Design

Tim Hardwick:

Every once in a while even Apple gets it wrong, and a tech company’s coherent rationale for the way a product should be designed can translate into end-user irritation, or even a customer’s personal hell. Here we take a look back at a handful of Apple’s most questionable design decisions in recent memory.

Pretty good list. No doubt every one of these products have love out there. But the flaws are hard to argue with.

It’d be interesting to see such a list with shake-your-head software design decisions.

Follow the headline link, start scrolling for a walk through Apple prototype collector Giulio Zompetti’s prototype tweets.

Interesting that Apple builds these prototypes in this way. Is it cheaper to pour with translucent material? Is it so engineers can see the guts of their designs, quickly tweak the fit ’til they get it right?

This definitely reminds me of the OG translucent Bondi iMacs.

Ferrari press release:

Amsterdam and Maranello, 27 September 2021. Exor N.V. (“Exor”), the leading diversified holding company controlled by the Agnelli family, and Ferrari N.V. (“Ferrari”) announce a long term, multi-year collaboration with Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson at the creative collective LoveFrom.

Marc Newson and Sir Jony Ive:

“We have been friends with John for many years and are great admirers of his insight and vision. We are thrilled to be embarking on such an important, long term collaboration with Ferrari and more broadly Exor. As Ferrari owners and collectors, we could not be more excited about collaborating with this extraordinary company and in particular with the design team expertly led by Flavio Manzoni. We see some uniquely exciting opportunities working together which we believe will yield important and valuable work.”

Ferrari already makes beautiful vehicles. It’ll be interesting to see what Jony Ive and Mark Newson bring to the design.

One interesting side note of the emergence of LoveFrom is the lack of a web site. Yesterday’s Ferrari press release had me check to see if that changed. When I did a LoveFrom search, here’s the Siri recommended web site.

Go ahead and give it a click. Clever.

Wallpaper:

The 20-strong Industrial Design Group is at the core of Apple’s creative process and typically works at least two years out. This suite of products revealed in October were still at prototype stage back in 2018, long before Chief Design Officer Jony Ive stepped back from the company after 27 years. This level of foresight is essential, allowing time for the vast global mechanism of mass production, assembly and distribution to gear up for the next generation.

And:

As ever, the details go far beyond what you see on the surface — the iPhone team had to tweak the internal architecture — already a literal miracle of packaging – to accommodate the magnetic coil. The cardholder wallet is sprung so that a single card is still held as tightly as three. The passive NFC field ensures the iPhone detects when an accessory is docked, a feature demonstrated best by the sleeve which leaves a small slot for the time display. Putting away your phone will also change the display colour to match the sleeve’s.

If you appreciate design, this is a fun read. Apple and detail, partners.

Apple:

Apple today previewed Apple Central World, its second and largest retail location in Thailand. Nestled in the heart of Ratchaprasong, Bangkok’s iconic intersection, the store provides a completely new and accessible destination within the lively city.

Another Apple Store. Another canvas for Apple’s architects. Read on.

Apple Central World’s distinctive architecture is brought to life with the first-ever all-glass design, housed under a cantilevered Tree Canopy roof. Once inside, customers can travel between two levels via a spiral staircase that wraps around a timber core, or riding a unique cylindrical elevator clad in mirror-polished stainless steel. Guests can enter from the ground or upper level, which provides a direct connection to the Skytrain and the city’s largest shopping center.

These words to not do this design justice. Follow the headline link, check out that image. Don’t miss that transparent wrap-around staircase that takes you to the second level. An incredible design.

Definitely on my “sights to see” bucket list.

Michael Flarup:

With the redesign of macOS 11 Big Sur, Apple has made many interface changes and updated the appearance of apps. Materials and dimensionality has made its way back into the interface —and every single app icon for every application and utility that Apple ships with macOS has been redesigned with depth, textures and lighting. This is a big deal. Probably bigger than what most people realise.

Scroll through the post, check out the images. You can’t help but see the emergence of realism in the design, as well as elements that bring macOS a bit closer to iOS (check out the squircles in the Big Sur icon image, about halfway down).

I do agree it’s a pendulum swing, from the full on felt, metal, and torn paper of skeuomorphism, to lossy flat design, to a gentle mix of the two. I’m enjoying the reemergence of fun.

From last week, InputMag with an interesting take on the move from skeuomorphism to flat design, followed by macOS Big Sur’s push into a new kind of design, dubbed neumorphism.

Take the discussion flying around Twitter about Big Sur’s icons with a grain of salt. This is a new design wave, and the rules are still being written, broken, and rewritten.

Some design elements break reality (shadows that are just wrong or that fight other shadows with inconsistent lighting patterns). Will Apple work on lining all those shadows up? Will they let icons be art, give designers a free hand?

I’ve always felt that the design pendulum swung too far to the flat side, offering fewer clues to users (Is the switch on or off? Hard to tell.) I’m looking forward to seeing what designers do with neumorphism, but hoping for a consistently lit, nuanced touch.

Josh Centers, writing for TidBITS, digs into Apple’s increasing use of the ellipsis (…). As Josh points out, it’s not all roses.

Interesting read.

[VIDEO] Apple’s South Korean site posted a sequence of colorful AirPod case pictures, along with a video (embedded in the main Loop post) showing off those cases.

I tweeted a couple of screen shots of the images (not from the video). New cases appeared each time I refreshed the page. Interesting designs. Fascinating that some of them have hooks to hang the case from a chain.

Did Apple make these prototypes? Are these Etsy-like 3rd party crafts? No matter, I love ’em all. Whimsy!

Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac:

The iconic wood tables that fill every Apple Store have long been globally admired as symbols of tasteful interior design. Fewer people are aware that recent top Apple Stores contain a hidden space called the Boardroom. Each Boardroom is decorated with a collection of premium furniture and accessories from some of the most respected designers in the world. We tracked down these hard-to-find items to create a directory for those with a discerning eye for design.

Were you aware that your local Apple Store might have a spacious board room hidden in the back of the store? Some terrific work by Michael Steeber. Lots of pictures from around the world, all of beautifully decorated rooms out of the public view.

If you connect to Apple in any way, this news has to hit hard. The Apple blogs and Twitter feeds were filled to bursting last night when the news broke.

Personally, this feels like a friendly but still quite painful divorce or, as John Gruber put it:

My gut sense for years has been that Ive without Jobs has been like McCartney without Lennon. Or Lennon without McCartney — take whichever analogical pairing you prefer. My point here is only that the fruit of their collaborations were, seemingly magically, far greater than the sums of the duos’ talents and tastes.

This is the last vestige of a magical period at Apple, when Steve Jobs and Jony Ive changed the world, cycle after cycle.

From Apple’s press release:

Apple today announced that Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, will depart the company as an employee later this year to form an independent design company which will count Apple among its primary clients. While he pursues personal projects, Ive in his new company will continue to work closely and on a range of projects with Apple.

Jony’s new company, said to be called LoveFrom and in partnership with long time collaborator Marc Newson, will launch next year.

Design team leaders Evans Hankey, vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, vice president of Human Interface Design, will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. Both Dye and Hankey have played key leadership roles on Apple’s design team for many years. Williams has led the development of Apple Watch since its inception and will spend more of his time working with the design team in their studio.

Jony Ive’s status on Apple’s official leadership page remains unchanged. Makes sense, since Ive won’t be leaving until the end of the year.

Gruber’s Lennon and McCartney comment really resonates. In Steve Jobs’ second time with Apple, his iMac/iPod/iPhone/iPad period, Jobs and Ive felt like equals, partners, reporting to each other, sharing an incredible vision. Together.

Wrap-up from Gruber’s piece (if you only read one piece on Jony Ive leaving, that’s the one):

I don’t worry that Apple is in trouble because Jony Ive is leaving; I worry that Apple is in trouble because he’s not being replaced.

My Apple world feels a bit ripped apart this morning.