How Steve Jobs Ruined My Life | Hacker News Reader

How Steve Jobs Ruined My Life

core77.com

47 pointscwan21 comments

Wait. So because of Steve Jobs, clients went from wanting ugly products made cheaply to wanting beautiful products made cheaply... and that's how he ruined your life?

Better title: "Steve Jobs inspired my clients, but it doesn't change the fact that they're cheap."

i think what he tries to say is that steve jobs made people appreciate design, but dont actually listen to designers but just want to copy the ipod

The article has interesting thoughts despite the flame bait headline and the lack of any actual legitimate grievance against Steve or Apple.

It was more like "I wish he had done more"...I didn't see how things were any worse than they were before.

I was amused by the author's misappropriation of the gay nineties (1890s).

It does seem like instead of taking lessons about understanding the value of design and design process, manufacterers have latched onto whatever aesthetic Apple has gone to recently. Just look at the latest crop of MacBook Air knock-offs.

It's tragic in that there are certainly plenty of talented designers out there with the skill and vision to make something just as well designed as an Apple product, but taken in a different direction.

In software at least, both Microsoft and Google seem to be taking minimalism in a different direction from Apple's penchant for skeuomorphis, which I think is great.

In hardware, there doesn't seem to be any such thing. I did like the aesthetic of the CR-48: flat, matte, dark gray, soft-touch plastic. Understated, unassuming, and functional. And now that it seems like Google has got religion about design, maybe they can exert some of that onto Motorola, their new hardware branch.

A guy can dream, can't he?

The tech industry doesn't understand a damn thing about aesthetics, and until it does, Apple will dominate.

Too many people making decisions are afraid to let the designer come out with anything approaching novel. Too many engineers are too mired in nerdy product specifications to realize nobody cares about how many processors are in a phone. Too many designers are too afraid to stray from the archetypical Web 2.0 site.

This is not cause for despair; rather, it's a giant opportunity staring you in the face. The industry needs people with vision, taste, and the balls to push back on everyone else that would get in their way.

I think it's partly a failure of designers to communicate what they can do. I do understand how hard this can be; my wife is a product designer, sometimes for tech products.

As I said before, I'm hopeful about both Microsoft and Google. They both seem to have gotten more serious about design, at least on software. Google is notoriously data-driven, and a designer who understands how to speak Googlese, with design theory backed by data, could have a serious impact. All the Google re-designs and especially Android 4 ICS have me very hopeful.

I'm less bullish on Google. They are very data-driven, which works until it doesn't. I can't imagine what data anyone at Google would have provided in 2001 that could have convinced them to build an iPod.

Google doesn't seem so much paralysis-by-analysis, but more paralysis-until-analysis. I'm not a googler, but have several friends who are. The stories of designers who have come and gone from their teams aren't well published, but I guess frustration is a norm in those circles when it comes to design. Apparently, design vision doesn't lead a product -- it follows.

I know they have made managerial changes there (I was told the move of Meyer out as head of product management had something to do with design), but the culture of data-first seems to be holding them back.

Such is the case with the fashion industry. You have the trend setters, the top designers who innovate. Then you have the smaller design shops who employ "artists" and ask them to copy and mimic the best.

Things don't necessarily look fancy or nice because they are, but because they typically debut in a velben good. They begin to lose their luster as the copycats catch on and as the market becomes over-saturated with copycat designs, the trend setter is forced back to the drawing board to create the new, fresh look.

This is just the stupidity of the "me too!" clones. Just look at clones of Groupon. Or jobs on Elance (at least 20% are "clone this").

Copying is no guarantee of success. At a certain point you have to risk being hated (Jobs' and his products) and actually listen to what the designer thinks.

This supports something I've long suspected: that much of Apple's singular success is due to their ability to mislead their competition into making poor design choices, and distract them from real innovation. How much money has been wasted trying to copy the iPad?

tl;dr A lot of businesses feel that non-designers know how to design something after they've seen a successful Apple product, and that designers are just there to implement the 'vision' of the non-designer(s).

I think I read a quote from someone at IDEO or a similar company. The designer said that every time someone came to them saying "I want the next iPod," the designer would think to themselves "Then show me the next Steve Jobs!"

Jobs famously said that design isn't how it looks – but how it works. That distinction is a big reason companies have such a hard time catching up to Apple on quality (and often, popularity).

Very true. I still have a cheap USB hub in translucent plastic from the Imac First Generation era.

from the article: "Steve Jobs was not a designer"

I'm thinking that line is pretty untrue.

From another HN story: "Showcasing their extensive work together, Jobs and Ive share credit for inventing over 200 patents. Jobs is responsible for the most total patents at the company, at 313."

Yeah I'm pretty sure he was doing something over there.

How many of those patents are solely Jobs'?

You don't have to be a designer to appreciate the importance of design. What the author is bemoaning is that other companies don't understand the process. You see many stories of Jobs rejecting designs, but none about him sitting down and creating them. The position of a gatekeeper who critiques designs is different from a designer in important ways.

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