[culpable_pickle]

Quantifying best is very difficult. Is it the best technically but market conditions makes it less appealing? Or is it the best fit for the market but it’s a nightmare to build and so they can’t pump enough of them out to be reasonable.

The products that launch end up being good enough in all areas but rarely/never the best in all areas.

It’s the sign of a healthy business IMHO

[the_af]

If quantifying "best" is so difficult, then maybe Ive should have worded his words of consolation better, maybe? Otherwise it's just an empty platitude.

[nomel]

Someone like Ive, and anyone within his professional circle, would necessarily be intimately familiar with the concept of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, just as best is. Any one designers design is the best for that designer. Best, by anyones definition, doesn’t always make the cut.

[the_af]

I obviously disagree. And it's not like Ive has never made a mistake in his decisions or appreciations. His words are not holy.

[nomel]

The context here is product design. Does this mean that you think there's one perfect form of a product that everyone would agree is the best, from the bean counters, to the fabricators, to the users?

[the_af]

Well, if there isn't, Ive shouldn't have used the word "best"! It sends the wrong message. Designers should be careful with their words.

(As an aside, in my opinion -- and many others on HN, as I've read through the years -- Ive sometimes made the worst choice between two design decisions, so he definitely sometimes cut the best in favor of the less good).

(Also, judging by the reactions to my top-level comment, others agree with me!)

[nomel]

I think you're coming from a context that isn't design, so there's a language mismatch here. In design, and basically everything not dictated by maths/optimization, the precise definition of "best" is that it's subjective. From the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/best

> 1. excelling all others

> 2. offering or producing the greatest advantage, utility, or satisfaction

Different models of products exist because "best" is subjective. The phone that is best for me is not best for you, but both are precisely, by definition, best for each of us. You seem to be thinking that the word "best" means some absolute global maximum, which is not the definition of the word. That maximum is made from weights in some huge vector space, with those weights being different depending on the perspective of each of us. There is no "correct" perspective that can allow this global maximum, that you seem to be searching for, to exist.

You're making the assumption that he, a celebrated consumer product designer, was not aware of the subjective, multivariate, nature of "best", when used in the context of consumer product design. I don't think that's an appropriate assumption, for any professional designer.