Apple ends consulting agreement with Jony Ive

I'm not stuck in the 90s ... which model of Sony Minidisc?

I had that growing up and loved it, it was a big upgrade over my discman, but for me the iPod 5th generation is the best personal music device ever created. I recently bought one (my original got stolen a decade ago) and upgraded it to use a 512gb SD card.

It's still the king. Got a pair of planar headphones and I'm hearing things in Beatles songs I've listened to ten thousand times that I've never heard before. When I use it in the car, I don't have to take my eyes off the road to change the track, the subtle audio feedback let's you use the menu without looking at it. It fits well in the hand, I wouldn't want it any smaller or lighter (it's a little too light due to my SD card mod).

No touchscreen, no internet connection and it holds my entire collection and then some.

I don't even like Apple laptops or phones, but that thing is a work of art.

Edit: The best part is I can service it. You could buy almost an entire iPod worth of replacement parts on eBay.

Not only the epitome of design, but the pinnacle of Mechanical sound playing objects. After this it's all flash memory and lcd screens.

> Is design supposed to be transient to catch up with the times?

The only thing design catches up is money saving. Computer cases from the 90 look infinitely better than the present day ones. Damn, even IBM ones look like someone "worked" on them. Today you will see cheap copies of the same thing with an axe applied here and there for variation. The same with other stuff (TV, monitors, keyboard, mouses). And cars.

Ive’s designs definitely changed over time. His history at Apple actually predates the return of Jobs, and he was responsible for much more expressive designs like that of the Twentieth Anniversary Mac, the Newton eMate, the PowerMac G3 AIO, and perhaps most famously the various generations of CRT iMac. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that he started leaning harder into the straight lines and cold metal.

I think most of his designs are pretty shameless knockoffs of Dieter Rams stuff, he does the same simple form thing that Rams pioneered.

Smart Playlists!

Back in the iTunes days, I had a smart playlist that consisted of songs that I last listened to between 6 and 7 months ago. Kind of a reminder of music that I liked, but maybe forgot about. I had several different playlists that were all dynamic and based on some combination of my listening history, download date, release date, and/or other ID3 tags.

The new Music app is stupid when it comes to playlists. You have to manually create each one.

This - the nag screen to sign up iCloud when attaching photos in iMessage is prime example of this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250951130?answerId=2518...

> catering to idiots

Lots of UI improvements, still no container/jail support in the kernel. It has never been more a lifestyle statement, and less a useful operating system.

That’s not true anymore in the recent iterations

I wouldn't say that's true. The Apple II was actually the more flexible and engineering focused of the 1977 Trinity with it's multiple expansion slots and built in assembly monitor. It was very much a computer for hobbiests because that's what Woz personally wanted.

I dunno, their designs for the last decade or so, before the most recent years, have been entirely unimpressive. Yeah, they're supposed to be known for it, but IMHO their outputs were pretty ordinary and caused a lot of usability issues. Disposable trash-can desktops? Pro laptops with no ports? iPads that bend every which way? iPhones that didn't have working antennas? Whoever was responsible for those, whether it's Ive or anyone else... I just hope Apple is using this separation to turn a new leaf.

So much of design is subjective, but my particular problem with them is that they emphasized form over function so much that their products were unusable in the end. I remember needing a new laptop for a few years, and kept looking at the Mac ones year after year but unable to type on them.

Then, whatever happened in the last 2-3 years has been AMAZING. I thought Ive had already left in some capacity and that was why. Finally, usable pro machines again (still wish they had a USB-A port). I look forward to what they will produce without being under a bad design dictator anymore.

I loved the feel of the keyboard (contrary to some) but durability and redundancy were god-awful.

I didn't realize anyone actually liked those! Thanks for sharing.

As someone with a very particular keyboard preference (Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop), I know what it's like to find that one keyboard you finally mesh with. It's tough when that happens to be built in to a laptop.

At least there'll probably be a lot of those flooding the used markets soon...

Or, just wired. I don't care if they call it the Bottom Feeders Mouse for N00bs I'd buy it.

I can, other companies are making that.

I hope they don't change the ergonomics. In 30 years of using a mouse, trying out dozens of different ones, this is the only one that I've ever been able to use the whole day without discomfort. It's magic.

The whole point of it not charging from the front is so people don't just always leave it plugged in

Maybe make it chime so you have to unplug it and they keep their annoying "we know better than you" while leaving users to their own literal devices

I’ve been just as happy or happier with my company provided M1 Pro 16” than I was with the much vaunted pre-touchbar 2015 15”. I can’t think of too much more that I’d want from a laptop.

It's a lot better than the old Macbook Pros, but that's only because they've been terrible for so long.

All I want is a Mac in a Thinkpad-like shell, with ports and docking support and all that 1990s-style jazz. But they can keep the modern monitor, that's pretty good.