> Throughout the years, apple consistently delivers great design. They seem to always define (or at least popularize) a new trend, which then storms the world and everyone copies it
To the loss of everyone. This is the same company that introduced disappearing scrollbars, just one of many dumb design decisions.
What modern design seems to forget, is that at the end of the day, people actually want to USE the interface, not just look at it.
Good point. It’s like post-Jobs Apple has forgotten that design is not how it looks, but how it works.
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, “Make it look good!” That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” - Steve Jobs
> I think Apple is a Design company, as in that's their main value add. Like Steve Jobs said, design is not just how their products look but how they work - something that requires both software and hardware.
That's just word redefining. And I have an old iMac 20 that has all its USB ports on the back and every time I have to twist my wrist to plug something I am reminded how Apple isn't that good at functional design. The thing is pretty though.
It wasn't usable for the majority of the market. Even in the infamous mea culpa Apple made about it, they admitted they designed themselves into a corner. It was designed so poorly, they had to take years to undo it after admitting it needed to be done.
>Apple is fundamentally now a company that can move immense amounts of capital into new industries with the underlying ethos of user experience.
The user experience of many Apple products is notably substandard. Maps, homepod, keyboard, list goes on. What Apple is good at is integration (both horizontal and vertical) and managing user perception through design.
I hear people say this often enough to question my own sanity, because I don't find Apple's UX to be very good at all. I find it confusing and it makes things difficult to figure out.
> The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions.
One could very very easily make the case that apple's popularity is not due to super sleekness but the boost of ipod+itunes (hey, portable music i can easily use without piracy) followed by iphone (mobile internet and touch ui) and the coherent combination of these user-useful tools under a single brand with a single design language.
Nothing precludes the same phenomenon from happening using a different design language, even one that is still sleek but yet doesn't generate mountains of unrepairable trash and set a precedent for other companies to do the same.
Instead, apple used sleekness to sell unrepairability and thereby boost it's bottom line to the detriment of consumer rights and the environment.
> Apple has lost its user-focus. Its products will only get worse and worse. Fortunately, this creates opportunity for new companies.
Apple has never focused on the users, it was always their interpretation of what the user wanted.
For the most notorious example of this:
> You're holding it wrong
Using Apple means you adjust to what Apple decides the UX should be like. And if you do, you enjoy a mostly uniform interface with good vertical integration across devices.
If you can't or don't want to, then you shouldn't use Apple products. It's as simple as that
> If you want to be the next Apple, stop to think about the tasks you envision normies doing with your thing and build around those tasks, making them stupidly easy, at the expense of a cohesive general system design.
I like your point, but to be fair, Apple is one of the absolute last companies I would accuse of having an incoherent system design philosophy.
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.
>Funny, because I thought that the whole point of buying an Apple product is that even if you lose features and interoperability, it's incredibly well polished and thought out.
Actually you only lose features you wouldn't want in the first place and would drag the whole thing down (less battery life, bulkier, etc). Not having FM radio for example is like not having a floppy disk drive an modern PCs.
As for "incredibly well polished and thought out" it still is. For one, there's much more to a mobile OS than graphic design. How it works and feels is much more important than how it looks ("design is how it works").
Second, most of those are some guy's pet peeves, not genuine problems. If he cannot understand why a red carret matches blue text, that doesn't make it into a genuine problem. Same if he didn't get the memo that drop shadows are used to add a depth to the UI layers and thinks they are stray leftovers.
> They have set literally no trend in the last couple of decades, other than thinness at all costs
Hahaha then you have not kept attention. Apple led the trend away from beige boxes. Style of keyboard used. Large track pads. USB. First to remove floppy drive. Both hardware, software and web design has been heavily inspired by Apple. Just look at icons used, first popularized by Apple.
Ubuntu desktop is strongly inspired by macOS. Operating system with drivers preloaded through update mechanism was pioneered by Apple. Windows finally seem to be doing this.
>This is what I think is happening at Apple. Now some of you may disagree, because you’re still Apple fanboys
Because if you disagree with me, it can only be because you're blinded by your loyalty, not because your experience is different from mine.
Beyond that, I have a genuine question: why are users so stupid? If it's so obvious to this person that Apple's UI is a series of design failures, why do users continue to buy them, year after year? Both as brand new devices and as replacements for broken ones, otherwise rational individuals continue to purchase substandardly designed products.
> Apple has claimed to be at the forefront of design for decades,but their UIs look just as garbage as many others at elderly font sizes.
They also claim to be against waste and ecologically responsible, yet adopt the worst anti-consumer and anti-environment market practices they can get away with. Hell, they invented some.
> UI/UX is everything. Apple became the most valuable company in history on the back of UI/UX alone. Their tech is decent but not that much better than anyone else's, but their stuff is at least marginally easier to use and that's worth more than the GDP of quite a few countries combined.
Huh, to me it's both. The UI/UX wouldn't be worth shit if their software ate battery like it was free, crashed often, was frequently janky, hogged resources to the point of being a problem, or all the fancy features underlying their UX didn't work pretty damn well without user fixing or intervention. Software quality is part of why their UX is so good, not just design languages or whatever. You don't get their level of auto-magic if you haven't done a whole bunch of things very right in the underlying code & architecture.
They're far from perfect (practically all consumer-facing software is at least kinda bad, IMO) and one can point to a handful of duds that they just can't seem to get right (Xcode, for instance) but I'd put software quality as my number one reason for using them, and I'd point to that as an absolutely vital element in their UX being well above average. It's that combo that no-one else seems able to touch—in fact, it often seems like no-one else is even trying, and I really wish they would.
> Apple’s core base is different, they embrace change regardless of its utility.
I really don't know how one can come to this conclusion. Apple people bitch about _everything_ that changes. I think the one and only exception might be any time that they added retina screens to something.
>when you are used to high quality design injected by Apple
Hmm, people do like to glorify Apple. Just remember that Apple is the same company that told us we were holding the phone wrong and that included copy and paste after three iterations of the iPhone.
To the loss of everyone. This is the same company that introduced disappearing scrollbars, just one of many dumb design decisions.
What modern design seems to forget, is that at the end of the day, people actually want to USE the interface, not just look at it.
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