What Apple's headphones can teach us about user experience design

Falsely claiming that Apple gear follows function over form is my pet peeve at the moment. John Gruber thought the Steve Jobs biography missed this vital element and therefore was ruined.

I'd suggest designing staircases out of glass, adding non-functional screws to balance a design, painting a titanium laptop (with paint that bubbled and flaked) because you didn't like the color, using platonic solids, and making storefronts symmetrical and having the windows aligned with outside paving stones suggest an obsession with form, almost to the point of OCD.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!, but please don't tell me that a totally symmetrical design makes it easy to find the volume up and down when fumbling in your pocket, that's just silly. As is listing pressing the center button three times to skip to previous track under the heading "Less is more" generates intuitiveness. Minimal? Yes. Beautiful? Yes. Functional? Not really.