Clarification on Jobs' Apple TV UI Rejection | Hacker News Reader

Clarification on Jobs' Apple TV UI Rejection

techcrunch.com

32 pointsmartingordon21 comments

His whole explantation seems to ignore the controversial part of his tweet: "Now there is nobody to say "no" to bad design."

He was clearly referring to "now" and indicates the design is bad.

From the article:

Margolis adds that he no longer owns any Apple stock and hasn’t been employed by the company since 2008.

Having not worked there since 2008, he's not in the position to make that comment. It sounds like he was just venting or speculating, perhaps.

The point was that, in the clarification, he explains that each step of the Apple TV interface was a step forward, but the original tweet strongly suggests that he thinks the interface is worse now.

For me, the original tweet only suggests that he tried now to get some credit for something he did in 2007 an what was rejected. The bad thing is, what we see now is not what he did in 2007, he only did something "similar." The differences alone could be good enough reason for his work to get rejected, and he even himself now clarifies that the context is even more important.

If you look at his twitter feed, the controversial part was just part of a longer "twitter conversation" he was having with Aral Balkan about the new Apple TV UI design. He was criticizing parts of the design while actually defending other parts.

It's very plausible that he really was referring to the present with that comment but its still pretty clear that everyone is reading way too far into it. It seems pretty reasonable to assume he was just making a flip remark without thinking of what would happen next. How could he? I know I wouldn't. How many regular (read: not famous) folks would think a quick tweet would ever get picked up like that even if they did work for the Apples of the world? I'm sure had there been reason to believe bloggers would jump on that one tweet he would've chosen his words more carefully. People like this guy tweet speculative stuff like that all day long and nothing comes of it most days so there was really no reason to expect it this time.

I'm one of the first to call bullshit anytime someone attributes a current Apple issue to the death of Steve Jobs. But to me the controversial part isn't the tweet, it's the firestorm of blog coverage that it generated. As far as I'm concerned this guy just post a quick mini rant as most people are wont to do on Twitter. Then out of nowhere a bunch of desperate bloggers latched on and dialed the sensationalism up to 11.

It's not like while Steve was alive, he stop less-than-stellar products from going out the door. Personally, I find the new Apple TV design to be much easier then before. Now, instead of playing "Guess the menu", I see where I want to go quickly and easily. Even the colors make it easy to see where it is at a glance. When I first saw it, and has been mentioned elsewhere, I was immediately struck by the question: Well, when are they going to release the AppleTV app for my iPad? Because that screen could be easily replicated to the iPad, and work perfectly.

Steve Jobs said yes to the iPod Hi-Fi, the Nano fatty (I was fine with this design but others were not) the Apple TV Take 2 UI (Again widely disliked), and several other small and larger 'missteps' in hind site. The reality is that Apple made many other far better choices which overshadow these errors.

Honestly I don't think in 5 years we are going to have an Apple thats in shambles and we'll point back to the AppleTV3 UI as the turning point.

This was a statement made by a man with some influence that hits on the misinformed fear that Jobs was the only one doing all the management, design and engineering work at Apple.

The saddest thing about this episode is that we will probably never, ever, see a complete inside story about the design and making of the iPhone like we got with the story of Macintosh. It has to be epic.

Even little things like http://www.folklore.org are fascinating and preserve the history. How will we get the true history of future projects without layer upon layer of analysis, hand-wringing, and legal threats?

Apple was also very secretive about the early Macintosh when it was being developed, but time passed and eroded the necessity of the secrecy compared to the entertainment value of the story. Archive.org records show that Folklore started hosting Macintosh stories for the first time around January 26, 2004. The Macintosh 128k was released on January 24, 1984. That means it took 20 years for the early Mac stories to accumulate into the critical mass necessary for Revolution in the Valley to be written. As time passes, we'll probably start hearing the juicy stories of the iPhone's development.

Apple was just a different company back then.

When the Mac launched Apple made all the key guys available for interviews. We knew their names, we knew what they worked on. Sure, we didn't get the dirt until long after the fact, but the Mac didn't just drop from the sky with Steve Jobs standing on top of it.

I woke up today to friends posting on facebook about getting out of Apple stock "at the top" because of these SJ UI rejection posts. Even if the ui is a mistake (and I'm not sure it is, I haven't played with it yet), Apple has made other missteps in the past 5 years without meaningfully impacting the growth in their share price.

Sounds like Margolis backpedaled on his statement once he realized his social repercussions.

Definitely why he issued the in depth statement, but I don't think he's backpedaling necessarily. I took a brief look at his Twitter feed and it looked consistent with his opinions.

Quoting from tweet always runs the danger of out of context. I suspect the grid in the UI is to prepare for apps on AppleTV in iOS 6, when Apple launches a Thunderbolt Display with built in AppleTV, or what you might call iTV.

Sounds like an excuse after they realized that the comment might have an impact on their Apple TV sales, not that they were incredibly large to begin with.

Who's "they"? TechCrunch? Or the engineer that hasn't worked at Apple since 2008?

No, I'd say it sounds more like someone who had no clue his tweet would be taken to this level back tracking after realizing he probably didn't tweet the most well thought out criticism of the UI.

Former employee of massively famous company makes a flip remark. Wild speculation and over thinking ensues.

It is interesting to watch a giant PR machine go into action. I hope Mr. Margolis' legs are ok.

Huh. I am glad I am not the only one who found the new Apple TV GUI terribly ugly.

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