Next the Jobs quote. It’s also not just how it works! In fact, I disagree with that quote. Design isn't about any of the those in reality, it’s about solving problems. This is a quote that gets banded about a lot and one that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the design process. The end goal may be how it works, looks and feels. Good design is an elegant solution. Balustrading in the space is inelegant.
The Principle from Rams 10 principals that I’d apply is the one about honesty as hiding the stairs and balustrading could be considered dishonest - however that’s tenuous.
lame design-school whackery. The only thing that should be giving me feelings of excitement and awe is how well the space functions. Not your tacky visual tricks.
How do you know you have to approach that?
This is like the mystery meat of architecture and you're defending it (and with a bad attitude and tone of voice throughout the thread, I might add).
Your attitude is exactly the problem I have with Apple, and the way you think is exactly why you don't see any problem with Apple: you're building the stairs for those who use them, not for yourself.
People don't care if a laptop is 4.7 millimiters or 4.9. We need battery life. We actually use the headphone jack, and we don't care if the phone is 0.2 millimiters thinner if the tradeoff is we can't use the expensive headphones we have without a dongle. We might use the USB-C port, but we're still using USB, SD cards, etc., keep them there, please.
You might argue that these are silly requests, but then I guess I won't spend $2000 for an Apple laptop again, and I won't be using your stairs. Luckily there is a lot of choice.
That is a really weak argument. It’s a strawman. Your ability to see stairs from a distance has no bearing on their usability or functionality. So long as when you’re in the space, it’s obvious that they are there, which from what I can see, is indeed the case.
Your beef seems to be Apple’s apparent arrogance at removing ~4% of battery (realistically closer to 2% when covering and fixings are accounted for) and moving forward with newer connectivity options like headphone jacks (which when looking at how compact the internals of the iPhone X are, make more sense) and older USB ports. I remember when they dropped ADB and parallel/SCSI in favour of USB. I remember buying an iMac without a floppy drive. Apple have always done this. And even when at their lowest, the pack have generally followed. Ask yourself why when you’re next saving a file in Dropbox...
Really. If I don't even realize they're there, they don't seem to be successful as something that is supposed to take me upstairs.
> Your beef seems to be Apple’s apparent arrogance at removing ~4% of battery (realistically closer to 2% when covering and fixings are accounted for)
Really, 2%. My MacBook Air lasted at least 3 hours more than my MacBook Pro. _At least_.
> and moving forward with newer connectivity options like headphone jacks (which when looking at how compact the internals of the iPhone X are, make more sense) and older USB ports.
Who cares about the internals of the iPhone X? I have headphones and I want to use them. The internal of the iPhone X should serve me, not some other goal (thinness, I guess? I have no idea).
> I remember when they dropped ADB and parallel/SCSI in favour of USB. I remember buying an iMac without a floppy drive. Apple have always done this. And even when at their lowest, the pack have generally followed. Ask yourself why when you’re next saving a file in Dropbox...
I bought the MacBook Air when people complained about no CD drive. It happened 0 times that I needed to use a CD and didn't know where to put it. With USB-C _only_ (if you noticed, I didn't say they shouldn've put 1 or 2 USB-C ports, just that it's completely retarded to have USB-C only) it's a _daily_ annoyance to not be able to connect my stuff without a dongle--which I often don't have at hand. No gain, and just hassle. That's the difference between the "old" Apple and the "new" Apple. They just have no idea what the hell they're doing anymore, and have a history of being right which makes them arrogant that they're right today.
All your arguments seem silly to me, but I care very little if people keep spending 2-3 times as much as they should for phones and computers, as long as it's not me. I ditched the iPhone for a Moto G5 that I bought for $285 and it works great in both hardware and software (the software is better than iOS actually IMHO), and a Surface Book which has both good design and it's functional.
There is a trade-off here that's being glossed over. Features that are unobtrusive to the point of being hard to find initially are perfectly fine in a space that is meant to be used almost exclusively by people that have been there before, such as an office space. Those same designs are very poor choices if a large percentage of users of that space have not been there before or will likely not be there again any time soon.