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Comment by doe88 | Hacker News Reader

I respect John Gruber but on this one I find it a bit too easy to lash-out (rightly or wrongly) on Jony Ive only when the man stepped-out of his job at Apple. It would have been a bit more courageous to have said these things when he was still there.

More on the point though, I'm not in the camp of those believing that in this day and age in a company as big as Apple you can assign all the mistakes (or successes) to a single man. For instance, to think Jony Ive being even remotely responsible for the keyboard debacle seems preposterous to me.

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To be an executive is to be responsible for execution. Someone who allows major blunders to happen under their watch is not a successful executive, whether they were personally responsible or not.

You can't make excuses as an executive. You can't say "there wasn't enough quality control," because you have the power to create the quality control process necessary to prevent the blunder. You can't say "I wasn't aware there was this risk of keyboard defects," because you have the power to create reporting structures that will surface such risks to all key stakeholders, including you. You can't say "I didn't have time to focus on functional deficiencies or risks because I was focused on aesthetics," because you have the power to hire and delegate to the most talented employees in the world; you have the power to do whatever is necessary so that you do have the time to focus on what needs to be focused on. You can't say "I didn't worry about functional risks because I wanted to focus on design," because your job is to execute, not to do what you want to do.

...Steve Jobs folklore:

Steve Jobs told employees a short story when they were promoted to vice president at Apple. Jobs would tell the VP that if the garbage in his office was not being emptied, Jobs would naturally demand an explanation from the janitor. "Well, the lock on the door was changed,' the janitor could reasonably respond. "And I couldn't get a key."

The janitor's response is reasonable. It's an understandable excuse. The janitor can't do his job without a key. As a janitor, he's allowed to have excuses.

"When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs told his newly-minted VPs. "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering."

"In other words,' (Jobs continued,) "when the employee becomes a vice president, he or she must vacate all excuses for failure. A vice president is responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn't matter what you say."

"When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs told his newly-minted VPs. "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering."

Thank you for sharing.

It's called being an employee. With a bigger paycheck comes a bigger amount of career risk.

The employer makes the rules, the employees play the game.

I'm not saying that because I believe that's the way it should be, but because that's how it seems to be.

> to think Jony Ive being even remotely responsible for the keyboard debacle seems preposterous to me

On the contrary, he is definitely responsible. First, because he was the head of design, and keyboards are part of the overall design. Second, because he pushed for or accepted the push towards ever thinner and lighter products, at the expense of almost everything else. And third, because of the push towards more uniform/beautiful/symmetric designs at the expense of functionality (limited ports, USB-C only, cursor keys on the keyboard).

He is very much responsible and I think what we saw from Apple in the last few years in the Mac lineup was below expectations. I've been saying for some time that it seemed like Jony Ive was running rampant within the company, not using or loving Macs himself, but deciding about their design, with no one in a position to say "No" (like Steve Jobs did).

What did he use?

Also, me not being a Mac user at all, it confuses me why people keep using the inferior external keyboards. I get that in the Macs or the MacBooks you make tradeoffs with things you do like, but if the external Apple keyboard stinks at being a keyboard, why not a sleek, functional Logitech device instead?

Suppose I'm saying, there's some shared responsibility, not just John Ive being responsible.

> What did he use?

That is actually an interesting question worth thinking about.

I think that top Apple management (at least Tim Cook and Jony Ive) does not use computers that much. If they do, they connect exactly zero external devices. And they are definitely not "power users" who would appreciate function keys (or even the Esc key for that matter). Tim doesn't mind the annoying delay from Spotlight when pressing Cmd-space to search on an iPad (the system loses several keystrokes because of a silly pause), Jony doesn't mind the half-second animation when switching spaces on a Mac, which you can't turn off. They don't do these things often enough to matter, and they do things slowly.

Also, if Tim's keyboard starts failing, how quickly do you think he gets a replacement? I'd bet it isn't two weeks.

This is different from Steve Jobs, whatever you might think about him, he did love computers and he at least felt the needs of more experienced users.

I think the design failures of the recent Macbooks (and the trashcan Mac Pro) are a reflection of how top management at the company uses and thinks of computers.

Whet people talk about Apple's keyboards being bad, they're almost always referring to the internal ones not external ones.

The external keyboards, by virtue of having an additional millimeter or so of key travel, are devoid of all the issues that plague the laptop iteration of the keyboards. A lot of people actually love this keyboard style, they just don’t love being deprived the normal use of their machine because the keyboard could not stand up to normal use and abuse for even a short period of time.

I use a Logitech at the office — I don’t know exactly which model, but it was in the $80-90 range. While I think their mice are genuinely brilliant, the keyboard is awful, mushy garbage. While my preference is for a heavy mechanical keyboard, they tend to be loud and tiring to work on for extended periods of time, and Apple’s keyboards are a genuinely good balance between design, tactility, loudness and overall layout.

They are, however, far too expensive. Even on sale, my Magic Keyboard with the numpad was more expensive than any sensibly-priced mechanical keyboard, and that’s beyond silly to think about.

You sound like one that have never used external apple keyboard. They are excellent, and I love how small and unobtrusive they are.

That's part of why I use a 60% mechanical keyboard. Smaller than any apple keyboard too.

Which one are you using? Smaller than Apple’s magic keyboard without the numpad?

Ah, looks like they shrunk that keyboard by an inch or so since I bought my old apple keyboard - the newer one is about the same as my current keyboard. I use a vortex pok3r - I got it for the mechanical switches and programmability in addition to the size.

Thank you for the reference - good to know for my Windows development machines!

> it confuses me why people keep using the inferior external keyboards.

Because many people actually like the keyboards, and they don't stink at being a keyboard.

I absolutely love my wired apple keyboard and wouldn’t change it.

Gruber has not been shy about bashing Apple’s design decisions with either the keyboards, or the prioritizing of thinness over battery life.

The keyboard debacle was a direct result of Apple striving for thinness.

> or the prioritizing of thinness over battery life.

Apple’s current MacBook lineup starting in late 2017 (i.e. the thinnest laptops and with butterfly keyboards) have the best battery life of any Apple laptop ever made.

I don’t recall Gruber ever complaining about the battery life of Apple’s thin devices. Do you have a link?

But the battery life could be better if they would just keep the size and weight the same. How many people wouldn’t be willing to have a slightly thicker/heavier laptop for more battery life?

But battery life is good in ideal situations but when you start doing anything CPU/GPU intensive, battery life isn’t that great.

Huh, you mean late 2016, right? I have late-2016 MBP with a Touchbar

Yes, you’re right. I meant late 2016.

>Gruber has not been shy about bashing Apple’s design decisions with either the keyboards

Oh hell no, he was VERY late to the keyboard issue. The whole Keyboard issue finally broke out because one journalist got fed up with her keyboard failing so many times, and saw so many people had the same problem, she decide to run a new story on it. That was in early 2018 if I remember correctly.

October 2017

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/17/johnston-macboo...

I find these keyboards — specifically, the tales of woe about keys getting stuck or ceasing to work properly — a deeply worrisome sign about Apple’s priorities today.

His initial review of the keyboard before the problems started appearing.

https://daringfireball.net/2016/11/new_touch_bar_equipped_ma...

The keyboard is, for me, a mixed bag, and it’s probably the one thing that many people will like least about these machines. I find less key travel to be less pleasant while typing.

But this article also points out why he didn’t have the problem personally. He famously uses a 20 year old extended mechanical keyboard.

But I’m so far out there on this issue that I use a 20-year-old Apple Extended Keyboard II, with mechanical key switches, at my desk. I’ve never liked any notebook keyboard compared to an actual mechanical keyboard

> For instance, to think Jony Ive being even remotely responsible for the keyboard debacle seems preposterous to me.

I can definitely picture a world where Jony’s ruthless push for thin and light resulted in the butterfly keyboard.

I used to read Gruber religiously. But no longer. He's still every bit the eloquent writer that he used to be. But I no longer respect his integrity.

If he "don’t think Ive ever should have been put in control of software design", presumably he doesn't like the iOS 7 redesign either. But I've not heard a bad word from him before today.

Gruber spends more time doing his commentary on The Talk Show podcast and less on his blog. He's been consistently critical over the last few years; I too used to think he was a bit too favorable based on his writing, but since I started listening to his podcast, it's clear that he's much better at communicating orally.

>he doesn't like the iOS 7 redesign either. But I've not heard a bad word from him before today.

He was critical of iOS 7 from the start, felt it was wrong and wondering if it was Hardware Design taking over Software Design where the two have little to no overlap.

He must have at least tried the keyboard once before production. On the first key press you can tell it is terrible, and if you push all the keys you'll see some of them don't work. There's no way he didn't know how bad it is.

No you cannot. When you first use the keyboard it feels amazing[-]. That doesn’t stop it from being hot garbage, sadly.

[-]:If you are interested in shallow throw and uniform, lack of pitch, keyboards. Which the keyboard snobs will tell you is not an aesthetic configuration possible in that space, but they would be wrong.

Took me a while to get used to it, but I feel like it’s less damaging with me typing all day. It’s also a fun keyboard. Very clicky.

AFAIK it's actually more damaging; the short travel times mean that a keystroke is much more impactful and stresses your fingers more.

This seems to assume you press short- and long-travel keys with the same force.

You can't perfectly modulate your force. A long travel-distance keyboard gives you flexibility to make mistakes.

While I don’t like the lack of a physical escape key, I actually enjoy the new keyboard. In terms of blame, the executives are responsible for these decisions. That’s why Scott Forstall was let go when he oversaw the release of Maps.

> easy to lash-out ... the man stepped-out

Phrasal verbs are spelled with two words: to lash out, he stepped out, he took off, to shut down, to set up. Their corresponding nouns are spelled with one word: a takeoff, a setup, a shutdown, a step-up.

Apple fanboys and their analysis aside, there is precedent for this behavior by Tim/Apple. Refer to Scott Forstall.

Exactly, the more I think about it the more I see a Forstall-maps-redux-pattern at play here. That is build a narrative where all the blame on current hardware designs must be attributed to Ive, because now being out it is a convenient scapegoat and doesn't hurt nobody at Apple.

It takes a forward thinking company to let go of a top level person that is running the show in a big way, it is also time to take a fair look-with-hindsight at what has been going on.

The numbers are excellent at Apple but you have to ask whether this is Apple's work or the demands of the marketplace. Everyone wants a mobile phone, although a tough market to be in for the likes of HTC/Nokia/Blackberry (who got it majorly wrong), could Apple have done better?

Same with computers. Everyone has one but could Apple have done better had they listened to the customers?

Steve Jobs was right to get rid of the floppy disk and Flash even though that was deeply upsetting to some people. That set a bit of a trend with Apple being prepared to get rid of some features that people really liked such as the MagSafe power adaptor. Then there were the dongles. In ten years time people will look back on that not as a bold but correct decision. Ultimately many people were quite inconvenienced by that unilateral decision.

There are products such as the Mac Pro that are nonsensical. Then when it comes to actual computers rather than lifestyle accessories, Apple don't really do server things. So if you are an Apple shop then you don't have rack-mounted Apple computers, they come from somewhere else.

There are lots of people that cuss the mice, the keyboards and much else. If you are a PC or Linux user then these mutterings are kept to oneself. You just know that you don't question these things as the loyal followers of the cult are okay with these things.

Sometimes it requires someone to be moved sideways to take a revisionist view grounded in realism. We have been worshipping false gods. Apple have been pissing off the true faithful in the developer community. The choir might not have the numbers of the congregation but they are a key demographic for getting the congregation to show up. As a developer myself I have never been converted to the Apple flock. So I have a little bit of perspective and I am not blinded by the Apple Way. But Apple could have got this market entirely to themselves, all they needed was to have just the one developer grade laptop and just the one developer grade desktop.

Developer grade? It just means having a case you can open and upgrade, the required ports and a user interface (hw + sw) that 'just works'. Even if there isn't the same margin made on these products they are 'halo', the rewards come when every developer moves on to spec. Apple for their respective companies and friends/family.

China is a bit of a problem for Apple. Huawei products are getting a bit of press at the moment but if you look at the quality and design you can see some incredible stuff going on. It is hard to say Apple are the best in comparison.

Anyway, Apple is a forward thinking company and whatever the real reasons they have mutually agreed to let the design boss go and to take a different direction. I am hopeful that the customer rather than the designer will come first and that we will be seeing great products come out of Cupertino that don't get non-Apple people like me in silly arguments about Apple design hubris.

So I am def no Jon Gruber, but since you mention courage criticizing Ive when he was still in charge at Apple, this was my take when Ive ran the show:

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234

Are you in agreement? I found it’s a mixed bag.

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