While I love many parts of the current aesthetic, for me the usability drift started in 1992 with the departure of the original research-and-testing-driven, form-follows-function interface guru, Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini.
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Steve and Jony worked, Steve had the big picture to corral Jony’s vision into a great outcome. Tim stepped aside and left him to it. Jony found himself untethered and effectively left the building.
Looking forward to reading this one.
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I read the NY Times excerpt, and got the impression the author thought style was the essence of what tech should be. Jobs knew that style could enhance tech; Ive thought style came first, and didn’t care if the style made the screen unreadable.
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I too was thrilled to see Ive leave and hope the screen door didn’t hit him on the way out.
The final straw was putting him in charge of software. For over two years suffering with severe eyestrain squinting at light-gray print on white backgrounds, a ridiculous redesign of the system font and other allegedly “artistic” bad calls, I came close to leaving Macs behind after being a 1984 early adopter and loyal longtime user.
And oh thanks Jony for the" skinny is better than useful" laptop re-designs. Now I have an amazing collection of hubs and dongles strapped to the side of what was once considered a portable design.
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Boy, I wish I had said that! What a great word - “skeuomorphism!” Yes, I know I am slowing down because of age, but I still miss that factor and feel its loss has contributed to my more deliberative operation of my Mac.
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Skeuomorphism is, to my mind, just an extension of the original GUI metaphor of a physical desk with papers and folders laying on it.
I agree with others who pointed out Ive changed the UI for his own aesthetic reasons, often to the detriment of usability. Lessening contrast doesn’t make it easier to see things. Increasing whitespace to the point of having to discard usable information (I’m looking at you, Music.app that can’t even show the whole damned song title without a VERY slow crawl…) doesn’t make anything more usable.
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Thanks for saying this. It always bugs me when folks talk about “form over function” as if they know what design is, when no one who does would actually use that term, or think of Ive as practicing it.
Ive was not the greatest desinger IMO, but the idea that he willfully removed ports and such because of some twisted idea of “beauty” and bedamned the consequences to function is just ridiculous.
Personally I wouldn’t use such an emotional and charged term like “soul” but I guess they have to sell the book? I also don’t see that it has anything to do with Jony Ive.
I would agree that Apple has lost its “moxy” or “chops” or something of that type. Their hardware and software engineering has been fairly atrocious for quite a long time now.
I would put the fault exactly where Steve Jobs often put it. They’ve lost track of the product, lost faith in their own designs, and now focus almost exclusively on “pleasing the customers” which is of course death to any serious design operation which Jobs himself often noted.
A good example would be the astonishing amount of resources they devoted over at least a five year period in order to get “dark mode” to work. You may like dark mode or enjoy it, but it can’t be denied that it has no purpose other than “looking cool” and that the resources might have been better spent somewhere else.
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The evidence speaks for itself.
In what way did removing the ports benefit Mac users?
In what way did making Mac laptops so thin that ports no longer could be accommodated benefit Mac users?
Or are you saying that removing the ports did NOT have negative consequences for users?
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I used to have to schlep a MacBook on the New York City subway and bus transit system 5 days a week, and occasionally throughout major airports. So I was delighted when Apple removed ports. And I could swear the MacBooks got heavier and heavier during each journey.
You seem a little “port-happy” lol. 
It would take ages to explain this to you, but some low-hanging reasons why less ports might be “better,” include driving the adoption of less ports, driving the adoption of a particular new type of port, or driving the obsolescence of older ports, to mention just the obvious. There are many other possibilities as well.
Suffice to say that the heuristics on any particular industrial design can be extremely complicated. It’s not as simple as you think.
On an iPhone or iPad with an OLED display, dark mode extends battery life. It also makes the screen easier to read in a dimly lit room (for example, reading on a iPhone in bed, while your spouse is trying to sleep.
So while I don’t always use dark mode, I think it was a worthwhile expenditure of resources. YMMV.
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Well the stated reason for it at the time (at least from the users proposing it) was the prevalent (and 100% wrong) idea that dark screens with white text were “easier on the eyes” and helped with “eye strain.” All of which is a myth despite being a very persistent myth.
I would also argue that battery savings are irrelevant because it only saves battery for a small subset of users. If you don’t want to use dark mode (most folks) then there is no benefit.
If people like it it’s no big deal to me. To each their own. Personally, I find it a bit “bro-ish,” if you know what I mean. It’s aimed at tech dudes who like everything black on black etc.
Mostly it just irritates me that so much time effort and resources were spent on it when they could have been spent on other things. It’s also a classic case of a company doing a design because their users are asking for it, which is pretty much the worst thing for a designer to do.
I think all of that is indicative of the type of company Apple is lately. i.e - Unfocussed, ageing, overly masculine in it’s designs, poor resource allocation etc.
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In what way did removing the ports benefit Mac users?
Trading specific ports for USB-C ports allowed people (with the use of an adapter) the ability to use a much wider range of accessories than they might have with only ports dedicated to specific things.
Now I happen to think they went too far with that, and the current return to having an HDMI port on their MacBook Pros is a good decision, but the versatility of the USB-C ports is spectacular.
In what way did making Mac laptops so thin that ports no longer could be accommodated benefit Mac users?
Thinness=lightness. It’s not the thinness that’s critical, it’s the reduced weight – and I for one enjoy that substantially reduced weight.
That’s a lot to get from dark mode.
I might not agree with several things being claimed here, but this I understand and believe I know what you mean.
IME dark mode is something used by the proverbial “tech bro” to display just how savvy and incredibly geeky he is. And yes, I mean he. I have yet to meet a casual user who thinks that after spending all their life reading dark text on light background, that all of a sudden they can manipulate their word processor so much better when they have it set to display white on black.
Frankly, I don’t care what people use, everybody should set up according to their own preference. But it isn’t lost on me which type predominantly has switched to dark mode.
I will note though that Hollywood has had this obsession with dark mode for far longer than Apple. And I would be willing to believe they are a substantial reason tech bros got infused with this idea that in order to appear to be a real geek, you need to set your shell to green on black. Most of the guys with that setup weren’t even born when the S/36 shipped.
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This. I actually prefer one TB4 port that I can use in a multitude of ways vs. an HDMI port with a single use or a card reader with perhaps 2 uses.
In my perfect 14" MBP at the very least the card reader would never had made its comeback and instead I would have gotten a 2nd TB4 on the RHS.
I took on Dark Mode significantly a few years ago.
Since then, I’ve moderated a little. It’s clear that for some people, displays are often just too bright. And I do agree that when reading in bed while Tonya is asleep, a white-on-black scheme with the brightness turned all the way down works well.
As far as ports go, there’s nothing new there at all. The pain is real, but it’s also finite. You don’t hear anyone whining about the lack of ADB, serial, and SCSI ports anymore, though there were lots of complaints when Apple dropped them in favor of USB.
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but I think that’s a wild exaggeration. I’m no Apple apologist, but for example, the iPhone 14 Pro’s computational photography capabilities are nothing short of magic, and all that comes because Apple has developed custom CPUs. The M-family of chips is insanely impressive, and the Macs it powers have been selling better than ever before because of it. The AirPods and AirTag are popular because they’re really good, and the Apple Watch lineup gets better every year.
Sure, there are products that feel like they’re still searching for their niche, like the Apple TV, HomePod, and to an extent the iPad. But even then, they’re not bad, just somehow not always connecting with user needs and price points the way everyone might want.
Put it this way. There’s almost nothing Apple makes that I wouldn’t use if someone wanted to give it to me. That’s far from true of a lot of competing products.
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I think you meant DIP switches, not pins.
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