History Will Not Be Kind to Jony Ive | Hacker News Reader

History Will Not Be Kind to Jony Ive

vice.com

151 pointsjb1991129 comments

This article is trash. It's basically saying "But Ive's focus on slim design and minimalism meant sacrifices had to be made in terms of repairability".

Well guess what, that's a design decision and we live in a free market - so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone. The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.

If you really think what the world needs is airpods with a replaceable battery, go build one.

That's pretty disingenuous - its not reasonable to ask the average person to take into consideration the intricate nuances of design and its impact on society when making a buying decision. If we live in a free market (we don't, by the way - especially not in the EU where I live, and thank goodness for that!), then surely it is the onus of the business to promote positive choices for society in their product selection? Because if not them, and not the state, then who else?

so AirPods with replaceable batteries are "promoting positive choices for society" and the current AirPods Apple makes are not? I think the OP is saying there was an election by the people, and they voted overwhelmingly in favor for current Apple AirPods with their money. If people have money and are allowed to choose one thing over the other won't one choice always be "promoting positive choices for society" and one not as much? Unless you make the choices like they do in the Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale country of gilead.

Given advertising and PR, do consumers actually make free choices?

Do consumers have the costs of their choices spelled out clearly, or are they hidden and deferred as externalities under the false pretence that neither customers nor anyone they know will ever have to worry about them?

How accurately do market costs include physical, ecological, environmental, and political/social costs?

Is a system that cannot accurately present costs to consumers without interpreting them through its own value system actually credible and trustworthy?

> [the people] voted overwhelmingly in favor for current Apple AirPods with their money

Are you sure about this? Personally, I almost never see people wearing AirPods in public, but I do see a lot of other headphones. It cannot be said that they "overwhelmingly" captured the headphone or earbud market.

Googling around it seems they are the best selling for wireless according to some sources. But most earphones I see in public seem to be wired still. Yet more googling seems to suggest the whole of the headphone market sells > 10x the number of units as AirPods. It falls far short of an "overwhelming" impression.

It might be that the truth is in the middle. Clearly the design was great but hindering repairability is a legitimate criticism.

I recall watching a young child from a poor family in an Apple Store trying to get the iPad that she loved repaired and the family being told that her only option was to purchase a new one which they clearly could not afford. Seeing how distraught it made the little girl really bothered me. That was the day that I started to intensely hate Apple.

In fairness, however, hindering repairability feels like a business decision that Ive may not have been responsible for.

> Seeing how distraught it made the little girl really bothered me. That was the day that I started to intensely hate Apple.

Some things you could have done:

1) Offer to buy the parents a replacement.

2) Offer to take the iPad to a third party to repair. Like Louis Rossman and offer to pay for the repair.

3) Offer to setup a GoFundMe for the replacement or to cover the cost of the repair.

4) Educate the parents that Android is a cheaper better option and determine the best action to recover the data (can be done) and move over to Android.

5) Educate the parents that companies like Louis Rossman exist and can repair Apple devices and to research on the internet for more information.

And yet, you did nothing.

Why would he do something when he can be morally smug at the “man” on the internet?

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.

More generally, will you please (a) not post unsubstantive comments to HN, and (b) edit the nasty swipes out of the comments you do post? We're hoping for a bit better than that here.

I've tried talking to friends and family (who all make much less money than me, and some are struggling financially) about switching to Android, and they just smile and ignore me. Face it: Americans are usually broke because they refuse to live within their means, and they insist on believing they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires. You can try educating them about cheaper, better options but they'll insist on buying the full-priced expensive shiny thing that all their friends have.

As for #1 (and #3), why would he want to help fund Apple and their high prices and anti-consumer practices?

This crosses into personal attack. That's not allowed on HN. It only makes things worse, and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That story is depressing. Not the story itself, just how privileged the West is that not being able repair an iPad is poverty.

One of the hallmarks of privilege is being so far removed from a problem that you cannot empathize with the people who suffer from it.

Sounds bad until you realize you can buy a used iPad for the cost of a hypothetical repair for whatever the damage was.

People do forget about the used market. Apple products are well-built and tend to last. If you can't afford a new one, get a second-hand one instead of a top-price new one.

Consider an alternative world: Apple decides to only make highly repairable devices, and a computer like the iPad is never created.

Obviously this is not the only alternative world, but I think it is realistic. Say the design initiatives were inverted: Repairability were king and form & function were subservient to it. In such a world, we would still have giant beige boxes on our desks. That's not to say there is not a balance to be struck that could result in a more repairable iPad, but my point is that Apple's design initiatives have resulted in many new, successful computing form factors (touch, tablet, watch, AirPods even).

I will hitch my wagon to the horse that continues to plow new ground, even if there is some theoretical ideal that is "better."

I personally believe that Apple's resistance to repairability (or, more accurately to repairability outside their dominion) stems from a desire to control a customers experience with their product, not from some business case or greed. This goes all the way back to Steve Jobs and the original Macintosh [0].

I personally can, and have, repaired my Apple devices with 3rd party parts, and the results have been less than sub-optimal. A screen that was deeply blue-shifted (so extreme that even software adjustments didn't help), a home button that became nonfunctional, and a battery that became swollen. I've had some repairs that worked great, but buying quality parts is a bit more expensive, to the point it is worth it (to me) to have Apple repair.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K#Expansion

Your false dichotomy is unconvincing, because Apple were so inept in designing the iPad, they can't even repair it themselves.

The non-TouchID button of an iPad broke and my only option would have been to essentially buy a new iPad, because they send the broken one to HQ and give you a refurbished device in exchange.

They can't repair a broken button! That is incredibly lame.

Furthermore, their devices have become less repairable and more failure-prone for no good reason. For example the MBP screen will die just from opening and closing the lid, because they used too short cables. Major fuck-up, but they will easily fix it by replacing the cable, right? No, they designed it in such a way that the entire screen must be replaced.

I'd like to see you try to explain away this idiocy please. Tell us how we couldn't have had MBPs and iPads if Apple would have been able to fix their own devices instead of force-recycling them.

Nowhere in my comment did I present a dichotomy. Actually, I went out of my way to avoid a dichotomy.

Beyond that, my argument, more simply, is the following:

1. Apple has a set of philosophies and priorities in design. Within these, repairability is a lower priority than Vice and some customers would prefer.

2. From those priorities comes expertise and processes that result in the creation of new products and entirely new product categories.

3. Apple has seen success unlike any other company from those resultant products. Not just successful, but the most successful ever. No other company has replicated some of those products.

4. Given the above, Apple sees no reason to make any changes to their design priorities. Even if those priorities have resulted in missteps, they have been overwhelmingly rewarded by their decisions. Indeed, it is plainly obvious that it would be foolish to change those priorities based on the voices of Vice and Louis Rossman who look at a part of the design but not the whole. This is akin to fans asking LeBron James to take fewer shots because he missed a single game-winner.

That is to say, even if the "thin and light" priority has resulted in missteps (I think this is objectively true, re: keyboards, MBP screen cable, etc), Apple would not have been able to create a product like the Apple Watch without the expertise and processes that flow out of those priorities.

I think Apple can, and most likely will, make adjustments to the processes that come from those priorities to correct and prevent those missteps, without changing the priorities themselves.

When I was a child we mainly played with non-electronic toys like dolls. This was mainly because my family already had a lot of older toys from the previous generation, not because electronic toys were unavailable to us. Children grow especially attached to dolls, of course, and in many cases they cannot be easily replaced when they break. I remember that sometimes we would take damaged dolls to the "doll doctor", a skilled woman that ran a doll repair business at her home. She could repair doll clothing, fix scratches or broken limbs, replace missing eyes, and more. The doll's return was like a dear friend coming home from the hospital.

Some commentators here miss that the iPad may be today's equivalent of a child's doll. Not being able to replace the iPad is like telling the child their playtime friend is dead and never coming back. This strikes me as good reason to have your children bond to something easily replaceable... and consider buying a backup!

> Well guess what, that's a design decision and we live in a free market - so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone.

This shifts blame off suppliers and on to consumers. Suppliers can do whatever they want: it's the responsibility of consumers to choose what is best for society.

In my opinion this is not an effective approach for society, for example because of unbalanced information. I think the responsibility needs to be shared.

> The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.

I don't think the author is disputing that the designs were good decisions, when the goal is profit. They are complaining that sustainability was not taking into account.

Suppliers can’t do whatever they want, as they will quickly go broke when people vote with their wallets. You and I might disagree strongly with disposable electronics, but people are happily handing over their money for this stuff. And it makes sense when you see polls that say people aren’t even willing to pay $100 more a year to stop climate change.

I for one am excited about how my home value will go up once the coasts flood and I have beach front property here in Kansas. Less land = more expensive land, I can’t lose!

Climate change will probably mean more tornadoes for Kansas.

part of this is because of an ongoing disinformation campaign by the companies and individuals who benefit the most from not addressing the climate crisis. People aren't willing to pay $100 more a year to stop climate change because from all the information they've been fed, it's not a big deal. There's very good reason to believe that if people understood the current and future effects better there would be a much more drastic response.

Just look at similar failures in the past where corporate interest spread disinformation to continue making money (cigarettes, lead in gasoline, health insurance companies today, sugar industry, etc.). When people learn the actual facts the prevailing opinion tends to change pretty heavily. Sure suppliers must cater to demand, but that ignores the fact that often suppliers play a large role in cultivating that demand regardless of the moral value of that demand.

But equally, the consumer buys what the consumer wants. All Apple is guilty of is making decisions that feed the consumer's wants. Apple's income is proof positive that the consumer is willing to pay as much as they are, and quite probably more, to get their hands on what Apple have designed and for all the bad there is in the phone's design, there's enough good that enough people are willing to part with high amounts of money to get their products.

> But equally, the consumer buys what the consumer wants.

I don't believe in this equality. The consumer is limited to buying what is available in the market, which may not be what the consumer wants.

For example, if I had the option to buy a current Macbook Pro without a touchbar, and with the circa-2015 keyboard, I'd do so.

There's never going to be an infinite array of choices in a free market; there's only so many people and companies, and they can only make so many different things efficiently and sell them.

Apple made the decision to sell the Macbook with the touchbar, and you're free to either buy it or not. Personally, I don't like Macs or Apple, so I don't buy them at all, and I advise my friends and family to avoid them too. Most of them don't listen to me, and insist they "need" Apple products and pay top dollar for them, even though many of them are struggling financially. I try showing them my nice Android phone with removable batteries and dual cameras that I got for $140 on Ebay and that has MVNO service that costs a fraction of what they pay monthly to the big carriers, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Then they wonder why they're always broke and why I seem to be loaded....

Anyway, if you don't like the current Macs, don't buy them. It's really as simple as that. I have a Dell Latitude laptop that's (I think) 4 years old and easily repairable which I also bought used (ex-corporate lease), so I'm keeping it. And I have a phone that's 2-3 years old and has replaceable batteries, an SDcard slot with a 128GB card in it, and that cost me relatively little, and I'm keeping that for the time being too. Maybe if I see something better that I get excited by, I'll buy it, but I'm not dumb enough to buy something just because that's what some company wants me to buy.

But it's not that simple.

No other company can legally sell OS-X computers; some of the software on the platform is Mac only. So if you're in the Mac ecosystem then making a switch to Windows or Linux can be a major hurdle.

I'm saying that as a die-hard Windows fan (well, after Nadella took over) who's now currently enjoying Windows Terminal (beta), the Linux Subsystem, and some major improvements in the usability of the Win10 OS. Not to mention their new Edge Browser, Code, and .net Core - the list goes on.

Even though I believe the grass is much greener on this side, I can fully understand that a huge number of people don't want to or can't easily change. The new Macbook Pros are beautifully designed, if it just wasn't for that missing row of keys and total lack of travel in those that remain.

> Even though I believe the grass is much greener on this side

It is? Forced upgrades and fucking ads in the OS, not to mention tracking that cannot even be disabled in the Enterprise editions?

I rather pay more for a Mac and not be haunted by ads. There's enough ads on the Internet even with an adblocker, all over public space (TV, radio, newspapers, on the sides of buildings, cars, in public transport), I don't need them in my OS too...

I haven't seen much of any ads after I performed my post install clean ups.

I agree the pre installed games are a nuisance and need to go.

I can manage my updates by using the many tools provided in the Pro edition in later updates (1 year ago). You probably haven't seen those?

I don't mind Microsoft collecting telemetry that relates to Windows updates Vs hardware configurations. You don't really need so much of that in osx land as Apple owns all the core hardware. In Windows, there's many magnitudes more configs.

> I haven't seen much of any ads after I performed my post install clean ups.

One should not be supposed to do manual clean-ups simply to have an OS that's ad free. We pay for Windows, after all.

> I don't mind Microsoft collecting telemetry that relates to Windows updates Vs hardware configurations.

The problem is that the "telemetry" is totally intransparent and uncontrollable. In the case of Office 365 there is no way to operate it inside the EU and conforming to the GDPR (https://www.datenschutz-notizen.de/office-16-und-office-365-...).

> Anyway, if you don't like the current Macs, don't buy them. It's really as simple as that.

I like my Android phone, and I am happy buying non-Apple laptops for myself. However, my company machine choices have me stuck on Apple. It's just not as simple as you'd like it to be.

>However, my company machine choices have me stuck on Apple.

This isn't really a problem. The whole point of work is to make money to support yourself; you're being paid to put up with whatever BS is entailed with that job. No one likes everything about their job, and for software people, there's very, very few jobs where they actually love their IT environment. Usually they complain about it in one way or another. The IT environment is just another factor to consider when choosing between offers, along with company culture, commute, office environment, salary, etc. You can't have it all. So my advice before doesn't apply to whatever your employer chooses to make you use in exchange for you collecting a salary, it's only for your personal use, where you really do have the power to choose what's best for you and what you like the most without worrying about external factors (unless perhaps you have a spouse/SO who will dump you because they don't like your choice, but if that's the case you're probably better off without them).

>For example, if I had the option to buy a current Macbook Pro without a touchbar, and with the circa-2015 keyboard, I'd do so.

Given enough money I'm sure you could find someone to do a custom build :)

Ah yes, but you'd still buy the Macbook Pro, because all other things being equal the Macbook Pro with the touchbar still suits your purpose better than the alternative available product.

The market bears out because you vote with your money. It may not be quite what you want, but you'd rather make the trade off and pay Apple what they want you to pay than go without or have the alternative product. Thus you pay for what you want. Your money tells Apple that even though you may not like their product completely, they're still doing a good enough job for you to pay what they demand you to pay for it. That's all companies really care about.

It's like an abusive relationship with a narcissist, they give you juuuuuust enough to keep you there, but never enough to feel truly happy about life.

"consumer buys what the consumer wants"

And the supplier uses AI-guided targeted advertising to tell the public exactly what it wants.

The market decision loop has been broken for a long time.

You could go back to the US auto industry of the 1950s - early 70s, telling (and convincing) the buying public that it wanted huge, heavy, overpowered, inefficient, unsafe, poorly-handling, and tremendously fuel-inefficient cars. Until reality did what it does and imposed, and the buying public didn't, and Japan and Germany were more than happy to sell them what they discovered they did want: well-engineered, efficient, inexpensive (until 1980s import quota limits drove manufacturers up-market), better-handling, and safer cars.

This isn’t how markets work. Suppliers can’t just “do whatever they want”. If there’s no demand for a project you’ll very quickly go out of business that way. It is up to the consumers, and people chose iPhones over chunky android phones with hot swappable batteries and the like.

You can’t really be a “sustainable” company (or anything, really) when you’re out of business.

It's not like there are any alternatives for running macos...

No, it's up to regulators to fix market failures like this one.

people chose iphones when they were far superior to everything else and have been (largely) locked-in by switching costs ever since.

> This shifts blame off suppliers and on to consumers. Suppliers can do whatever they want: it's the responsibility of consumers to choose what is best for society.

Wether you agree with it or not, this is how capitalism and a free market works. It's a feature, not a bug.

Yes, it is well known that unrestrained capitalism is bad. Next?

If I decide which product to buy based on whether I want to be able to repair it myself, I’m making a decision for myself, not for society.

I think the argument is that a product that is hard to repair is less likely to be repaired, and, thus, more likely to become waste and be more quickly replaced with an altogether new product when confronted with a minor, and otherwise repairable, fault.

For an individual user who may be disinclined to repair a machine, it may make no material difference. For society as a whole, it has an impact.

Of course, if the overwhelming behavior is disposal, repairability may have negative environmental impacts (extra material use for modularity, etc). A similar example would be people discarding reusable plastic bags after one or two uses, resulting in more plastic waste than with bags intended for single use.

It takes time for markets and users to adjust, and we may find that Apple was well-positioned to take advantage of market trends in processor and efficiency improvements at the right time for portable device markets like phones and laptops. Maybe we'll swing back to longer lifetimes and more modularity at some point...

> you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone

Where can I find an expandable, repairable laptop that runs MacOS?

Run a Hackintosh

Let me clarify: where can I buy an expandable repairable laptop that runs macOS legally with support from the vendor?

It's a fair criticism of Ive to say he's been responsible for people throwing away perfectly good electronics to get the latest, fashionable model. Changing the design from year to year purely so that people will feel the need to upgrade lest they be thought of as out of fashion.

If you believe consumers are responsible for the choices they make, then Ive is responsible for the choices he made too.

I was about to disagree with you, then I remembered the little red dot they put on the crown of the Apple Watch 3 to differentiate it from older versions. That was purely about demonstrating the owner has the newest iteration.

The red dot differentiated it from the non-cellular version.

In case we forget what we bought and accidentally try to make a call off our version of the watch for commoners.

You can make a call from your non-cellular watch, provided you're in range of your iPhone.

Parent is slightly off in the details but the basic point is correct: the dot went from a filled circle in one generation to an open circle in the next. There's no functional reason for this, and the form of the crown itself didn't change enough for there to be any real reason other than for "spectators" to be able to distinguish the models visibly.

(And I'm not casting a stone here: I say this as someone who bought a Watch from each generation.)

No surprise there.

I was more referring to the fact that colors are available only in certain years. So if you have the "Rose Gold" iPhone, this identifies you as being on the latest release in one year. And also identifies you as being a year out of date when they don't make that color available in the following year.

> The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.

I think this may have been true at some point, but not anymore. I know so many people that are blinded by brand loyalty to Apple that they'll buy basically any product they put out. They wouldn't consider an Android device because it doesn't portray the same "status". The same is true with the MacBook Pro. I used to be a happy MacBook Pro user, but when it was time to upgrade and I saw the current lineup there was no way I could consider buying one. I've never been the type to just buy Apple for the sake of buying Apple. Many people go ahead and buy a $2000 device that they only use to browse social media solely because Apple made it.

All you are saying is that symbols of status and "brand loyalty" are more important to some buyers than features and functionality. That's just a fact about some people. You might argue that it's foolish and irrational, but it doesn't change the fact or that people buy based on their personal criteria, which may be different to yours.

Your choices are not intrinsically more rational than theirs. They value status. You don't. It would be silly of them to buy in the way you buy because they don't value the same things.

Apple serves a very large market of people who consider status more important than features (if we accept your initial assertion). Their designs are made to appeal to that group.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying the design doesn't matter to these people. By virtue of the product being produced by Apple that means it's "good", so they buy it regardless of whether or not the design actually makes the product better.

> so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone

This is false. Massively.

The available options are not many, not strongly different neither much freely available to choose. Most, at best, start with "can I at least afford it?".

I know many that wish to have an Apple device but must use a very bad and cheap android... because is what them can afford.

Also, consider developers, supposedly a group that "could choose best".

How many times "where is a good laptop that run linux" you hear? Is because it not EXIST. I can't choose it. Only accept a decent approximation.

If you pay attention, you will see that the market is not close to provide good options in so many fronts.

I remember a few years ago: "Where is the RDBMS GUI front-end for osx?", It not EXIST at the time. But you can "chose" to use linux? Linux not have good UI tools at large. Only windows in my niche.

How many times "where is a good laptop that run linux" you hear?

That is the market at work. The market doesn't exist to serve every possible need, only profitable needs. The demand for Linux laptops is so low that it supports only a handful of specialist businesses, none of which have the investment or infrastructure to build laptops like Apple's.

Using oil and coal is a design decision - and we live in a free market.

The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making oil companies some of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.

See where we are now.

> so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone. Is it not well within the author's rights to write a piece about it and talk about it? Are the only options in Appleland really "buy it and like it" and "go away" ?

So you paraphrased the article, which I'll take at face value. How does this make the article trash?

Critics don't owe us better products just because they have the audacity to write about other people's products.

I think the world needs more articles criticising companies for making unrepairable crap.

> so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone

Sadly every brand has been imitating the cool kid.

Case in point: Thinkpads.

Thinkpads used to be an absolute beauty of engineering. I have an old x220: You could swap battery by hand, change the memory and hard disk by undoing one single screw, swap the keyboard by undoing 3 screws.

I also go a new one recently, a T480. Changing memory and mass media means taking the whole bottom off, which means which is almost impossible to do with breaking some small plastic tabs. Changing the battery and keyboard is close to heart surgery.

Their newer model downright solder memory in the machine, making it impossible to upgrade or repair.

Another example, OneOps was one of the few company making sane decision, their latest model does not have a jack for headset.

Thinkpads are no longer made by IBM, so, yeah.

Other brands have faired a much worse fate. AEG for example was once a brand which stood for good german quality, nowadays everyone who wants to use that name only has to buy the right to do so from some turkish company.

At the very least, AEG home appliances are made by Electrolux. Same internals as Zanussi, a step above the sad state of Sharp, Panasonic, Grundig (made by Beko). Not as good as they once were, though.

Funnily enough, I was chatting to the guy who came to repair my 10yr old Siemens dishwasher a month or so back. His advice - next time you buy one, buy a Beko, as they have long understood how to build a good product to a price cap. The marque brands are now trying to save costs by doing the same internally, but they are not as good at it!

Oh man, funny that you mention that. So Bosch/Siemens have the most reliable appliances (lowest failure rates), except for their bloody dishwashers. They use unique, expensive parts and are very hard to disassemble. Terrible choices, no idea why.

Beko use standard components (except the main board) found on dozens of other brands and most of them only require you to remove the bottom cover for access.

To be fair, Beko branded machines are pretty good. Just not that good. Especially for the premium price they want for some of their other brands.

I've worked on several Beko washers that overheated until the glass on the door cracked (flooding the place). But that's nothing compared to some Miele that will power the heater even if there's no water, getting it red hot and risking a real fire. Ditto for Indesit dryers.

> Thinkpads are no longer made by IBM, so, yeah.

I've heard this line of thought repeated alot--"Thinkpads went to crap once IBM sold them to Lenovo"--but I could swear I read an article stating that the Thinkpad team went to Lenovo as well, such that the same people still work on them.

I'll edit my post if I can find the source.

Whether or not the team itself moved over, I believe they still use something very close to the original design and build process as the IBM ThinkPads.

The Lenovo deal happened a long time ago. Does it matter much today what the team was like in 2004? People move on, etc. The thinkpad brand itself is quite a bit older, even.

This makes sense. They are everywhere in the South East Asia market for electronic goods and their products are trash. I presume a Chinese firm got them as marketing.

What if that's just further confirmation that people who change parts are a small minority of the market? I could see Apple purposely sacrificing market share to achieve design trendiness purity, but boring TPS-reporting laptop manufactures? No way!

Design and advertising are used to make devices look obsolete when they're actually still perfectly good to use. Consumers choose to buy new devices instead of repairing/upgrading their old devices. Devices become harder to repair, making repairs more expensive. Consumers repair even less.

I have the OG X1C (i7/8/256). I got a free battery swap included in my purchase, and the guy who came out had it done quite quickly.

The 2012 is still going pretty well for me and quite useful as my #2 dev machine. I have a much higher powered desktop. I'd like a new X1C, but won't replace it until it breaks - and currently it looks like I better not hold my breath for that to happen; it's holding up incredibly well.

How's that for reducing waste; buying top spec laptops and making them last not 2, not 3 but 7 years and going.

I bought a lifetime supply of x220 parts on ebay. Since Moore's law has failed since they came out, newer machines would be a downgrade on every front except the screen.

The reason I got a new one is for the ability to add more memory, but newer machines use way less energy (smaller battery or longer life on one charge).

There's a few lenovo machines which are faster (xeon chips) and you can stuff them with memory, and as I said, the x220 screen leaves something to be desired, but for now, the keyboard kind of wins over these factors. The big battery is pretty good; lasts all day, assuming I'm not compiling browsers.

I've got a t470s, it's really not that bad. Roughly equivalent to swapping parts on my 2010 MBP, you remove the bottom and everything is right there. I don't love that I only have one DIMM slot, but it's still a very serviceable machine.

I also had an x220 (I actually keep it around my office as a spare). Adding a second SSD to the WWAN slot required basically a complete teardown of the machine. The swappable battery seemed nice, but the battery in mine falls out because the locking mechanism broke.

For my use I actually prefer the newer style thinkpads. If I need to replace the battery I'll deal with the 5 screws on the bottom. Regarding the t490 RAM, it's like my T470s, one stick soldered and one DIMM slot.

I'll also add that although Lenovo is far from perfect (superfish), they do have a history of correcting bad design decisions based on customer feedback (see the t440/x240 trackpads).

I don't think the article goes far enough.

>>sacrifices had to be made in terms of repairability"

It's not just repairability. There are substantial sacrifices made to usability; Ive chooses form over function.

Example 1: Thanks to Ive's fetish with "smaller/slimmer", everyone is now carrying around a bag full of adapters and dongles to connect the devices they use: usb, video, network, etc.

Example 2: The butterfly keyboard. Loud, an ergonomic mess, and unreliable.

Example 3: The absurd decision to place the charging port on the wireless mouse on the bottom - rendering it unusable while it charges. But it looks so sleek.

These are all good things, because people like them, and are happily handing truckloads of their money over to Ive's company for products with these "features".

I'd like to see Apple try to take this even farther, such as making Macbooks require a dongle just to use WiFi, making it so that they only work with genuine Apple WiFi dongles, and then charging more for the dongle than the Macbook itself costs. I seem to remember a Space Quest game that had something like this in the plot. With the stupidity that consumers have shown regarding Apple, I have no doubt that this would work out just fine for them.

Thousands of design decisions go into a product, while consumers can only vote yes/no.

So a hypothetical consumer could like 1950 decisions, deeply dislike 50 and it would still be worth it for them to buy the product.

This is exactly what's happening for Apple, their products are still good enough to be bought, but at the same time they make a lot of stupid design decisions which frustrate us.

In my case, the MBP has so many reliability issues that I would no longer personally purchase it.

There's more than one product out there. For phones, there's dozens of models available on the new market at any time, plus all the used ones (this is a lot since they change models about every year). For any given product, there should be other options out there that would suit you better. The problem with Apple is that people are emotionally invested into the brand; they buy it just because it gives them status (like a Rolex watch or a BMW), because they're a fan of the brand for some reason, etc., not because the product actually the best match to their list of desired features.

No, thanks to Google there are zero alternatives to the iPhone.

Everything else is just another hardware iteration on the same spyware.

>> These are all good things, because people like them, and are happily handing truckloads of their money over to Ive's company for products with these "features".

That's kind of assuming that Apple users are all the same.

I would unscientifically break down the users as:

1 - People who love the OS too much too switch to something else

2 - People who love the OS and hardware

3 - People who love the hardware form factors, and don't necessarily care about the OS

4 - People who love the owning an Apple products (loyal to the company more than the products)

I don't know how big each group is, but I tend to think the people in group 1 are the bulk of the people complaining, and are begrudgingly buying new Apple hardware until it eventually stops making sense to.

> if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone

Or at least while our planet is inhabitable. 44.3 degrees today in France, the highest temperature ever recorded in that country. Free markets and design decisions are great, protecting our common environment is also not such a bad idea...

It should be against the law to make non-repairable electronics. The world is literally about to end and we cannot afford to sacrifice everything on the altar of some sort of platonic notion of beauty.

It may be a free market, but we only get one planet earth, and your ideas about a free market don't really have an answer to that concern.

> Well guess what, that's a design decision and we live in a free market - so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone. The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.

Good design decisions, perhaps. Good environmental decisions, not at all. I think we're all starting to realize the impact of externalizing the environmental costs, so I can't say the article's basic premise is far off.

Well guess what, that's a design decision and we live in a free market - so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone.

Nothing in the article argued otherwise.

The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.

Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's good, or a good decision. The use of gas for powering cars made a lot of companies very valuable, but one can certainly question that decision in light of the impact on the environment. One can cite plenty of other examples where a decision made sense if you look at it in a very myopic sense, analyzing only the short term financial implications... while the longer-term view yields a much different analysis.

The long term view is that Apple also became the world's most valuable brand with exceptionally loyal customers.

Except some of their most loyal customers have been switching to other laptops that made less sacrifice. They could have pleased new comers and loyal customers, and kept a better reputation by delivering a higher quality device, instead of becoming just a fashion statement.

They grew because of their obsession with thinness, BUT at some point they should have recognized the diminishing returns, that people wanted battery life and real keyboards. They left money on the table, with regard to opportunity cost, that wont ever be calculatable, by not changing their tune once they became thin enough.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that they provide products with consistently high margins, and encourage vendor lock in.

You've just made the best argument for why we need to regulate the free markets.

> Well guess what, that's a design decision and we live in a free market - so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone. The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.

That assumes the unrepairable hardware is an isolated choice by customers when it isn't. There are a hundred other reasons why to buy a particular laptop or not, a huge one being the ability to run macos.

If you want to see actual consumer preferences then produce a repairable Macbook and see if anybody buys that. Which they did in 2006 when that was the case -- so by your logic doesn't that prove that the market has spoken and people want repairable hardware?

Relying on the market to indicate preferences works when there is aggressive competition providing every possible combination of alternatives people might want. If the actual combination that people want isn't available then all you're proving is that some people like macos more than they dislike disposable hardware, which is a crap excuse for destroying the environment.

> The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.

One could very very easily make the case that apple's popularity is not due to super sleekness but the boost of ipod+itunes (hey, portable music i can easily use without piracy) followed by iphone (mobile internet and touch ui) and the coherent combination of these user-useful tools under a single brand with a single design language.

Nothing precludes the same phenomenon from happening using a different design language, even one that is still sleek but yet doesn't generate mountains of unrepairable trash and set a precedent for other companies to do the same.

Instead, apple used sleekness to sell unrepairability and thereby boost it's bottom line to the detriment of consumer rights and the environment.

>Well guess what, that's a design decision and we live in a free market - so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone...

I imagine one is also free to write about why they don't like it...

I never understand this argument. So people should just keep their mouths shut about anything they don't like assuming they have a market alternative? Why? Maybe I like a lot about X but don't like where X is now headed? Why shouldn't I speak up?

The article has an excellent main point -- that repairability and modularity are valuable.

You complain "we live in a free market". Of course we do.

One of the key features of a free market is that it rewards not only better products, but it also very handsomely rewards people/companies who can externalize costs -- optimize one thing that makes profits for them, while leaving the society or the planet to pay the costs.

You apparently advocate a commercial ethos where it is good to trash the commons, as long as you can make a profit.

Just because trashing the commons can result in a company becoming one of the largest in the world, does not mean that any criticism of it is trash.

The fact that his design made Apple a lot of money means that they were good business decisions. However, that isn't the same as them being good design decisions.

As I understand it, design is the study of how form can be improved in order to improve function. Ive's focus on slimness appears to be improving form at the expense of function.

Saying that people just need to go out and build their own operating system/computer is ridiculous. No average person (or really any individual) has the resources to do that.

I agree. Sensationalist trash. The article claims that Ive’s design decisions affected not only Apple, but other brands like Samsung and HTC as well. Really? If they were terrible decisions then other companies wouldn’t have been forced to adopt them and the market would’ve punished Apple, right? The fact that other brands adopted them means that the market wanted slim, sleek and overpriced products. So blame the public, not Ive.

What I will agree with here is that we have made devices so thin and fragile that you instantly have to wrap them in thick cases to protect them. Or carry around a pound of adapters to shave off a few grams in having more than one port.

The optimization toward light and thin has gone a little overboard. These aren’t just art pieces, but tools. Make my laptop 10% heavier but give me a machine that can take a beating

I think there's a disconnect between what makes someone buy a device, and what makes a quality device.

In the abstract I think a lot of people would say they'd take a heavier phone that's more durable and has a longer battery life.

Unfortunately most phones are sold on "tech-lust." The sleekness and thin-ness of the device. How futuristic it is. People will pay a lot of money for a luxury device that feels "right."

I'm not sure how we resolve the conflict. For a sellers perspective you kind of have to chase the art-piece, especially when people choose it over the practical tool again and again. But I think most people would be happier if the design was more tool-like.

Was the integrated circuit a mistake because it isn't repairable? The historical arc of technological development is unmistakably towards smaller, more complex, more integrated systems that are impossible to access and repair without highly specialised equipment. Does anybody really believe that technology 100 years from now will be anything other than nano-tech meta-materials, the functioning of which is totally opaque to anybody without a tunnelling microscope and an in-depth understanding of quantum physics? History will judge Ive no more harshly than one person caught in an irresistible wave.

The integrated circuit was not unrepairable on purpose. The amount of plastic packaging per transistor in an integrated circuit is much much smaller than for individual transistors. The point is that the Apple devices are not repairable on purpose. The half-a-millimeter-thinner argument is a laughable pretext.

Yet integrated circuits are more open than Apple products because they offered their functionality through a standardized pin-"API", and could be combined with circuits from other manufacturers. Apple products are mainly designed to live in an Apple-only ecosystem.

There's a balance. Not doing reasonable component separation, such as SSD, mainboard, CPU, and RAM from each other different from the feasibility of repairing nanomaterial directly.

I still want to be able to replace the battery in my Tesla, which I can.

I think what most comments critical of this article are missing is the “History” portion of the title. Sure. At the moment it isn’t ridiculous to create headphones that must be broken and thus trashed to replace the battery. But, when climate change is (very soon) bearing down on us with its full force, we will revisit these decisions. At that point, with that perspective, I have to believe that history will indeed not be kind to these decisions.

Yes, we can praise Ive today for being a pioneer. But in 20 years, he'll perhaps be looked at in a different light.

Repairability is really important for sustainable, maintainable systems. Beauty without reparability-- in hindsight it will be like those illuminated manuscripts from the middle ages that were created with poisons like arsenic and stored in sealed containers[1]. It's beautiful, but most definitely not as functional or impressive as it otherwise might be.

[1] https://www.livescience.com/63025-poisonous-books-coated-in-...

It turns out that disassembly and maintenance are features that cost quite a bit of money all along the chain from design to component sourcing to assembly and even delivery. Most consumers want rock bottom prices and would rather just by a new widget with more better features. None of this touches on what Jon Ive did in terms of making the machines themselves and their interfaces as appealing and accessible as possible within the constraints of hardware and software production.

One of the big potential advantages to the current situation is that some company could design and market computers that are repairable and also hire Jon Ive to enhance their beauty and interfaces.

The original iMac G5 was easy to dissemble. There are three screws which lift off the entire back and everything is exposed. Replacing a HDD was a cinch.

In the subsequent models they made it far more difficult without really changing the outward design. You had to remove the screen, it was a lot harder and more technical. It was a decision to make macs and other devices non repairable.

This would have been something of an original thought if it were written, say, last week. But it's clearly an article trolling the actual news. A blogger decided to write something edgy after a few minutes of thought. The pathetic thing is this blogger probably believes it is insightful, original, and intelligent.

And just what's with the concern for how the future looks upon this time in history? It seems like so many arguments are based on the premise that for one reason or another, humans of the future will judge the humans of today in a negative way. Why would I care? Even if I did, I'd assume that at some point in the future literally nobody will be thinking or judging of humans of today. We aren't that special. Get over yourselves.

I have always despised how publications latch on to anything Apple like a pit bull. Especially when you’re borderline insulting of a person instead of a critic of the work.

End of the day, he’s one of a select few household names in the space. His work helped make Apple one of the biggest Andy most influential companies on earth. Nobody will remember the keyboards — his legacy is just fine.

What about "History Will Not Be Kind to Apple"?

Ultimately, ALL of these apparent flaws were approved by the Apple and Ive isn't even a company officer. Further, the average consumer has no idea who Jony Ive is. Apple created the iPhone, not Ive.

> Ive isn't even a company officer.

I can't say it better than Wikipedia:

> On 26 May 2015, the firm announced that Ive was promoted to chief design officer (CDO), at the time one of only three C-level executives at Apple along with CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri (Jeff Williams would be promoted to COO at the end of 2015).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive

I've been thoroughly schooled.

It seems like the author has a definite axe to grind here. I can't recall a single story about Apple's product design that lays the blame for unrepairability at Ive's feet, yet here's this article that implies nobody else was involved in the design of Apple's products.

I'm not much a fan of Apple's chosen method of doing business, and can honestly say I've only liked a few of the product designs that Ive has created over the years, but I think history will be kind to him; his designs helped create the juggernaut Apple is today, and he's leaving at a bit of a high point in his career.

What a clickbait article. Love or hate Jony's designs, millions have used and loved the products. There have been issues wrt repairability, but it's nothing as dramatic as the article claims.

Love or hate big tobacco, millions have used and loved cigarettes. What an argument!

"It's nothing as dramatic". Really? Millions of unrepairable wireless earbuds heading to the landfill every year is not dramatic?

There has to be a strawman like word for this argument. Last I checked, Jony's products didn't cause Cancer or kill anyone. At worst, all they did was annoy someone.

Your argument would have held credence without that argument.

> "It's nothing as dramatic". Really? Millions of unrepairable wireless earbuds heading to the landfill every year is not dramatic?

Yeah, just casually ignore this part of the comment...

GP is not implying that Apple products are like cancer. He is trying to show that GGP's argument was invalid, by applying to a different case where it obviously doesn't hold.

A: "X is not bad, because millions have used and loved it."

B: "That doesn't follow. Millions have used and loved Y, and Y is clearly bad, so A's argument doesn't hold."

C: "B claims that X is like Y, but Y causes cancer, and X doesn't, so B's argument is invalid."

D (me): "No, B doesn't claim that X is like Y, so C's argument is not sound, and B's is valid and sound, and A's is invalid."

Or so.

I tend to think the opposite. When you think of design you think of Apple (which in turn means Jony Ive). Whether or not they cause some functional issues doesn't matter. The market has spoken and they love the sleek design that this man has come up with. If it weren't true people wouldn't be all out copying the designs of Apple. I think history will look favorably on him, and pretty much forget the functional issues (whether real or just perceived) his designs caused.

I can't speak for "the market", but personally I like the seamless integration (of UNIXy base & consistent GUI, of hardware & software, across different devices). Not the super-sleek design.

Like many users, I'd prefer if the devices were a bit thicker, but had more battery life and were more easily repairable (and, for the MBP, had a keyboard that would just work).

They could do all of that, fix the keyboard, put in a 100WHr battery, and componetize the parts (SSD/RAM, CPU, motherboard) without changing much from the current look and feel. I imagine it would be a hybrid between the 2015 and 2016 Macs.

Written by a “journalist” about whom history will not even footnote.

“Ive, Apple's Chief Design Officer, is leaving the company. He leaves a legacy that made its products hard to repair and impossible to upgrade.”

And leaves a trail of epic industrial design, user experience, and manufacturing genius.

Does one repair/upgrade a pacemaker? A fine watch? A modern heavily computerized, sensor-filled car? Smart TV? A digital camera?

Article is a pile of poor logic and lack of appreciation of design. Hard pass.

Yes, one usually does and can repair all those things. Except for the pacemaker, which I’m not sure.

Yeah I disagree with the article. Ive will be sought after for years. Imagine having his name attached to the next Samsung phone. His singular designs helped propel Apple to where they are on just the back of the iPhone which at one point made up north of 60% of Apple’s revenue. History will put him in the same boat as Jobs.

And history will not be kind to media outlets that consistently put out trash like this, aiding in the ever growing distrust in the media gigantic eye roll

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