Once he lost his editor the designs Apple shipped moved more and more towards being perfect designs at the expense of thoughts of usability.
And now he’s known as the guy who helped “ruin” Apple’s products until they kicked him out.
Unfortunate. For the lack of an editor.
But to say Apple kicked Ive out seems wrong to me. They rather wore him out and he left.
To give credit to Cook he listened to the chorus of complaints and acted on it. The results aren't as pretty as the Ive era designs. But they give users a lot more of what they really want, instead of a nice case with missing useful features.
Ive actually had a lot of misses, from the gradients and flat look in iOS 7, to the infamous butterfly keyboard and missing USB ports, to the early versions of Watch, to (at a guess) the touchbar. There were also Jobs-era failures like the hockey puck mouse and the Siri Remote for Apple TV.
And personally I'm not a huge fan of the current Apple typography and branding.
So - not really missing his influence. I'd love to see Apple find a new design head who could inject more personality than the current products have, but I don't think Ive's departure was a terrible loss in any way.
Not saying Ive hadn't had some great designs in his time at Apple but saying the new designs aren't as pretty is highly debatable. From what I can tell, I don't think many people found the touchbar to be particularly "pretty".
Aesthetically it changes the entire look of the keyboard and wraps it together.
My next computer is having function keys though, so make of that what you will.
Ive actually had a lot of misses, from the gradients and flat look in iOS 7
https://www.macworld.com/article/221357/why-ios-7s-design-is...
I'm not sure they're supposed to be. The design aesthetic of the new MacBook Pro is...chonky. And that has to be intentional. They've made a work machine. It kinda looks like one. And despite being very clearly of the same design lineage, the MacBook Air doesn't have that vibe, to me. It's a much lighter-feeling thing that feels closer to the older designs.
> And personally I'm not a huge fan of the current Apple typography and branding.
The font kills me. It's just not nice to read.
That seems obvious, Cook was never the "taste" person, which is what Jobs was (brutally so). Cook has always been the ops guy (his original role was SVP for worldwide ops, then EVP for sales and ops, before becoming COO).
Ive as design lead already is the editor. Thats job of art director.
What Jobs has done for Ive is that he probably pushed many other departments to do what Ive and his team came up with.
Its very likely Ive “fails” are organisation issues and his inability to push things to completion.
I am not a big fan of Ive but Apple turned their trajectory completely around because of designs comming from department he was leading. And the big turn around the old iMac was comming mostly solely from him.
I wouldnt give so much credit to Jobs in same way as i wouldnt give so much credit to Ive. They are just on top.
If your experience with designers are some UI juniors who got the job after being in the field for less than 2 years it might seem like it.
But designers doing those products are really juggling hard problems and requirements that other departments give them. Everything is a tradeoff and they are the ones 100% on side of usability.
I am sick of this perception that that products made by engineers are functional and products made by designers are pretty. Its designers who make it people functional and its engineers who whip out the specs and clever tech solutions.
The aesthetic is sideproduct.
Designers shouldn't be just 100% on the side of usability, they should be balancing multiple factors such as cost, aesthetic, durability, portability, accessibility, ease of manufacturing as well as usability (there are many more).
All of these things have trade-offs - making a product more durable might increase cost, making it easier to manufacture might hurt it's aesthetic, adding more ports might improve functionality but decrease the aesthetic and increase cost etc.
The job of a designer is to balance all of these factors. The argument is that the balance Jony had was skewed more towards aesthetic which resulted in trade-offs in other directions.
> The aesthetic is a side product.
IMO the aesthetic definetly isn't a sideproduct for Apple - it's clear that aesthetic is a core part of the design process (see the iMac G3, G4, Trashcan Mac, latest iMac, Homepod e.t.c. where a significant portion of product engineering is driven by the external aesthetic to a large extent). The design of the iMac G4 was no accidental side product of the tech.
The criticism of Ive is that he weighted aesthetic too high at times, which for example resulted in an obsession for product-thinness which compromised the usability/durability of the keyboard, and of un-obtruded sides which led to the removal of ports and a charge-port on the bottom of the magic mouse.
You can still be a great designer and have a bias towards form over function - and arguably the best designs are done where there is some sort of creative tension between form and function (as tension often breeds creative solutions to release the tension).
By sideproduct i meant that nobody starts with aesthetics. It starts with the tech and its limits. Good designers can whip most things and shapes to look good.
I just dont think Jobs was mythical design hero because he took typography class.
You aren't a brilliant designer if your design choices make a product less functional. And there's a long track record of Ive doing exactly that.
This is an oxymoron. Being a desinger doesn't mean that you focus on making things look good while someone else comes along and reminds you about "usability". A design isn't "perfect" if it has usability problems. Any designer worth their salt will be the first to tell you that.
If a design is for some reason repulsive to a user then it is not good design.
I think Ive and Jobs together raised the bar for tech so many times that its easy to forget what computers used to look like.
it’s not like the machines were dumpster fires. I think we are too harsh sometimes.
but yes obviously the keyboard sucked and i hated that part of the laptop.
otherwise it was as good of a machine. great even. slimness is still nice in a laptop - it still performed as good as any other laptop I considered. 4x USBc was a great move too, especially charging from either side.
So undoubtedly new ones are better. but we are overly harsh on that era and Ive.
it’s not like he was the only one in on the keyboard decision either. Apple thought the keyboard was a competitive advantage at first!