Apple loses industrial design team member to Airbnb
Apple's industrial design group has lost another employee, as 8-year veteran Miklu Silvanto was recently hired away by Airbnb to contribute to a project launched by the home rental giant's Samara design studio.
Silvanto left Apple in April to lead the industrial and interaction design team at Backyard, an initiative tasked with investigating new and novel ways to design, build and share homes, reports Dezeen.
According to the minimalist Backyard website, the project seeks to "prototype new ways that homes can be built and shared, guided by an ambition to realize more humanistic, future-oriented, and waste-conscious design." The team includes industrial designers, interaction designers, architects, roboticists, mechanical and hardware engineers, material specialists and policy experts, Samara says.
"Samara has a huge ambition that will be very difficult to carry out, but it's exactly the kind of big, crazy gamble that these kinds of companies should be taking," Silvanto said in a statement to Dezeen. "The nature of the work and the creative approach we're taking make me optimistic for the future."
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia hired Silvanto to the Backyard team. The initiative was launched in 2018 as an offshoot of Samara, Airbnb's three-year-old in-house design studio.
Silvanto, a 38-year-old graduate of the Royal College of Art, worked in Apple's ID group under CDO Jony Ive from 2011 to April of this year, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to Apple, the designer co-founded design agency Aivan in 2007.
Silvanto is credited on a number of Apple design patents covering AirPods, Apple Watch, iPhone and a variety of accessories, among other key hardware.
Today's report comes on the heels of news that the small ID group is experiencing its most significant employee turnover in years. Last week, it was reported that three core members of the design team -- Rico Zorkendorfer, Daniele De Iuliis and Julian Hnig -- have departed or plan to depart the company in the near future, with their positions to be filled by young recruits.
Silvanto left Apple in April to lead the industrial and interaction design team at Backyard, an initiative tasked with investigating new and novel ways to design, build and share homes, reports Dezeen.
According to the minimalist Backyard website, the project seeks to "prototype new ways that homes can be built and shared, guided by an ambition to realize more humanistic, future-oriented, and waste-conscious design." The team includes industrial designers, interaction designers, architects, roboticists, mechanical and hardware engineers, material specialists and policy experts, Samara says.
"Samara has a huge ambition that will be very difficult to carry out, but it's exactly the kind of big, crazy gamble that these kinds of companies should be taking," Silvanto said in a statement to Dezeen. "The nature of the work and the creative approach we're taking make me optimistic for the future."
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia hired Silvanto to the Backyard team. The initiative was launched in 2018 as an offshoot of Samara, Airbnb's three-year-old in-house design studio.
Silvanto, a 38-year-old graduate of the Royal College of Art, worked in Apple's ID group under CDO Jony Ive from 2011 to April of this year, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to Apple, the designer co-founded design agency Aivan in 2007.
Silvanto is credited on a number of Apple design patents covering AirPods, Apple Watch, iPhone and a variety of accessories, among other key hardware.
Today's report comes on the heels of news that the small ID group is experiencing its most significant employee turnover in years. Last week, it was reported that three core members of the design team -- Rico Zorkendorfer, Daniele De Iuliis and Julian Hnig -- have departed or plan to depart the company in the near future, with their positions to be filled by young recruits.
Comments
There once was a time I had pretty much nothing at all negative to say about my beloved Apple. But designs in recent years put even more emphasis on form over function that ever before, so much so that practicality and durability has been thrown out the window. Apple's saving grace as far as the Mac is concerned is the iMac, which still has USB-A and the SD Card slot, in addition to USB-C and modern tech. The 15" MBP is big enough to accommodate all that, as is the forthcoming (or so we're told) 16" MBP. If the 16" turns out to be another part-bastardized 15" MBP with butterfly keyboard, it's only more proof that Apple has zero interest in its loyal Mac fans. And that, my friends, is why I am happy to see many more of the Apple design team go. They may be doing well as far as iOS devices are concerned (especially the iPad), but my eye is on the Mac.
First of all, while both being significantly larger than a Mom and Pop store, there is still a big difference running a company and in particular its culture between 30 and 130 k people. In other words, those “rebel groups” responsible for hissing pirate flags, or naming projects “butt-headed-astronomer”, or sounds “sosumi” largely disappear completely and is replaced by more streamlining and bureaucracy. With its pluses and minuses.
On a second note, if every person that would join or leave the company would be reported, there would be room for anything else. Face it: Apple is except for relatively few people having “normal” people coming and going, no magic skills involved and hence upon leaving no sign for doom whatsoever.
Still don't believe Ive-and-Co make mistakes? Justify the charging method of the original Apple pencil. Justify the charging method of the current Apple Mouse 2. And the notch on many current iPhones is just irritating. The 15" MBP is physically large enough to accommodate an SD card slot and even one USB-A port in addition to all the existing ports, but they didn't continue to offer that functionality even though many still use USB-A today and most cameras use SD cards (not to mention the supplementary storage an always-in card can offer). And how about that TouchBar? The list goes on.
Still think John Ive is detached from his design team? Let's see what he had to say in this Dec. 2017 interview (I added bold to show the design team is small and Ive is very much a part of it):
Apple to me is just a collection of people, a collection of people who are united with the same set of values and goals. The team is small enough that you can all communicate what that tentative, very hard to articulate idea is. And I think that’s why, as a team, we feel so fortunate that we get to be part of that transition, from abstract idea to something that is tangible. In 30 years time, we’ll look back at, with such fondness, the way we worked, not necessarily what we did. That’s where experience, not only as an individual, but experience as a group is really important.
And as to how Apple Park will ensure all the design teams work closely together, Ive had to say this in that same interview:
What that will mean . . . is that an industrial designer will be sitting next to a font designer, who will be sitting next to a sound designer, who will be sitting next to a motion graphics designer, and a haptics expert, and somebody who is used to working on three-dimensional figures that are animated, next to a user interface expert, with digital model makers and physical real-world model makers. And . . . it’s hard to say that without getting a little uppity uppity jumpy. I’m really terribly excited about what that’s going to lead.
• Mouse needs charging once every couple months? Everyone I work around plugs it in on their way out one night and doesn't think about it for months. Non issue.
• Notch is necessary for now and also not a problem for 99.9% of users. Why does it bother you? Does it help if you think of it as ears holding extra info above the screen? Again, non issue.
• Almost no-one uses SD slots. USB-A is inferior in every way and easily adapted (just get a single keychain adapter). I don't see why an old USB port is useful to anyone except randoms.
• I love the Touch Bar compared to the old row of keys I nearly *never* used except for a couple of them. Now I"m programming custom button layouts and loving it. I'll take this any day over a dedicated Launchpad button.
I understand people have gripes, and I never said Apple doesn't make mistakes, but when many of the gripes listed are literally not issues for 99.999% of people 99.999% of the time it's just kind of ridiculous and detracts from the valid use arguments you may have. Charging the mouse once every couple months from the bottom does not detract from actual usage in real world cases. The "just irritating" notch which is a stopgap measure on the way to a full screen device literally does not affect real world usage. Etc. These aren't mistakes.
Of course, you cannot, and therefore it is mere speculation that pretty much I alone (or I and only a handful of others) have such gripes. A half hour of checking tech articles and skimming through forums will show that many more people are like me than you think. And again, I'm talking about Apple fans here.
All we want is Apple to get back on the right track. You feel they are there now, but many of us do not. And yet, like I said before, if Apple gets back on the right track and pleases those of us with gripes, you folks without gripes will still be pleased. So it's a win for us an for you to join us, at least with empathy.
Thanks.
I would recommend publications like Macworld magazine to you. (Single issues and cheap monthly subscriptions are mentioned at the bottom of the Macworld subscriptions page.) Macworld especially can give you a fresh perspective on Apple products. Articles in the May 2019 issue Macworld (paid, digital edition) are outstanding. They outline all of the "gripes" and "usability issues" that I have mentioned and more. Not only that, but Macworld writers also use terminology like "as we all know" which implies the majority of us. When I read those words, I shake my head and feel included in that group. Funny, but in this forum I often get called out for having a "minority voice" among Mac users. That's why I feel Macworld writers are a part of my generation who knows what "practical usability" really means.
I like AppleInsider because it offers articles in a more timely manner that Macworld. But I still love Macworld because even though they obviously still love Apple, they are unbiased enough to give Apple products a hard look and they are not ashamed to slam the company when the customer gets the short end of the stick. That's why I've been a paid subscriber to Macworld since the 1980's. They tell it like it is, without any blind worship.
Suffice it to say, you underestimate the number of Mac users and general Apple product fans out there who are critical of Apple's recent product offerings. And keep in mind we were not really that critical at all of Apple in the past. I was a member of Guy Kawasaki's EvangeList email mailing list back in the day -- a real hardcore Mac fan. I've loved Macs since 1984. In those days (20+ years ago), even when Apple was doing badly, I had pretty much nothing ill to say about Apple. That's because Apple satisfied all my practical needs, giving me more features than I even needed at times. That's no longer true these days (within the last 4 years or so), and I don't hold back by pointing out how. All it takes is a little effort on Apple's part to put the customer first again. Apple once did that while keeping a strong emphasis on design too. Now it's mostly emphasis on design, customer and practicality be darned. And that is true even if the current offerings from Apple satisfy you completely. Back in the day, most Mac fans were satisfied. When we browsed online forums, we mainly saw Mac fans defending Apple and the Mac from Windoze users. These days, we have a split among Mac users, with passive folk like yourself who love everything Apple kicks out (even the single port MacBook) bickering with the rest of Mac users like myself who ask, "Where did the good old days of 'practical usability' go?"
If Apple makes their products better (more key travel, adding back features they removed for no good reason, etc.) to satisfy fans like me, you will continue to be satisfied, and most Mac users can be satisfied once again. That's the skinny of it, plain and simple.
Apple has an extremely high customer satisfaction rate. I think you overestimate the number of unhappy users out there.
There's nothing wrong with the single port MacBook. If you don't like the single port, then you're not the target market for it. It's that simple.
I don't have any practical usability problems with my 2018 MBP, which is my favorite Mac to date that I've owned.
That was painful to watch. So, the one guy had a faulty key and was mad, and also misses the SD slot. Big deal. What's this dongle/WIFI nonsense? Never heard of that, sounds like a problem with the dongle not Apple, if there's interference. I don't have that problem. The other girl was like, "I got ports!" which doesn't resonate with me. I'll take four 40Gbps do-everything ports over a pile of legacy shit any day. The rest of the video was just a rambling mess.
Regardless, you still didn't explain how those gripes were actual usability problems, so yeah... I am griping about your gripes.
But I'm also glad to see you are in my age group (or maybe you're a bit older than I am -- I'm still a youthful 48). But being fellow geezers doesn't mean we think alike, and it's quite clear we don't. But suffice it to say, we both share a long history of love for Apple products, and I that's what matters most in the end.
Me. :-)
No, really. I'd love to take over Apple Design. You'd see some pretty big and wonderful changes if that happened, believe me. I would start targeting products at The Rest of Us once again. Customer First is the right policy all the time. Apple really needs to Think Different again and that means taking the Mac off the back burner. Simply transforming the Mac with Apple silicone or promising a hopelessly unaffordable Mac Pro isn't enough. Mac users deserve so much more than that. And who better to be in charge than someone who not only loves Apple, but who has been through every iteration of the Mac since 1984. Knowing the past can help you design something even better for the future.