Jony Ive on Apple’s New HQ and the Disappearing iPhone
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The Steve Jobs Theatre is a good example. It’s very impressive and looks great. But it serves the designer more than the user. It’s so “perfect” that staircases would ruin it, so they are invisible. In the last iPhone event Apple employees were standing there to show people where are the stairs. That is not good design. It’s a conference venue but they had put temporary desks outside for information/cards/… because it does not have a place for that. Even bathrooms are hidden because they would ruin the designer’s great vision. The whole thing is very impressive, but it’s bad design.
Edit: I’m not saying that Ive’s a bad designer. Not at all. He’s one of the best. A great example from Apple’s recent works is how the lid of the new MacBook Pros opens without the keyboard part moving up. And you can do it with one finger. But, unfortunately, there are so many examples of bad design that looks good.
No, that's exactly what you're saying. Would you mind providing an example of your Platonic ideal of a designer?
I shouldn’t have to explain the relativeness of all content on the internet in 2017.
Next the Jobs quote. It’s also not just how it works! In fact, I disagree with that quote. Design isn't about any of the those in reality, it’s about solving problems. This is a quote that gets banded about a lot and one that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the design process. The end goal may be how it works, looks and feels. Good design is an elegant solution. Balustrading in the space is inelegant.
The Principle from Rams 10 principals that I’d apply is the one about honesty as hiding the stairs and balustrading could be considered dishonest - however that’s tenuous.
lame design-school whackery. The only thing that should be giving me feelings of excitement and awe is how well the space functions. Not your tacky visual tricks.
How do you know you have to approach that?
This is like the mystery meat of architecture and you're defending it (and with a bad attitude and tone of voice throughout the thread, I might add).
Your attitude is exactly the problem I have with Apple, and the way you think is exactly why you don't see any problem with Apple: you're building the stairs for those who use them, not for yourself.
People don't care if a laptop is 4.7 millimiters or 4.9. We need battery life. We actually use the headphone jack, and we don't care if the phone is 0.2 millimiters thinner if the tradeoff is we can't use the expensive headphones we have without a dongle. We might use the USB-C port, but we're still using USB, SD cards, etc., keep them there, please.
You might argue that these are silly requests, but then I guess I won't spend $2000 for an Apple laptop again, and I won't be using your stairs. Luckily there is a lot of choice.
That is a really weak argument. It’s a strawman. Your ability to see stairs from a distance has no bearing on their usability or functionality. So long as when you’re in the space, it’s obvious that they are there, which from what I can see, is indeed the case.
Your beef seems to be Apple’s apparent arrogance at removing ~4% of battery (realistically closer to 2% when covering and fixings are accounted for) and moving forward with newer connectivity options like headphone jacks (which when looking at how compact the internals of the iPhone X are, make more sense) and older USB ports. I remember when they dropped ADB and parallel/SCSI in favour of USB. I remember buying an iMac without a floppy drive. Apple have always done this. And even when at their lowest, the pack have generally followed. Ask yourself why when you’re next saving a file in Dropbox...
Really. If I don't even realize they're there, they don't seem to be successful as something that is supposed to take me upstairs.
> Your beef seems to be Apple’s apparent arrogance at removing ~4% of battery (realistically closer to 2% when covering and fixings are accounted for)
Really, 2%. My MacBook Air lasted at least 3 hours more than my MacBook Pro. _At least_.
> and moving forward with newer connectivity options like headphone jacks (which when looking at how compact the internals of the iPhone X are, make more sense) and older USB ports.
Who cares about the internals of the iPhone X? I have headphones and I want to use them. The internal of the iPhone X should serve me, not some other goal (thinness, I guess? I have no idea).
> I remember when they dropped ADB and parallel/SCSI in favour of USB. I remember buying an iMac without a floppy drive. Apple have always done this. And even when at their lowest, the pack have generally followed. Ask yourself why when you’re next saving a file in Dropbox...
I bought the MacBook Air when people complained about no CD drive. It happened 0 times that I needed to use a CD and didn't know where to put it. With USB-C _only_ (if you noticed, I didn't say they shouldn've put 1 or 2 USB-C ports, just that it's completely retarded to have USB-C only) it's a _daily_ annoyance to not be able to connect my stuff without a dongle--which I often don't have at hand. No gain, and just hassle. That's the difference between the "old" Apple and the "new" Apple. They just have no idea what the hell they're doing anymore, and have a history of being right which makes them arrogant that they're right today.
All your arguments seem silly to me, but I care very little if people keep spending 2-3 times as much as they should for phones and computers, as long as it's not me. I ditched the iPhone for a Moto G5 that I bought for $285 and it works great in both hardware and software (the software is better than iOS actually IMHO), and a Surface Book which has both good design and it's functional.
There is a trade-off here that's being glossed over. Features that are unobtrusive to the point of being hard to find initially are perfectly fine in a space that is meant to be used almost exclusively by people that have been there before, such as an office space. Those same designs are very poor choices if a large percentage of users of that space have not been there before or will likely not be there again any time soon.
I'm moving away from Apple because it's now looks over functionality.
1. New bugs are introduced
2. The text messaging app has some new feature or widget I'll never use adding a button to misclick or taking up more vertical space, and I need to figure out how to hide it
3. Some stock app has been completely redesigned for no discernible reason whatsoever, and the new design is more visually appealing but renders some or all of the app completely unusable or broken in some way
4. A new stock app has been introduced that does nothing and doesn't matter at all, and can't be removed
I can't think of a single part of any recent update to iOS that wasn't one of those 4 things.
The most recent victim of #3 is the Podcasts app. What could be simpler than this? I want to search for podcasts, maintain a list of my favorites, and then view a list of their episodes starting with the most recent.
Apparently this is no longer possible.
There's a list called "Listen Now" that's showing me episodes from weeks ago. Who the fuck knows how that list is populated, and what I'm seeing is outdated, so moving on and never looking at that list again.
Then in "Library" there's a list of "Shows." When I click on a show it shows me "My Episodes", which doesn't show me the most recent episodes, so moving on and never looking at that again. Also, what exactly is "My Episode" supposed to mean? What exactly is "mine" about an episode of a podcast?? Does this imply all the other 7 lists of podcast episodes contain episodes that aren't mine? So then whose are they?
Also in "Library" there's a list just called "Episodes." This also doesn't show me the most recent episodes as far as I can tell, and certain podcasts are missing entirely. Moving on and never looking at that again.
Below that is "Recently Updated" shows, which is identical to "Shows" except ordered by update recency. Most every podcast is constantly being updated, so this is functionally a random scramble of the Shows list. Completely pointless, moving on and never looking at that again.
All in all, there are literally 8 separate lists of podcasts and podcast episodes (outside of browse and search), and every single one of them is completely useless except Library > Shows > [Show] > (Scroll all the way to the bottom) > Available Episodes, and it's the single most deeply buried list out of all of the lists.
For the life of me I cannot understand why they're going to such great lengths to improve upon and bury a simple reverse chronological feed of episodes. You can't improve it, you don't need to improve it, nobody asked you to improve it, it's FINE. JUST SHOW ME THE EPISODE THAT HAPPENED THE MOST RECENTLY ok I'm done.
How recent is this? I definitely remember being able to do that at least 6 years ago.
I consider it one of the nicest things about Macbooks. Which is odd, because it doesn't even matter.
I'm not sure that they really should make cars, or TVs, but they are basically an amazing phone company at this point and that's about it. Maybe, I don't know, build an ad-free search engine and bake it into all your products so that you can give google a run for their money instead of obsessing over a $5 billion building.
Edit: I forgot about the Apple watch, which I'm a fan of.
Just hoping it doesn't turn into another Sears Tower - an overly extravagant building built by a company at the peak of their existence, only to have markets shift out under them... soon winding up with way too much building for way too much cost.
It's not uncommon for the land under such buildings to have 100+ year leases. That much money and time put into that much building requires very long terms. Maybe Apple bought the land outright, but I'm certain they're thinking longer-term than 10 years here... as was Sears at the time they built their tower.
This also doesn't account for the annual maintenance costs of such a grand building. Apple's sitting on top of a big pile of money today, but that may not be the case 20 years from now (as was the case for Sears)... the maintenance costs will only increase as the building ages.
See the law of buildings in this excerpt: https://johannesdeberlaymont.com/2016/06/10/c-northcote-park...
Sears helped confirm the rule. I hope it doesn’t apply in Apple’s case; I like them.
That said, Sear's tower is an emblem of Chicago. The AHQ is off to the side of the Bay and is 'harder' to see. If they built it like the Millennium Tower/TransAmerica, then that would be something different, but as is, it's going to go down like Falling Water. Off in a corner, a masterpiece truly, but never used. Like a Bugatti is with cars, only a thing for true architecture dorks.
Somehow I don't see this happening.
This isn't the same as Search, Google wants to provide the best Search service for iOS as possible and is now paying Apple billions for privilege of being the default. Attempting to develop an ad-free Search alternative would dilute their focus, cost them a fortune and their Customers would be worse off for it.
In the country where I live (Brazil), Apple Maps does not have turn-by-turn direction available, while Google Maps has.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microso...
Maybe Bing's not a sinkhole now, but they were losing billions per year trying to compete with Google: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-reorg-earnings-repo...
It still costs Microsoft billions to run Bing for which an Apple ad-free Service will always be a profit sink hole without any chance of recuperating their investments whilst foregoing their billions of nearly pure profit Services Revenue they're getting from Google now.
And for what? inflict a worse experience on their customer base so they can try to hurt Google the way Microsoft tried to do with Bing? Google has enough successful properties that there's nothing Apple can do that would hurt Google's profits enough where they can't maintain their level of R&D on Android (which is itself ludicrously profitable).
I just don't see what this would achieve and how it would help them achieve their core mission, diluting their talent and resources doesn't help them make the most enviable products and would cost them billions in the process, both of which are against their DNA.
Google survives on it's ad-words revenue as far as I can tell. Android only generates money for google through ads (which is again dependent upon tracking the user) and they've never released revenue numbers for Youtube, so we can probably assume Youtube loses money. And even if Youtube makes money, it is still from ads. So if Apple can cut into Google's ad-words business model, they will deal a blow to their chief competitor, Android.
This is an interesting article talking about how Google could fail b/c it is too dependent on ad revenue. https://hackernoon.com/how-google-collapsed-b6ffa82198ee
Apple definitely needs to expand its vision. A major tech player like Apple shouldn't be spending all their time iterating on the iphone and making their laptops a tiny bit thinner. They should really have a serious AR product like the Hololens by now at the absolute minimum. Honestly, Apple seems to think that their mission is to be a computer sculpture company at this point. They are totally obsessed with design to the point that they can't create a usable desktop computer. They've lost the plot.
Already answered by my first comment:
> over a decade away from being able to catch up and provide a competitive service against arguably the smartest company in the world whose core competency is search
> In my opinion a search service that doesn't track you is superior to Google (see DuckDuckGo for an example)
DuckDuckGo leverages existing infrastructure and uses existing sources (Bing, Yahoo...) to power their search results [1]. It also doesn't matter what an anecdotal data point thinks is superior, only what their customers prefer in aggregate. DuckDuckGo has so little market share it doesn't even register as a line item [2]. Microsoft started trying to compete with Google with Live Search in 2006 and after bleeding billions and evenwith the help of their Windows Desktop Monopoly and IE, MS Edge market-share they've still only managed 7.5%.
> Google survives on it's ad-words revenue as far as I can tell. Android only generates money for google through ads
Google doesn't disclose their profits they get from Android, but Oracle did it for them where they've disclosed that Android's generated $31B revenue and $22B profit.
> they've never released revenue numbers for Youtube, so we can probably assume Youtube loses money.
Alphabet not disclosing their internal numbers for their revenue sources doesn't mean anything, most mega corps don't breakdown their segments for not wanting to give away competitive secrets.
> And even if Youtube makes money, it is still from ads. So if Apple can cut into Google's ad-words business model, they will deal a blow to their chief competitor, Android.
How can an ad-free Apple Search Engine possibly have any tangible effect into Google's ad-words business model? Are the companies currently buying Google's ads going to stop buying them because a company with <13% of Android's market share (and 5% Desktop Browser Share) dilutes their focus, resources and talent in providing an alternative inferior Search engine that no-one can buy ads for? Is everyone buying ads just going to give up and stop online advertising altogether?
Microsoft has poured billions, have invested over a decade and tried their hardest to hurt Google and steal market share away from them, a technological super power with deep roots into developing technology and infrastructure at all layers as part of their core competency. They're the #2 cloud hosting provider (who also counts Apple as a Customer) that even with leveraging their Desktop Monopoly and IE/Edge browsers can only command 7.5% market share. How is Apple, starting over a decade later with no skills or experience, no ad infrastructure or corporate customer base, first hope to be able to build a competitive search engine then use it to steal market-share from everyone else who's search engine habits have been hard-grained into users daily lives for years. Apple can't keep an AI lead with their Siri voice assistant even after acquiring the technology years before everyone else. I don't see how they'd be able to compete with Bing let alone Google.
> Apple definitely needs to expand its vision.
Apple is the most valuable company in the world, so it's executing better than everyone else.
> Apple shouldn't be spending all their time iterating on the iphone and making their laptops a tiny bit thinner.
Other than being a ludicrous assertion on what they spend their time on, Apple's focus on the iPhone has made it the most successful product in history.
> They should really have a serious AR product like the Hololens by now at the absolute minimum.
Hololens is a commercial failure that's selling units in the 1000's [4] and Apple's already leading the race in Augmented Reality [5] and is expected to release a stand-alone AR headset next year [6]. Unlike other companies Apple only releases products when they believe it provides the best experience and stands the best chance of becoming a consumer success. They also have a commanding lead in developing the fastest mobile chips which is going to help greatly in their AR future.
> Apple seems to think that their mission is to be a computer sculpture company at this point.
In addition to being the most valuable company, Apple's also the most valuable brand in the world [7].
> They are totally obsessed with design to the point that they can't create a usable desktop computer.
I've been using iMac's for over a decade and am currently writing this on their latest 27" iMac w/ Retina 5K, it's by far the best Desktop I've ever seen or used.
> They've lost the plot.
Being the most successful company in history suggests maybe not. Apple got to where they are by focusing on making the best consumer products possible, not by focusing on ways they can throw away billions of profits in trying to hurt a competitor.
[1] http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/1/28/duckduckgo-architecture-1-million-deep-searches-a-day-and-gr.html
[2] https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=0
[3] https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generated-31-billion-revenue-google-oracle
[4] https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/27/14411744/microsoft-hololens-sales-numbers
[5] http://mashable.com/2017/08/29/apple-arkit-versus-google-arcore/#sC4Wn5co6Oqy
[6] https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/8/16622802/apple-ar-headset-augmented-reality-plans-rumors-2019
[7] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brands-most-valuable-in-the-world-interbrand/A search engine by its nature allows computation on content that you can't do through an external web API. For example you can invert Walmart's pages on their online site into a catalog of SKUs, prices and equipment.
A search engine can create (and provide access to for a fee) meta data around the digital footprint of people and what they are interested in, afraid of, and where fashion is headed (query traffic)
A search engine can develop and maintain a robust connected graph of commercial entities and data about them which can be resold to banks, bundled into subscription ratings services, and mined for market trends and "inside" information.
You could also deliver a customer friendly advertising platform but much like opioids are ok for treating pain it seems nearly impossible for people who own a decent sized index from being seduced by the cash possibilities there.
You would think they have enough money to do everything at once, but for whatever reason, it evidently doesn't work that way.
But everything has a trade off. I’d trade for higher pay or more commercial projects.
I think wired hit on something when they called it a design out of the 1950's. Its a suburban corporate office park.
A white, glass, and wood suburban corporate office park, but a suburban corporate office park none the less.
Edit: I am witholding my judgement of the actual space until 6 months after its inhabited though, because I'm not sure I can be objective about it at this stage...
I don't know, but I think the McLaren building has worked out nicely for them. Working there might not be to everyone's tastes but they set the standard for how it is done and the rest of the industry took note.
Some of the buildings in North Korea are quite amazing and the subway system is a work of art, immaculately clean. Working in the parts they show Westerners should be a true joy with the most pleasant of traffic free commutes. However I would not feel entirely free working in North Korea, being deprived of the Internet would matter to me and I would not feel happy 'cut off'.
I imagine working at the wonderful Apple HQ to be slightly cultish in the North Korean way rather than the McLaren way. Perhaps I prefer smaller churches in smaller towns. Or maybe I am more interested in FOSS and computing in general rather than the intricacies of doing things the Apple way.
The old SGI building as used by Google, that has things one can criticise but that building has survived the test of time. Many wonderful things have happened in this building but ultimately it is just a building and not a sacred shrine. The Apple building sort of crosses into 'sacred shrine' territory that will always be entwined with the memory of the founding story.
Some design elements look great, but are probably hard to keep clean, and functionality might suffered a bit, and some elements surface reflect too much sun light. That everyone got a height-adjustable desk is great.
> But if Ive is a maker and industrial designer in the classic mould […] he is also the man most responsible for making our new most essential objects all but disappear. ‘As a design team our goal has been, in some ways, to get design out of the way. We try to define a solution that seems so inevitable that it does recede.’
[0] https://cdn.wallpaper.com/main/93wpr17dec118-2.jpg
[1] http://www.thecosytraveller.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08...
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/British_...
[0] http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NY-DE081_NYSCEN_G_...
I'm eying a Surface because all the stuff Apple makes is now more about looks (not design, mind you) than functionality, and I'm totally fed up with giving a lot of money to someone who cares more about how the thing looks then if it convenient for me.
Ive or whoever designs both hardware and software there has lost touch. Most of the stuff they make puts huge compromises and sacrifices convenience to improve looks.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-surface/microso...
Perhaps, but I never said that. Where did you get that from?
While the Surface line has had its reliability issues (especially Surface 4), rumor has it that the omission of USB-C from the latest Surfaces was part of a deliberate effort to focus on refining the current design (and improving its reliability) rather than adding new features and risking creating even more issues. They also have a point that USB-C isn't quite ready for prime time and I can't say I miss it having recently switched from a MacBook to a Surface Pro.
I'm not saying that these companies should stop trying to innovate (far from it). What I'm seeing is a big difference in priorities, and I'm not a fan of Apple's of late -- too much focus on design ideals and not enough on things that actually help me get my work done.
[1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/17/johnston-macboo...
I keep my keyboard very clean, but it's so shallow that even dust can mess up the keys. No idea what was wrong with the battery, they just said it didn't pass their tests.
I'm selling the laptop while it's still under warranty.
One would think EUR1800 are enough to buy a laptop that you can actually use because the keyboard works, but Apple don't agree.
Many people (including Gruber) reported the massive internal outrage Apple employees had when they learned about the actual working conditions.
No they don't. They employ offshore tax havens, shell companies and exploit various loop holes in order to avoid doing so. It's lawful yes. But it's immoral and unfair to smaller businesses who do pay their share. Buying an iPhone in Europe means less money for infrastructure, schools, hospitals and universities. The iPhone itself piggybacks on decades of tax funded research and development, yet Apple do not contribute back.
Apple are of course one of many corporations that employ these practices, but they are the largest and often market themselves as being ethical.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/06/apple-secretly-m...
Eg, the "earned" and "tax paid" absolute totals need to be properly proportionate to each other, which is what most of the objections have been about. ;-)
Not about progressive tax rates, which your comment seems to be about?