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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

Actually, the tyranny of design at Apple existed long before Jonny Ive. It began with Donald Norman who regularly discusses his Philip Starck juicer which "not meant to squeeze lemons, it is meant to start conversations."

I can't find the quote, but Donald Norman said something along the lines of "create something beautiful and people will say it's wonderful and easy to use".

This has always been the Apple way, and I don't see that changing. At Apple, form has always had priority over function.

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That’s interesting. I always thought of Don Norman as having sensible, clear design principles. In the Design of Everyday Things [1], one of his main points was that devices should be always be clear about what they do, by presenting unambiguous affordances to the user. A row of light switches is no good; they should be organized so that they map to location in the room. A fridge with two knobs for temperature and volume of air should present a clear mental model to the user in its documentation, or better yet have a more direct interface to simply select the desired temperature for a given area. Doors that should be pulled should have handlebars; doors that should be pushed should have horizontal plates.

If there’s anyone whose design principles I’d want at Apple, it’d be the guy who espoused clarity and unambiguity. Him waxing poetic about a useless juicer seems very out of character, although he did indeed say that [2]. I’d be interested to hear more about his more current work for Apple.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Thing... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/arts/features/story/0,11710,1166...

I think Norman is criticizing Apple's practices, not encouraging them.

It’s just not true. The early iOS had great fundamental usability.

The new voice recorder app is fundamentally worse than its predecessor in almost every way. IOS usability not a flat line. It started above industry standards, brought the whole industry up with it (Google would never have invested in Material Design without Apple’s competitiveness), and then seemingly when Scott Forstall left, took a real downturn.

"How Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name" By Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini

https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi...

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