Apple made a hard U-turn from form-over-function to the current state which was much needed
The design iterations over generations are now fairly static and that's a good thing - because Apple high end bulk customers are mostly developers, not the eccentric designer or the lone musician. It matters to keep thousands of your $2000-wielding developers happy than a handful of $50,000 carrying artists who are finicky about post-modernistic aesthetics. The kinds Jonny Ive felt a natural kinship with. His design ethos were good to make a splash from the moribund vanilla boxes in early 2000s. But keep making those splashes (without Steve Jobs to rein in with criticism & engineering team getting second-classed), you got serious product troubles.
Thinkpads come to mind when I think about MacBooks lineage. Well maintained product line which has kept their hardware UX fairly unchanged - the net result being they are an extremely dependable product in corporate environment.
Edit: I remember talking to a designer who once worked at Apple. I am told Jonny Ive even seriously floated the idea of a smooth slab iPhone/iPad devoid of any power buttons, charging slot or rockers - only featuring touch sensitive edges & speaker grille. Glad engineering team didn't take up on it. Would have been a recovery & update disaster.
The design iterations over generations are now fairly static and that's a good thing - because Apple high end bulk customers are mostly developers, not the eccentric designer or the lone musician. It matters to keep thousands of your $2000-wielding developers happy than a handful of $50,000 carrying artists who are finicky about post-modernistic aesthetics. The kinds Jonny Ive felt a natural kinship with. His design ethos were good to make a splash from the moribund vanilla boxes in early 2000s. But keep making those splashes (without Steve Jobs to rein in with criticism & engineering team getting second-classed), you got serious product troubles.
Thinkpads come to mind when I think about MacBooks lineage. Well maintained product line which has kept their hardware UX fairly unchanged - the net result being they are an extremely dependable product in corporate environment.
Edit: I remember talking to a designer who once worked at Apple. I am told Jonny Ive even seriously floated the idea of a smooth slab iPhone/iPad devoid of any power buttons, charging slot or rockers - only featuring touch sensitive edges & speaker grille. Glad engineering team didn't take up on it. Would have been a recovery & update disaster.
reply