When Stephen Fry Met Jony Ive

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/11628710/When-Stephen-Fry-met-Jony-Ive-the-self-confessed-fanboi-meets-Apples-newly-promoted-chief-design-officer.html

by Stevo11 • 11 years ago

47 21 11 years ago

telegraph.co.uk

morbius3• 11 years ago

This seems like little more than an Apple puff piece.

Apple has recently developed a standard British power plug whose prongs fold elegantly back flush into their body. Easily stowed, no agony if accidentally trod on. A separate and wholly different solution to that offered by the Mu Plug which solves the problem in another way.
“It took ages to solve,” Ive says wistfully. And that is the point. No one else cares as much. Of course it took ages, because anything worth doing does. People who take pains to the extent he and his team do are very very rare.

This sort of design has been present in countless cheap, $3 international power adapters. Ive's ego and insistence on exalting his own genius at the expense of others' is maddening, and to call something so simple an "innovation" illustrates how little is necessary for something to be deemed a work of ingenuity.

Like Marc Newson, much of his work is design for the sake of design, with little regard for functional implications. To have a company's philosophy be singularly focussed on aesthetics and minimalism alone is not a bad thing. But as Larry Wall prophetically said several years ago, "Apple is the arbiter of good taste. But when good taste becomes mandatory, it's no longer good taste, just manners."

I feel similarly about Apple's design philosophy. Their level of influence doesn't inspire opposing philosophies from their competitors, it inspires imitation-- since imitation is a basic, natural, fundamental reaction to something successful. The problem is that it alienates those who have other requirements that differ vastly from those of Apple's, and who would be better served with a little less aesthetic sense, and more functionality or durability at the expense of (largely arbitrary) things such as thickness, gloss, polish, and shine.

There is a reason you only see ThinkPads on ISS rather than MacBooks. Similar design goals -- minimalism, starkness, and abstraction -- but with vastly different approaches.

coldtea• 11 years ago

This sort of design has been present in countless cheap, $3 international power adapters.

"This sort" is not "the same". And that's for the design part -- we haven't even discussed implementation at all.

dreamfactory22• 11 years ago

design for the sake of design, with little regard for functional implications

This is a fundamental misunderstanding. The minimalist aesthetic is underpinned by the principle that form follows function, and is absolutely opposed to ornament or visual additions. Aesthetic === functional in this worldview; it's not a separate thing which gets added in. (This is precisely why Ives and others eschewed skeumorphism.)

morbius3• 11 years ago

Right-- but Ive also seeks to reduce form so much to the point where it begins to impede upon functionality. Take the thickness of the iPhone 6, for instance. The drive to reduce the noticeability of the hardware is at the direct expense of battery life and camera quality; I'd certainly consider this a failing of his design philosophy.

Slackwise• 11 years ago

Yea, except, Apple most definitely favors aesthetics over functionality.

Take the iPod shuffle:

- Gen 1 was minimal, usable, and a portable USB drive,

- Gen 2 was minimal and usable, but lost its portable USB drive functionality (required a cable to also be carried around), but

- Gen 3 was smaller for no reason, moved the controls to an earbud cable which was impossible to use while running, and cost extra to buy an adapter if you didn't want to use their shitty earbuds, and then

- Gen 4 returned to the 2nd Gen design, because Gen 3 was very clearly flawed.

Seriously, explain the 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle.

I can cite many examples where they've dumped functionality for aesthetics, like non-removable batteries, fully-sealed computers (latest Mac mini), etc, but this is the clearest mistake they've made where they had to actually reverse course because of their favoritism for aesthetics over functionality.

kaolinite• 11 years ago

This sort of design has been present in countless cheap, $3 international power adapters. Ive's ego and insistence on exalting his own genius at the expense of others' is maddening, and to call something so simple an "innovation" illustrates how little is necessary for something to be deemed a work of ingenuity.

Except the only quote we have from Ive was "It took ages to solve". He didn't talk about his genius, about how it was an innovation. It's all just a mix of what the reporter said and your personal biases.

I also don't think that ThinkPads on the ISS is a particularly good indicator of anything, besides perhaps the difference in the vendor's willingness to work with third parties on radiation hardening?

pilsetnieks• 11 years ago

The Thinkpads on the ISS isn't really a criteria to measure innovation or design. Those T60s are there because that's a standardized piece of equipment with a proven process for radiation hardening and for installing active cooling on them (traditional cooling doesn't work because it relies on convection which doesn't work in microgravity.) However, the people on the ISS are free to use personal devices (phones, tablets, etc.) and guess which are the most popular?

JacobAldridge• 11 years ago

"The development costs and development times of everything from those first iPods to the new line of Apple watches were far higher and far longer than any other company in the sector might tolerate.

And AS A RESULT the revenues from those products are far, far higher than any other company can dream of." [My emphasis]

I call post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this). While possibly just some lazy copy editing, I think everyone who's backed a hardware Kickstarter is well aware that blown out costs and development times do not normally result in far greater revenues.

Apple, in so many ways, is the exception not the rule. And in general this "fanboi" piece does a good job of highlighting some of their exceptions.

seiji• 11 years ago

Apple, in so many ways, is the exception not the rule.

I think Apple follows traditional device manufacturing rules pretty closely. It takes 3-7 years to get a new hardware product market ready. The exceptions are startups or crowdfunded doodads that are able to launch in 18 months.

Nobody's going to crowdfund on 3-7 year timescales though, so you end up with a lot of optimistic lies (even the creators lying to themselves about how quickly things can get made).

digi_owl• 11 years ago

More recent Kickstarter stuff is likely all done with R&D by the time they hit the site. This because after the initial year or so Kickstarter put into place a rule demanding a working prototype. Before that you had a mess of CAD renders and such being peddled. If you go over to Indiegogo you still find all those CAD renders and such, and i think that site has had a much lower success rate on delivery.

jamesrom• 11 years ago

Obviously, taken in context (that other companies might not tolerate higher costs and longer development times), the "as a result" line does not imply that higher costs and longer development times are the cause of far higher revenues in general.

The "as a result" line implies that for Apple, higher costs and longer development times has yielded more revenue.

The subject of the line is Apple, not the other companies.

klum• 11 years ago

There's another piece of the puzzle, which, in Apples case, may be attributed to the long and costly development process--that after this process, great products (which are not too late for the market) are released. If the hardware Kickstarter managed this, they probably wouldn't do too badly.

TrevorJ• 11 years ago

The reasons for blown out costs matter though: on kickstarter it's likely due to lack of experience with the manufacturing process. Kickstarter companies also likely do not have the marketing or global retail network to recoup sunk costs in many cases.

raverbashing• 11 years ago

“Maybe it should be called the Steve Jobs Campus?” I suggest. “Oh, Steve made his views on that very clear,” says Cook.

Good!

kbart• 11 years ago

"Ive’s inventiveness can perhaps most starkly be expressed by revealing that he has nearly 5,000 patents to his name."

Because patenting "rounded corners"[1] is really an impressive achievement. Not to mention other trivial/stupid patents (see lawsuit against Samsung).

1. http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-ipad-design-patent-2012...

When Stephen Fry Met Jony Ive

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