On Jony Ive Leaving Apple
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
The leadership of the design team is still in place. All Jony has been in recent years is essentially a Creative Director overseeing them. It's not like all of Apple's product design is now being handled by an outside company.
The trashcan Mac Pro was OK. The design was perhaps uninspired but it did provide adequate cooling for the 2013 Xeons that they were using. It so transpired that the design did not provide ample cooling for Intel's recent CPUs. But so what? Just change it.
The actual problem with the 2013 Mac Pro was operational. They decided to build it in the US. They made a big, high-tech factory with a large degree of automation. That's a great way to build a high volume product. It's a terrible way to build a $3000 niche computer.
The hidden cost of high wages: automation induced product inflexibility.
It's not even limited to low-volume products: if you had 100x the demand and the production capacity to match, you'd still want to run your expensive automation pipeline mostly unchanged for almost as many years as with a low-volume product. Only some of the up-front cost of automation is fixed per product change, another part is fixed per throughput * product change and this part will hit you at 100/day as hard as at 10000/day.
Other companies may churn out new enclosures every year, but I don't think this is how Apple rolls. Apple products are developed over the course of years, not months. I think typical Apple hardware has a lead time of two years.
That's why Apple products are built with more sophistication than any other companies product. They have enough time to get every detail right.
It's also why they are somewhat slow to respond to trends. Two years ago, they realised that they needed a new Mac Pro, and that the trash can was a failure. Now, two years later, they have an answer.
When the iPhone 5 was released, it was too small. The market was moving towards much bigger phones. Apple missed the trend, and it took them two years to fix the problem with iPhone 6.
Some things have even more lead time. The keyboards from the 2016 Macbook Pros were a failure. They need a new keyboard. They are obviously working on a better keyboard, but it's not ready yet. While they are working on a better keyboard, they are trying everything they can to reduce problems with the current keyboard (silicone cover, different alloy for the switches, etc).
I hope that the new keyboard will be in the rumored 16" Macbook, but right now no-one outside of Apple knows when it'll be released.
yes they plan products and then expect them to be in the market for 3 years before a redesign but the keyboard bandaid fixes don't mean that it was impossible for them to backtrack and release a different keyboard the next year it just means they were unwilling to hit the stop button and move out of their learned cadence to fix an issue that every single person who buys that product will encounter.
So they screwed up and instead of saying "oh, we screwed up, ok we're going to have to fix this to minimize the number of customers who will buy $2000 faulty devices" they instead decided to just carry on as normal, fix the design in 3 years when they'd be doing the redesign anyway and just try a few minimal bandaids on the solution which we know don't work because every bandaided keyboard is in the replacement program by default.
This could have been fixed, they could have shipped another design in a year the only two possible reasons why are money or just unwillingness to change cadence.
>That's why Apple products are built with more sophistication than any other companies product. They have enough time to get every detail right.
Wouldn't go that far, I get the feeling you haven't even really looked at what competitors are making these days the gap has well and truly been closed and in a good number of cases Apple is actually behind.
Which is why I think the recent Apple has Tim Cook's operational focus all over it. They couldn't close it down but they had to sell it as long as they could trying to amortised the cost. Same with MacBook Pro Keyboard, they were stubborn and cost focus to try and itch out another generation. Just because of the cost involved.
You could see Steve Jobs doing it differently, bring an MBP home to use it, ( As he used to call himself low cost Beta Tester ) saw the problem himself, demand it be fixed within 4 weeks, or get a new team to design a new Keyboard.
I think he cares about product quality way more than numbers on balance sheet. He might publicly dismiss it, ( very likely ), but quietly he would have the team working on a new keyboard and ship it, only to sliently provide extended warranty to MBP at a later date.
And sure, it might cost some, but Tim should count lost profit (opportunity costs) too.
My guess is that because they tried to manufacture and assemble in US, so they had very high automation for the TrashCan, which also meant these automation are likely not flexible enough to change the design. I don't think the Mac Pro was about cost though. Because Mac Pro unit shipment would not have made up for that investment anyway. I think it was merely an exercise for Apple's operational supply chain. And Apple's design team had lack of time and had to focus on many other more important issues. That was why it took so long. Basically the design department in Apple were not scaleable.
Plus on top of that probably in Apple's hivemind the cost of coming out with something bad is more than the opportunity cost of missed profit.
Your use of the term learned helplessness matches no definition I'm aware of. Can you elaborate on what you mean by this, and also point to what evidence you have that it runs wild at Apple?
and that's why it took them six years to design a new enclosure
It didn't take them six years though. All the evidence points to the iMac Pro being the intended successor to the trashcan Mac Pro. The iMac Pro was released ~4.5 years after the trashcan Mac Pro. And even the iMac Pro represents a departure from original plan A, which had to have been simply updating the trashcan Mac Pro. IOW, to start development of the iMac Pro, Apple first had to come to terms with the 2013 Mac Pro being a failure. If we assume that took them 1-2 years, it puts the lead time for developing a pro machine at 2.5-3.5 years. The new Mac Pro was announced in April 2017, and most analysts seem to agree that at that point the project had only just started which confirms a lead time of 2.5-3.5 years.
The trashcan Mac Pro was OK. […] It so transpired that the design did not provide ample cooling for Intel's recent CPUs.
Obviously the 2013 Mac Pro was fine in 2013. That's not the argument we're having.
But so what? Just change it.
Which is what they did. But first they had to recognize there was a problem. As I argued above, that had to have taken at least one year, but more likely two.
The actual problem with the 2013 Mac Pro was operational.
Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. If it had been possible to provide steady incremental updates to the Mac Pro, like Apple did with its predecessor, building it in the US probably wouldn't have been much a problem. But even disregarding that, I don't think it's fair to argue that the actual problem was operational. Sure, it must have been a complicating factory, but if the Mac Pro was a high priority for Apple, they could have easily decided to just write off their US factory and all its robots, and move production to China. The problem if any, was that the Mac Pro was simply not a high priority for Apple.
They look great but it is a terrible design. One of the jobs of a laptop enclosure is to let heat dissipate and aluminum is just not great at that, and it is not getting better with these smaller spaces.
Is aluminum the most heat efficient material? No. Is it better than plastic? Holy shit yes, in appearance, in heat dissipation, strength, feel, and durability it's head and shoulders above plastic.
I can't stand working on our fleet PCs anymore at work. Every time you move them, they creak, and squeak, and shift. $6,000 PC's that sound and feel like cheap ass Walmart guff.
At least my $4,200 Macbook Pro FEELS like it's worth that money.
In terms of heat dissipation, aluminum is a better choice, but there exists plenty of engineering experience in properly cooling laptops in plastic shells.
I speculate his reason must be to design something massively popular, that so many people in the world touch every day, that blends computers and architecture. And that his reason must a project so big that it can't reasonably fit inside Apple Park, both in terms of physical space and in terms of manufacturing partnerships where the team must be on site.
I speculate he's leaving Apple to design the Apple car.
Replies: 1) If Ive wanted to retire, I'd expect he could; he has mountains of money, and has achieved tremendous success in the marketplace. 2) If Ive were forced out, I'd expect an announcement akin to "will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook", not "founding an agency with Apple as a client". 3) Why leave now? Because Apple just bought a big piece of the car project, Drive.ai.
If you think Gruber is correct ("You’re either at Apple or you’re not" rings very true to me), Ive is done with Apple. The completion of Apple Park represents the culmination of his transition to architecture.
Why Bizarrely? The guy is probably worth millions if not tens of millions. He can probably live a lavish life off of 4% gains for the rest of his life and there is nothing wrong with that.
The guy is worth north of 400 million.
I said bizarrely because in these situations the media & general public seem to always think that people like this can't survive without work. The guy is undoubtedly incredibly passionate about design and almost certainly a workaholic. The grandparent is talking about him going on design the future of automobiles - maybe, maybe not. It felt like I was suggesting something against the grain, which was why I prefaced it with "bizarrely".
I think you mean, how would he top this. Why does he need to? Why can't he just ... pull a Woz and kinda tinker around?
Why does he have to go somewhere? Why not retire? Or do something he like? The problem with designing iPhone or any Apple products, is that he has so much constraint he cant really do much creative thinking any more. You need a new iPhone every year, and new design every few years, with tweaking of design in between. The design has to be able to be manufactured up to 100M unit a year. I suppose they even measure output with units per day. Materials will now have to be recyclable. And they cant cost more than X amount etc.
Then there is burn out I presume? He said he was deeply tired after doing the Apple Watch. That is roughly 3 years after Steve Jobs pass away. Steve was his best friend, and they both lift each other, and I assume Steve would motivate people, challenge each of these genius do something they thought they cant, but somehow all managed. Without their spiritual leader I assume the heavy burden is quite hard to bear. And people would burn out...
May be when Steve was around, working was fun at Apple. Now it is more like work for him. And so he decided to leave and enjoy life doing things he like.
Play that again in your head
Designing things for not Apple. Not designing for just 1 brand anymore.
I worry that Ive will quickly grow frustrated when he realizes that he is a consultant, and at the end of the day, it will be the company that makes the final decision.Will Ive want his name to be associated with an object that was deemed “good enough” by the hiring company?
Understanding the culture of an organization, the strengths and weaknesses of its executives, what the organization is capable as a whole.. that kind of access and connection comes when you are deeply integrated within it. As consultant, you are an external party, an outsider. No matter how good your ideas are, it is up to the client to decide whether or not they will be implemented.
I see Ive as the next Terry Gilliam trying to pitch Brazil! to a set of executives, except Gilliam was able to work with Criterion to ultimately release a 3 version box set: his version, what the executives wanted, and what was released in the theatre. Three completely different movies that highlight the clueless executives and the genius of Gilliam.
Or maybe he spends some time with his family and is a secret force behind the scenes, donating time to universities and design schools, trying to encourage the next generation.
seems to be loaded & well connected enough to easily do several of his own things..
Being able to say "Designed by Ive" is worth a lot. Companies will find the money just as they find money for Porsche design collaborations, Pininfarina design, collaboration with popstars, sponsorship of sports teams, etc.
Agree with your line of thinking though. It's more interesting to speculate on what could lure someone like that away, than just assume the mundane.
I am not that into design at all so excuse my question: is there someone who would probably be the perfect fit for this position, at least design-wise?
What they need, more than a CDO, is someone who they have to run every design by, someone (EDIT: with an impeccable eye) who is not afraid to say no. In other words, someone who can fill the role Steve Jobs used to play.
I, for one, nominate the great John Siracusa, for this job.
See http://hypercritical.co/fatbits/2009/05/06/hypercritical
Without knowing Apple internally, the point is that the staff under the COO (if the "C"s have their own divisions) are the back office, the accounting, HR, IT, and other shared services accross an organization. There isn't necessarily creativity as a mission.
I think I agree with @UIZealot that there's a need for a design approval that isn't directly involved in the design process, e.g. the SJ world would presumably have SJ saying yes/no to Jony, but in the post-SJ world it was Jony saying yes/no to essentially just Jony. I assume those decisions would be fairly one sided :D
I think Scott Forstall is that person.
Until now design was king at Apple. Will his departure bring balance back, or will design lose out to the other teams?
The big problem with that is that they are utterly enormous; all of their "traditional" niches combined are dwarfed by their casual user base. Creative professionals are just not a big market, comparatively; neither are folks who just want a great unix laptop. (And command line nerds in particular are becoming less and less welcome; this is why I'm probably typing on my last Mac.)
But the second problem is that, even if somehow Ives leaving meant that the scales fell from every Apple employee's eyes and suddenly they all wanted to put back the scripting languages, make machines specifically dedicated to running Pro Tools or After Effects and bundle every mac with a copy of 3 in Three, they still have a multiyear product pipeline. You don't turn that ship quickly.
Was it? Design is "how it works" and Apple products have been "working" a lot less lately (cylinder Mac Pro with no room for future processors, laptop keyboards, two different kinds of Pencil depending on which iPad you have, etc).
I have a very big gripe with that. Making stuff look beautiful is not design. Or at least that's only 10% of the design job. the macbooks are beautiful but they have many design issues.
That said, I wonder who Apple will try to snatch? Who are some other good designers out there? MS has some nice HW design. Google to me does not. Nokia? I'm sure there are some others, but can't think of any ATM.
I think the bigger thrust of Gruber's piece is his closing sentence, with which I wholeheartedly agree: "I don’t worry that Apple is in trouble because Jony Ive is leaving; I worry that Apple is in trouble because he’s not being replaced."
I don’t get the abnormal bashing _now_. He’s had some mild criticism before but now suddenly there have been intractable issues since Jobs died. It comes across as opportunistic and makes me doubt him.
More on the point though, I'm not in the camp of those believing that in this day and age in a company as big as Apple you can assign all the mistakes (or successes) to a single man. For instance, to think Jony Ive being even remotely responsible for the keyboard debacle seems preposterous to me.
I can definitely picture a world where Jony’s ruthless push for thin and light resulted in the butterfly keyboard.
You can't make excuses as an executive. You can't say "there wasn't enough quality control," because you have the power to create the quality control process necessary to prevent the blunder. You can't say "I wasn't aware there was this risk of keyboard defects," because you have the power to create reporting structures that will surface such risks to all key stakeholders, including you. You can't say "I didn't have time to focus on functional deficiencies or risks because I was focused on aesthetics," because you have the power to hire and delegate to the most talented employees in the world; you have the power to do whatever is necessary so that you do have the time to focus on what needs to be focused on. You can't say "I didn't worry about functional risks because I wanted to focus on design," because your job is to execute, not to do what you want to do.
Steve Jobs told employees a short story when they were promoted to vice president at Apple. Jobs would tell the VP that if the garbage in his office was not being emptied, Jobs would naturally demand an explanation from the janitor. "Well, the lock on the door was changed,' the janitor could reasonably respond. "And I couldn't get a key."
The janitor's response is reasonable. It's an understandable excuse. The janitor can't do his job without a key. As a janitor, he's allowed to have excuses.
"When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs told his newly-minted VPs. "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering."
"In other words,' (Jobs continued,) "when the employee becomes a vice president, he or she must vacate all excuses for failure. A vice president is responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn't matter what you say."
The employer makes the rules, the employees play the game.
I'm not saying that because I believe that's the way it should be, but because that's how it seems to be.
Thank you for sharing.
The keyboard debacle was a direct result of Apple striving for thinness.
Apple’s current MacBook lineup starting in late 2017 (i.e. the thinnest laptops and with butterfly keyboards) have the best battery life of any Apple laptop ever made.
I don’t recall Gruber ever complaining about the battery life of Apple’s thin devices. Do you have a link?
But battery life is good in ideal situations but when you start doing anything CPU/GPU intensive, battery life isn’t that great.
Oh hell no, he was VERY late to the keyboard issue. The whole Keyboard issue finally broke out because one journalist got fed up with her keyboard failing so many times, and saw so many people had the same problem, she decide to run a new story on it. That was in early 2018 if I remember correctly.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/17/johnston-macboo...
I find these keyboards — specifically, the tales of woe about keys getting stuck or ceasing to work properly — a deeply worrisome sign about Apple’s priorities today.
His initial review of the keyboard before the problems started appearing.
https://daringfireball.net/2016/11/new_touch_bar_equipped_ma...
The keyboard is, for me, a mixed bag, and it’s probably the one thing that many people will like least about these machines. I find less key travel to be less pleasant while typing.
But this article also points out why he didn’t have the problem personally. He famously uses a 20 year old extended mechanical keyboard.
But I’m so far out there on this issue that I use a 20-year-old Apple Extended Keyboard II, with mechanical key switches, at my desk. I’ve never liked any notebook keyboard compared to an actual mechanical keyboard
On the contrary, he is definitely responsible. First, because he was the head of design, and keyboards are part of the overall design. Second, because he pushed for or accepted the push towards ever thinner and lighter products, at the expense of almost everything else. And third, because of the push towards more uniform/beautiful/symmetric designs at the expense of functionality (limited ports, USB-C only, cursor keys on the keyboard).
He is very much responsible and I think what we saw from Apple in the last few years in the Mac lineup was below expectations. I've been saying for some time that it seemed like Jony Ive was running rampant within the company, not using or loving Macs himself, but deciding about their design, with no one in a position to say "No" (like Steve Jobs did).
Also, me not being a Mac user at all, it confuses me why people keep using the inferior external keyboards. I get that in the Macs or the MacBooks you make tradeoffs with things you do like, but if the external Apple keyboard stinks at being a keyboard, why not a sleek, functional Logitech device instead?
Suppose I'm saying, there's some shared responsibility, not just John Ive being responsible.
Because many people actually like the keyboards, and they don't stink at being a keyboard.
They are, however, far too expensive. Even on sale, my Magic Keyboard with the numpad was more expensive than any sensibly-priced mechanical keyboard, and that’s beyond silly to think about.
That is actually an interesting question worth thinking about.
I think that top Apple management (at least Tim Cook and Jony Ive) does not use computers that much. If they do, they connect exactly zero external devices. And they are definitely not "power users" who would appreciate function keys (or even the Esc key for that matter). Tim doesn't mind the annoying delay from Spotlight when pressing Cmd-space to search on an iPad (the system loses several keystrokes because of a silly pause), Jony doesn't mind the half-second animation when switching spaces on a Mac, which you can't turn off. They don't do these things often enough to matter, and they do things slowly.
Also, if Tim's keyboard starts failing, how quickly do you think he gets a replacement? I'd bet it isn't two weeks.
This is different from Steve Jobs, whatever you might think about him, he did love computers and he at least felt the needs of more experienced users.
I think the design failures of the recent Macbooks (and the trashcan Mac Pro) are a reflection of how top management at the company uses and thinks of computers.
[-]:If you are interested in shallow throw and uniform, lack of pitch, keyboards. Which the keyboard snobs will tell you is not an aesthetic configuration possible in that space, but they would be wrong.
http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234
Are you in agreement? I found it’s a mixed bag.
> easy to lash-out ... the man stepped-out
Phrasal verbs are spelled with two words: to lash out, he stepped out, he took off, to shut down, to set up. Their corresponding nouns are spelled with one word: a takeoff, a setup, a shutdown, a step-up.
The numbers are excellent at Apple but you have to ask whether this is Apple's work or the demands of the marketplace. Everyone wants a mobile phone, although a tough market to be in for the likes of HTC/Nokia/Blackberry (who got it majorly wrong), could Apple have done better?
Same with computers. Everyone has one but could Apple have done better had they listened to the customers?
Steve Jobs was right to get rid of the floppy disk and Flash even though that was deeply upsetting to some people. That set a bit of a trend with Apple being prepared to get rid of some features that people really liked such as the MagSafe power adaptor. Then there were the dongles. In ten years time people will look back on that not as a bold but correct decision. Ultimately many people were quite inconvenienced by that unilateral decision.
There are products such as the Mac Pro that are nonsensical. Then when it comes to actual computers rather than lifestyle accessories, Apple don't really do server things. So if you are an Apple shop then you don't have rack-mounted Apple computers, they come from somewhere else.
There are lots of people that cuss the mice, the keyboards and much else. If you are a PC or Linux user then these mutterings are kept to oneself. You just know that you don't question these things as the loyal followers of the cult are okay with these things.
Sometimes it requires someone to be moved sideways to take a revisionist view grounded in realism. We have been worshipping false gods. Apple have been pissing off the true faithful in the developer community. The choir might not have the numbers of the congregation but they are a key demographic for getting the congregation to show up. As a developer myself I have never been converted to the Apple flock. So I have a little bit of perspective and I am not blinded by the Apple Way. But Apple could have got this market entirely to themselves, all they needed was to have just the one developer grade laptop and just the one developer grade desktop.
Developer grade? It just means having a case you can open and upgrade, the required ports and a user interface (hw + sw) that 'just works'. Even if there isn't the same margin made on these products they are 'halo', the rewards come when every developer moves on to spec. Apple for their respective companies and friends/family.
China is a bit of a problem for Apple. Huawei products are getting a bit of press at the moment but if you look at the quality and design you can see some incredible stuff going on. It is hard to say Apple are the best in comparison.
Anyway, Apple is a forward thinking company and whatever the real reasons they have mutually agreed to let the design boss go and to take a different direction. I am hopeful that the customer rather than the designer will come first and that we will be seeing great products come out of Cupertino that don't get non-Apple people like me in silly arguments about Apple design hubris.
If he "don’t think Ive ever should have been put in control of software design", presumably he doesn't like the iOS 7 redesign either. But I've not heard a bad word from him before today.
He was critical of iOS 7 from the start, felt it was wrong and wondering if it was Hardware Design taking over Software Design where the two have little to no overlap.
So unless it was someone else forcing these decisions onto Ive, I think he really was missing Steve in recent years and there was no one at Apple to really challenge him. And however good and talented anyone is, I think to go from a good idea to a great product, everyone needs to be challenged at each step. Only through the following discussions the necessary refinements can be recognized and achieved.
The two are inseparable, because they are the same.
Maybe design got associated with aesthetics more and product with functionality and interaction, but this kind of reductionism is harmful.
Ah, pundits believe Apple Is Doomed!
The sentiment is reassuring. All seems well.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand why out of all of the skill sets that go into creating a product, "design" should be the only one with a dedicated C-level executive. To me it seems much healthier for the needs of the mechanical engineers (for example) to have equal weight with the needs of the designers.
That is: the idea of some clear separation (or worse, tension) between mechanical engineering and "design" is, to my best understanding, antithetical to what has made Apple an interesting company that makes interesting products. Mechanical engineers are doing design work. So are metallurgists and material scientists, as well as typographers.
This is a late thursday press release, and this is an uncharacteristically quick response from Gruber. He's shooting from the hip, but I think he has a valid concern, and it's a concern I suspect is shared by lots of folks who have been using apple computers for a long time: who is actually responsible for making product decisions?
> Fuck this “sir” shit. We don’t have titles in the United States.
The US isn't the only country on the map (surprisingly enough, I know). And who cares if Jony Ive is starting his own thing? Why would that be "pure spin"?
Apple is not in its renaissance days anymore - whilst Jony Ive might have been critical back then - Apple is just not the same company anymore. There are a lot more people responsible for the "magic" these days (which is a good thing).
“Sir” is an honorific. Like “his holiness” or “your honor” or “her majesty.”
We use titles all the time in the US but rarely use honorifics (with a few exceptions).
When I worked at Aflac, the sole remaining (living) founder, Paul Amos, was routinely internally referred to as Mr. Paul.
Whether this is a consistent point of his, whether Gruber has always referred to the Queen as Elizabeth Windsor, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t conflate convenience with respect. “The Queen” is a very easy name to remember and use informally without necessarily supporting monarchy. Like, I wouldn’t call Captain Blackbeard “Captain Blackbeard” out of respect for piracy.
Take it too seriously at your own risk, sir.
And regarding addressing people as 'Sir so and so'. As an American, it's always really jarring when I come across this in print. America has a lot of problems, but one of the most hopelessly idealistic things we ever did was opt to forego a formal aristocracy. But anyway, I think Gruber perhaps didn't realize that the reason the Financial Times was using Ives' title is that they're an English publication.
Very different things.
In the U.S., they're not so commonly used outside of very formal service situations (e.g., military, customer service). Friends don't call each other "sir" or "ma'am", except perhaps as a joke.
They don't do this in the UK either.
I would go one step further and say that aristocracy is fundamentally un-American.
How is that consistent with the fact that the five largest US corporations by market cap (Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Facebook) have not been passed on to offspring and were not started by descendents of the industrial elite of the country?
I agree that social mobility is lacking by in many ways, but the result is clearly not a fully-fledged industrial aristocracy.
Gruber is 100% right in this case. Fuck that nonsense.
That's pretty disrespectful and ignorant to other cultures and customs.
It made me realise that this whole article is really spiteful and negative. It doesn't contribute anything to making things better.
Maybe we should have just referred to plain "Barack Obama" over here because fuck this President shit, we don't have an elected head of state in the United Kingdom?
and the story was broken in the Financial Times,
a British newspaper.
Best I can tell, Sir is a title bestowed by the monarchy on people they like.
> all living former U.S. Presidents continue to be addressed as "Mr. President"
President isn't Obama's job any more. Sadly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honours_Committee
(Do you think the Queen was enthusiastic about knighting Elton John or Mick Jagger? https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/the-real-reason-que...)
Also, not all jobs come with an associated title. I'm a software engineer, but people don't refer to me as Software Engineer Joe Bloggs. "President" absolutely is used as a title. This is especially clear with former presidents, who retain the title. (E.g. George Bush, who isn't president, is still President Bush.)
The purpose is hierarchy. Sir Tim Berners Lee deserves that title. He is afforded recognition. Sir Bob Geldof has got there too. Although not everything to do with Band Aid was awesome, we give Sir Bob the dues. Then there are the rogues such as the arms salesmen. Athletes get the honours too. Get a few gold medals at the Olympics and you are there.
Unfortunately there are inherited titles, but, as mentioned the system is not universally liked and far from perfect. It is a hierarchy with the German lady married to some Greek bloke calling herself Queen at the top.
But what happens in a society where you don't have these things?
You have to have wealth and toys to confer status. You have only made it when you have the McMansion and the European super/hyper car, maybe with the private jet.
The British system is far cheaper. You can be respected with the 'sir' title and live in a Victorian terraced house with Blue Plaque outside. No private jet needed. With 'sir' the reputation goes before the person who has the title, it is what they say that matters, not however much bling stuff they own that matters.
It is understandable that in other parts of the formerly colonised world that this hierarchy is not desired, but there is an advantage to a society where people know their place and are content with their lot. Otherwise it is like America where you have to get rich or die trying with no happy in-between.
Not all customs deserve respect. I guess I don't have to produce a list of all the things that were once "customs", and that now horrify us. "Sir" is a honorific that implies class distinction, to indicate that someone is socially above you, by virtue of birth or by the decision of a monarch.
I know that the British crown now give knighthoods to honor notable artists, scientists, politicians, etc. It also still uses it in the traditional sense. In the UK, you can have a seat at the House of Lords (the upper house of parliament) because of your social status, either by birth or by position in the clergy. I certainly do not respect any of that.
Knighthoods (“Sir”) are in reality awarded by decisions of the elected government, though nominally by the Queen.
It particularly astonishes me when Americans defend these costumes, given that their country was essentially created in opposition to such a class system.
I'm surprised point 6 didn't defend into playground name calling.
Grow up.
May be that is a minor case to a US citizen. But might not be to a wider world of audience. He might not like it, but if he had any respect to his wider reader, may be he should not have wrote it. But then again, I know US tends to be more relax or loose in these sort of things. I guess it is a culture crash.
The Title of Nobility Clause prevents the federal government from granting titles of nobility. That's it. It doesn't prevent other countries from granting them to their citizens, and Ive is British.
There are plenty of titles that aren't of nobility in the US. Here's a few: Mr. President, Congresswoman, General, Colonel, and Mayor.
What use is a pundit like this when they are on rails to just spin any and every piece of Apple news to protect the mothership, at this point any words from Gruber have lost all objectivity.
The 1 second it took me to google revealed he is British, and apple is all about showing off your "class".. so yeah.
Also, Ive's title may not have been awarded by the US, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be acknowledged in what is an official piece of communication from one of the worlds largest companies.
To be facetious, one could also say that it is a surprise to hear outrage at the use of 'Sir' given that everyone in the US seems to call everyone else 'sir' or 'ma'am' all the time.
Personally, I am more annoyed at being sir-ed constantly. I much prefer to reserve it as a genuine term of respect, not a generic form of address.
[1] Article I, section 9.
Loud in the South, certainly. That's how I was raised, and it's used as a respectful, though somewhat common/generic, term of address. I don't know that I or many Americans would be comfortable with the social implications of referring to some one as "sir" out of respect the way you describe it; it implies superiority rather than respect.
I have never seen any mention of this issue in public forums, so I think it is good that Gruber brings it up.
And I kind of like how succinctly he puts it: Fuck this “sir” shit. We don’t have titles in America.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titles_of_Nobility_Amendment
These two sentences don't make sense when read together. If Apple design -- hardware and software -- declined during Ive's rein that, to me, is evidence that Ive is not preternaturally talented. The moment iOS 7 was unveiled at WWDC I knew Emperor Ive is wearing no clothes. The number of basic design mistakes iOS 7 was astounding.
For me, the most striking change in iOS 7 was that the icons lost all of their character. I put together some before and after examples:
https://i.imgur.com/hg8s50I.png
The design was... sterilized. I specifically remember that when I updated my iPad and saw the new Safari icon, I said, out loud, "what the fuck is that?"
Again, I don't know anything about usability or- well, I don't even know enough to have the vocabulary to describe what I don't know about design. But I thought the new icons were really dumb.
More to the point. Why did they need to be changed? What was so wrong with the way they were that a hundred million users needed to re-learn a user interface?
The battery had to be reduced in thickness, so it had to get wider and/or taller, and now we have iPad minis as phones.
-edit
...and Jobs was not keen on the iPad minis.
— Steve Jobs
This goal was so overachieved than young readers probably will have to google the term.
In other words, the function, not the form.
Apple knew that various size iPhones were in the pipe.
Sometimes it takes working with specific types of people to bring out someone's talent in the best way. I think Steve Jobs did that for Jony Ive in a unique way - it brought out the best in his work.
And I say this as someone who is terribly excited Ive is leaving and hoping for more funcional products.
In his shoes and with his talent and ability to leave, I also would not have agreed to be in charge of all design only to have Steve Jobs keep veto power over me.
None of those things were mistakes, they were choices made as a result of tradeoffs that people agonized over.
I think it makes perfect sense to me, Ive seems like he's got a big personality and a laser focus on a set of things he has a deep deep understanding of. Without Jobs maybe there was nobody to challenge Ive and thus the balance was pulled too far toward his vision and the greater picture has suffered.
And what about Jony's other responsibility, industrial design? The iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and other Apple products are all amazingly well designed and breathtakingly beautiful. But these products weren't designed by Jony Ive all by himself. He designed them under Steve Jobs's guidance and direction. Steve was the tastemaker. Apple's post-Steve products are nowhere near as well-designed.
Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors are horrid, and when you add those Crocs-like cases it looks more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen holding. Then they released some ads for the 5c, and I kid you not, one of the ads had sounds of bleating farm animals. (It was titled "Every color has a story", published on tumblr.) That the 5c didn't do well in the market shouldn't surprise anyone.
But it wasn't for executives. It was supposed to be a downmarket phone. You may think the colors were horrid, but I think they added much needed character to the iPhone line, much like the XRs.
Except Apple has previously found wild success in selling brightly colored devices down market, see the original iPod Mini for example. A selection of colors both appeals to the sort of person they are targeting with the lower end device (teens/young adults) while also preserving the marketshare of their higher end device by turning off the kind of older, more reserved buyer who might otherwise buy the less expensive option. There's also the entire Apple lineup in the early "Second Coming of Jobs" era with the iMac and, to a lesser extent, the Power Mac G3.
Design-wise, I really wanted one. Technology-wise, I couldn’t justify it.
Prominent finance people criticize other finance people for their decisions all of the time (Buffet et al). I think I could name a hundred other professions where this is also true (I use finance as a good analog). Just because <insert prominent professional> makes a criticism doesn't make it suddenly true.
I personally hated iOS7. Guess what, it clearly didn't stop people from buying more iPhones[0]. At the end of the day, Arment, Heliemann, and Gruber can all take a seat while iOS single-handedly rakes in billions for Apple. This is how business works.
[0] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/276306/global-apple-ipho...
Furthermore I also thought I put in enough qualifiers in my statement that I did not have to defend it as being my overarching philosophy regarding every situation it might possibly be applied to. After I wrote the preceding sentence I proceeded to write another 3 paragraphs until I realized that I was actually writing a bad version of an essay on aesthetics and requirements for being able to speak with critical insight, so I erased those paragraphs and here we are.
You can put a lot of thought into something and still make a mistake.
I got the sense there was a conflation of "didn't do things the way I wanted" and "poor design choices".
Every design choice is a tradeoff and industrial design is about making the right tradeoffs. He did not make the right tradeoffs. He regularly sacrificed functionality for the looks, and preferred form over function. While I do respect many of the things he did, I am glad his time at Apple is coming to an end.
The original Magic Trackpad should've had a port for wired connections. That would've allowed you to avoid having to constantly change batteries, as well as avoid the flaming garbage can that is bluetooth. At least they listened and fixed these issues with Magic Trackpad 2.
This is something I have had a hard time with over the years... I even emailed Jony in hte past abt some of the design "choices" that were made that REALLY irkd and cost me and MILLIONS of users too much money.
The overall body design of the iphone has been "sleek and slick" -- meaning that it was WAY too easy to drop and break.
The physical phone should have been more heartily designed from day one - and allowed for a lanyard attachement bracket on all models.
Screw the people who claim things like: OH that was a design decision to keep the 'vision' blah blah blah -- esp. and including specifically Ive.
The reason is that 'aesthetic design decision' cost consumers billions over the years.
I have a 6S+ -- my ~27th iphone
The argument is "why dont you go get a case!"
Why should such a 'perfect' design, so perfect where it doesnt want a lanyard or other safety features interrupting its elegance, require a case?
So, Fuck Ive worship.
I like the phone, I've had every iteration up to the 6S+ (which is my favorite, and I have had many of them. but I am not going to praise the shortcomings of the device and hero-worship the guy.
At a fundamental level Ios7 relied on color instead of texture for visual segmentation — and I’m not sure about others but the texture processing hardware in my brain is about a million times more reliable at performing segmentation tasks than any subtle abstract color blend detection engine in my brain will ever be ...
I hope that whatever new design mentality arises after this change is able to better improve the efficiency with which im able to use my devices - and that the devices are once again striving to meet me as an actual human rather than chasing some local optimum that might exist by imagining some 1 or 2D abstract idea of a human ...
You can can be an absolute genius as a collaborator but stumble a bit when working without someone around who can tell you ‘no’. There are a lot of brilliant writers who absolutely need a good editor.
It's possible to be preternaturally talented and still either (a) make mistakes, especially balancing priorities (say, thinness vs utility) (b) get into situations that are beyond the range where talent is a guarantee of success.