Aesthetics Send A Message | Hacker News Reader

Aesthetics Send A Message

mattmaroon.com

26 pointsmattmaroon32 comments

"spending large amounts of money on products to impress women is a not very effective thing to do."

[citation needed]

Good design is prescient of an audience, yes. Often, however, good design applies widely to audiences it was never intended for.

For instance, OXO brand kitchen supplies were designed to be big and easy to handle for the arthritic. I own a lot of their supplies because they're sturdy and easy to handle. I never use it and think "Wow. I'm feeling arthritic today"

Similarly, Apple. Designing to make computing cool and succeeding wildly probably means the design will apply to a large number of unintended audiences as well. If you wear a suit and are professional, a glowing apple is still going to look better than a clunky black box.

You buy OXO brand kitchen supplies (as do I) because they're good and they don't cost $2,500.

When you make something that costs $6, you don't have to focus as much. Also, regardless of how they started out, their products no longer seem aimed at arthritic people.

Btw, get one of their liquiseal mugs. Amazing.

"Resellers say MacBook Air sales aren’t as brisk as original MacBook"

And by that you take away "The air is a sales dud"??? The air is like a Ferrari. Of course you don't sell as many Ferrari's as fords. Why would that be surprising?

I feel like I'm disagreeing with everything Matt says this week, but: look at a computer like the MacBook Pro, which is fairly thin. It doesn't look like something you could destroy easily. I'm sure you could make a mini computer that didn't look fragile but that DID have a better aesthetic design than the Lenovo. It's an unattractive computer for everybody out of the "ugly is good" mentality. The fact that most corporations still have that mentality goes along with the fact that a ton of companies don't "get" a lot of things and make inferior products. Pretty defensive post on your part.

And, not to say this for the third time or anything, but your web site is broken, links don't work, and the URL you yourself gave us up there is broken and redirects to the front page. You're using Wordpress, theming is not hard, please fix it so I can browse your archives.

Ah, damnit. Thanks. It wasn't the theme, it was that damn WP-Super Cache. Doesn't seem to play nice with my site no matter how hard I try.

Yeah, I had similar problems. It messes with the URL.

The link to your RSS feed doesn't work either.

I think feedburner just needs to update next time I post. The plugin seems to have also borked the feed and feedburner is responding oddly (though my updates still come through.)

I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks for the tip.

This just seems like a thinly disguised "I hate Macs" argument.

It's more a "I can see why someone would prefer the design of something else over a Mac" argument. I guess the difference is too subtle.

Read your title - of course Aesthetics send a message! Of course business men want laptops that look like they are designed for business. Of course people have different tastes.

This is not worth a blog post, it's just so frickin obvious.

It didn't seem to be obvious to DHH.

I have to wonder do the aesthetics of your MAC make you as a programmer more effective?

Of course not. It really boils down to this: some people like for their possessions to be beautiful, and others don't care. Neither group can see things from the viewpoint of the other, hence this ongoing pointless flamery.

It has nothing to do with impressing girls or anyone else. It's a personal preference. I'm particular; I like for my things to look a certain way. All of us have our own proclivities, so why don't we all just shut the hell up about this already? How does it harm Matt Maroon if I "spend too much" for an Apple product? Just tell yourself that I'm a moron and move on.

I love great design but in the case of "tools" if the design doesn't help the function and the productivity of the user - and there is something else out there cheaper that does (even though its "ugly") I have to go with productivity.

I knew a guy who was a graphic artist for a game company and they worked in a fantastically beautiful room, soft lighting, Star Wars movies playing in the background. Everything was made to inspire the artists to do better work. I wonder if Apple doesn't make the environment pretty do inspire programmers too.

Yes.

Elegance begets elegance. For me, it's a lot easier to write good code when my surroundings are to my liking. It's the same reason why I set the desktop as I like it, wear comfortable headphones, and keep my system well organized and "clean."

Given that I typically spend at least 10 hours a day on my computer and use it to make my living, I consider it worth a few extra hundred dollars amortized over the life of the machine to make my life that much more pleasant.

I've never understood why some people are so puzzled or, worse, offended by that idea.

Perhaps the aesthetics of the OS do.

OK, I agree. But what about us, poor folks who use Apple products merely to have decent Rails environment, TextMate and OmniGraffle? who don't want to spend ages dealing with Linux packages or configuring wifi (though, spent few years using Gentoo, Debian and others)? I worry we have no choice.

In the speaker's lounge at the recent O'Reilly OSCON, all the laptops I saw were either Apples or Thinkpads. They both have appealing aesthetics for their audiences.

Thank You! I'm glad someone understands that the Macbook and the Thinkpad are both well designed and highly functional but represent distinctly different aesthetic viewpoints. I personally choose Thinkpad, but I can understand why someone might not appreciate its minimalist nature and prefer a Macbook instead.

I'm typing this on a Thinkpad T40, and I think Macbooks are more minimalist in design.

I own both a MacBook and a Thinkpad, and use them pretty much interchangably. I think that they're both perfectly decent machines, and I like the aesthetics of both (albeit for different reasons).

I'm starting to feel like the only person who hasn't taken sides in this...

I think there's a pretty good argument that spending money on products to impress women is perhaps the most effective thing to do.

Even if that were true, you'd be better of buying a cheap laptop and spending the money on clothing or pickup artist seminars. Either would be more effective.

"I see you've noticed my laptop. Most women do. They can't look away from its sleek contours and the power of its dual cores. If you want to touch it, I'll understand. Now, can I buy you a drink?"

I would pay good money to watch someone enact that.

Buy me a Macbook Air and enough alcohol, and I'm your man.

Not that good money, but a few drinks for sure.

s/Now,can I buy you a drink?/Now, would you like to buy me a drink?

My world still revolves around girls, but I'm posting this from a Lenovo anyway. (More precisely, one woman and three girls.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com