[thoms_a]

As a counterpoint, I bought my first iPhone (first ever Apple product) this week, and it was specifically because it seems like Apple is finally designing products with usability and functionality as their top priority.

Ive was great, but he was way too much of an artist to understand that computers are mostly tools. Ive was more interested in folding katanas and the process of creation than the mundane design of a productivity tool.

As an example, I remember being utterly bemused by the relentless port-pruning on the Macbook Pro. It just didn't make sense to me to remove ports on a machine designed primarily for productivity. But Ive didn't like ports, because katanas don't have ports. So the MBP didn't have ports.

[SllX]

I think he understood perfectly that computers were tools.

The PowerBook/MacBook Pro designs up through 2016, the MacBook Air from 2010 onwards, the Power Macs G3-G5/Macs Pro through 2013 and the 2019 Mac Pro, the iBook/MacBook line through 2011, and the entirety of the iMac’s history all reflect a recognition that computers are fundamentally tools. They just held the conceit that tools can also be beautiful.

But yes, sometime between Job’s death and 2017, the wheels just completely fell off when they introduced new Mac designs, and they spent the better part of the last 5 years putting them back on after Ive was promoted into the sky and left the company.

[paulryanrogers]

IDK. Doggedly sticking to a single button mouse. Putting charging port on the bottom of a mouse because designers know best. Calculators that produce wrong answers if one types before the beautiful animations finish. Keyboards so thin and heavily integrated dust can break them, and cannot be repaired without accessing main board.

Evidence suggests to me that Apple's record on utility is mixed.

[gls2ro]

I personally like the single button mouse. It is the only mouse I got so far that on MacOS let me scroll webpages up and down, left and right without any effort.

I really like that the almost the whole surface is active and have gestures.

I agree that for video games not having dedicated buttons is not ok. I dont play those so for me this is the perfect mouse.

Being using them from the first generation I think 2010-2011 and it is hard for me to go back to normal mouse.

[goosedragons]

Loads and loads of mice can do horizontal scrolling while having two mice buttons, e.g. Logitech MX Master, Razer Naga, etc. It's not uncommon for high end mice to have a mouse wheel you can tilt left or right to scroll left or right or some other system.

The Magic and Mighty mice support horizontal scrolling in spite of being one button mice and not because they are one button mice. Apple laptops kept with the whole one button thing even into 2000s where it was pretty painful as there was no scroll mechanism at all, no right click mechanism at all besides a key combo.

[urthor]

They'll fix that in a few years.

I suspect Ive was fired because he created the craziness of 2012-2017 post Jobs era.

Trashcan, no ports, touch bar, mouse charging etc etc.

These days I have moderate confidence Apple will fix its issues. Eventually.

[SllX]

Let’s be fair: Apple has had sufficient time to revise all of these post-Jobs Ive-era designs. Ive himself was still in charge when the trash can hit the bin, and they’ve more or less fixed the port situation on most of their models (I still have disagreements with some of their choices but we can at least say they’re debatable now).

But they just released a revision of the 13” MacBook Pro with the touchbar. And while I know they have a hard time course-correcting bad design choices on their biggest product lines, there’s no excuse for not having revised the Magic Mouse 2 by this point.

Also while this discussion has been mostly focused on hardware, let’s not forget that Apple is selling 6K displays while displaying all the signs and symptoms of an organization absolutely allergic to on-screen chrome in every release of Mac OS X for the past few years as well as the next major revision they just announced.

I’ll put a lot at Ive’s feet, but only for the time he was actually there and in charge of design.

[virgildotcodes]

Sorry, what do you mean by "on-screen chrome"? I've tried googling a bunch of variations on the phrase but I can't seem to find anything relevant.

[SllX]

Window or user interface chrome, which incidentally is where Google Chrome gets its name (as the “chrome” for the web) which is probably infesting your results. Going to Wikipedia’s “Chrome” disambiguation would get you a one-line description too but the page-link would just direct you to graphical user interfaces.

Chrome is all the stuff that’s not the content area in a GUI. So the user-agent you’re reading this in has a content area loading the page this thread is on (most likely a web browser but maybe you’re using an HN-specific app), and then a toolbar where the location bar lives, maybe a favorites bar and the window controls like close and minimize unless you’re on a phone. Basically chrome is all the overhead GUI like menus, toolbars, sidebars, pop-overs and controls around the stuff you’re focused in on.

[moralestapia]

Yup, firing Ive was the first step in the right direction.

Of course, we didn't see the effects until now because a trillion dollar ship takes a while to turn around.

[urthor]

Not even about the money.

Hardware involves making things, the turnaround time is nonzero.

[throwaway290]

I on the other hand am happy to have the last of the laptops without extra dust-collecting holes (a hub has more than a laptop could ever offer) and with touchbar (I'd hate having to switch to adjusting sound volume/screen brightness the old way).