for years. From stupid OS interface changes to the mouse charging design Ive has been hit-or-miss.
Ive created and approved several iconic designs. Like eMate, iMac, iPod, iPhone, and the tangerine iBook. Curves, colors, and so very playful.
The TiBook ended that. An amazing design but 15 years of iterations on Alu-Thin is too much. It has been stripping away usability to the point of dongles, inferior keyboards, and zero upgradability limiting every Mac.
Yes - the mouse shouldn't charge like that, and the battery pack is ugly (and only needed due to the design language). That doesn't make Ive overrated. We know he is able of doing more than shaving 2.5 mm in height and adding faux speaker grills.
Please enlighten me to which design choices I fail to understand. Changing iMac hard drives by removing the screen assembly?
Yes, plenty of things were 'fixed' then 'unfixed'. Front ports for example. The entire Mac Pro for example. But anyway, at least you tacitly admit they got things wrong but they were great enough change or fix what they got wrong.
And where did I say Apple was at it best before Flower Power?
Is my argument that Apple isn't perfect in EVERYTHING it has ever done?
Your point is exactly? That you don't like people criticising Apple and giving examples?
What do you think this means?:
"Lots of great design but lots of trash design too"
He's obviously still involved in the latest Apple designs, else they wouldn't be pandering to Ive's OCD in striving for even more thinness over function.
Thinness is the function.
Thinness is everything: natural cooling, more portability, shortest paths, smaller circuits, less electric resistance, more battery. That is proven by millions of iPads sold.
Moving the laptop from one desk onto another desk is not mobile computing. Millions of research dollars are spent every year by every chip maker for the sake of thinness. From now, every laptop will be thinner and thinner. More ports will be removed for the sake of fanless operation. Everything will be wireless. The wireless industry develops faster than any other connection standard. iPhone syncing was initially cabled over USB. People didn't want USB syncing, they wanted wireless syncing, over the air OS updates etc...
As the saying goes... Small minds discuss people, you know the rest...
A fellow who didn't educate any of her/his subordinates doesn't deserve that fellowship already. The design department is a team and Ive is a high-level executive. Such an executive is not expected to ride mouse on AutoCAD after so many years of brilliant service. Expecting that Ive would design by his very own hand is a layman's thinking that has nothing to do with any business or corporate reality. Apple has a design tradition and Ive is the guardian of that tradition, that's it. Just like some other executive being the guardian of the software tradition or another the guardian of sales and marketing tradition, another of the production and manufacturing tradition...
then to what do you attribute all the design goofups lately ?
Your imagination? People cite things like the charging port on the mouse being underneath it, but as an actual owner of this device I know that's irrelevant, it so rarely needs charging. Once a month maybe I plug it in before I leave the desk for the evening.
Etc. To amateurs and haters on the internet these things are goofups, to normal people they are not.
He's obviously still involved in the latest Apple designs, else they wouldn't be pandering to Ive's OCD in striving for even more thinness over function.
Thinness is the function.
Thinness is everything: natural cooling, more portability, shortest paths, smaller circuits, less electric resistance, more battery. That is proven by millions of iPads sold.
Moving the laptop from one desk onto another desk is not mobile computing. Millions of research dollars are spent every year by every chip maker for the sake of thinness. From now, every laptop will be thinner and thinner. More ports will be removed for the sake of fanless operation. Everything will be wireless. The wireless industry develops faster than any other connection standard. iPhone syncing was initially cabled over USB. People didn't want USB syncing, they wanted wireless syncing, over the air OS updates etc...
Get over it...
Bingo. Thinness is less volume and a lighter machine, this matters. When I drag out one of my ancient HPs it's comically large - in no way would I ever want to revert back to that. Thin. Thin is light. Light is easier to travel with, which is the point of a mobile notebook. That should go without saying, right.
Comments
I loved that thing! Very ergonomic for me, and I never had the mysterious issue with it turning askew and not knowing which way is up. Heck, I get my Magic Mouse turned upside down every other month or so and fear for a few seconds that I'm tripping balls.
This expensive Apple design book is utterly silly. How about designing 2160P and HDR into Apple TV, Ive?!
Another thing I've been thinking about. I've pretty much decided not to get any Apple product until everything in the pipeline is on the table. I'm not going to second guess design tradeoffs from one category to another until I know what I'm getting myself into. (And until the glitches are worked out of things like the Touch Bar. Pretty much every new Apple product I've had has been defective in some minor way, later fixed).
I think this is main reason people dislike all Apple mouses as they aren't designed to be used that way.
To me it's better to not grip instead throw the mouse a round with a fairly loose hand and the puck was great for that.
I'd really love a magic hockey puck as the current mouse is just a bit on the heavy side to be as agile* as the puck was.
*Well felt like it was at the time. I mean it was a ball mouse not very accurate and didn't track well so fully aware that I'm romanticizing the past.
http://daringfireball.net/2016/11/ives_role_at_apple
Obviously Ive is a unique figure within the company in the sense that he doesn't have a large staff (he may not even have any direct reports right now) and probably doesn't interact with large swaths of the company. He's not listed as an executive officer in SEC filings and therefore his salary and stock options don't have to be disclosed. But if you read Gruber's full blog post he doesn't think Ive's promotion to a C-level title was ceremonial as he doesn't think that's something Tim Cook would do.
You had to dig deep to find those examples of missing "functionality." Disk and CPU activity lights? Really?
I'm interested in your "black screen when shutting down" example. I would have said "that's not how my Mac behaves" but perhaps there's a scenario when that is true? Having said that, I "shut down" a Mac maybe once a year, so I can't say I care.
So Apple was at it's "best" just before the dalmation and flower power iMacs? Ok, so now we know your point of reference (and can safely disregard your opinion). As for all the random examples you've spewed up, many are excellent design choices (that you don't understand) and others are decisions that were subsequently changed/fixed. Is your argument that Apple isn't perfect in EVERYTHING it has ever done? Ok, I can agree with that earth-shattering conclusion.
Well, I attribute them to an opinion you picked up from the internet echo chamber.
The TiBook ended that. An amazing design but 15 years of iterations on Alu-Thin is too much. It has been stripping away usability to the point of dongles, inferior keyboards, and zero upgradability limiting every Mac.
Yes - the mouse shouldn't charge like that, and the battery pack is ugly (and only needed due to the design language). That doesn't make Ive overrated. We know he is able of doing more than shaving 2.5 mm in height and adding faux speaker grills.
Yes, plenty of things were 'fixed' then 'unfixed'. Front ports for example. The entire Mac Pro for example. But anyway, at least you tacitly admit they got things wrong but they were great enough change or fix what they got wrong.
And where did I say Apple was at it best before Flower Power?
Is my argument that Apple isn't perfect in EVERYTHING it has ever done?
Your point is exactly? That you don't like people criticising Apple and giving examples?
What do you think this means?:
"Lots of great design but lots of trash design too"
Thinness is everything: natural cooling, more portability, shortest paths, smaller circuits, less electric resistance, more battery. That is proven by millions of iPads sold.
Moving the laptop from one desk onto another desk is not mobile computing. Millions of research dollars are spent every year by every chip maker for the sake of thinness. From now, every laptop will be thinner and thinner. More ports will be removed for the sake of fanless operation. Everything will be wireless. The wireless industry develops faster than any other connection standard. iPhone syncing was initially cabled over USB. People didn't want USB syncing, they wanted wireless syncing, over the air OS updates etc...
Get over it...
Etc. To amateurs and haters on the internet these things are goofups, to normal people they are not.