Let's consider Jony's performance on software design first. This is what some prominent people have said about iOS 7: The Verge wrote in their review: "iOS 7 isn't harder to use, just less obvious. That's a momentous change: iOS used to be so obvious." In iOS 7 basic usability features such as making buttons look like buttons are now stuffed under Accessibility options. About this, Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment wrote: "If iOS 8 can’t remove any of these options, it's a design failure." (And iOS 8 didn't.) Michael Heilemann, Interface Director at Squarespace wrote, "when I look at [iOS 7 beta] I see anti-patterns and basic mistakes that should have been caught on the whiteboard before anyone even began thinking about coding it." And famed blogger John Gruber said this about iOS 7: "my guess is that [Steve Jobs] would not have supported this direction."

And what about Jony's other responsibility, industrial design? The iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and other Apple products are all amazingly well designed and breathtakingly beautiful. But these products weren't designed by Jony Ive all by himself. He designed them under Steve Jobs's guidance and direction. Steve was the tastemaker. Apple's post-Steve products are nowhere near as well-designed.

Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors are horrid, and when you add those Crocs-like cases it looks more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen holding. Then they released some ads for the 5c, and I kid you not, one of the ads had sounds of bleating farm animals. (It was titled "Every color has a story", published on tumblr.) That the 5c didn't do well in the market shouldn't surprise anyone.

> Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors are horrid, and when you add those Crocs-like cases it looks more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen holding.

But it wasn't for executives. It was supposed to be a downmarket phone. You may think the colors were horrid, but I think they added much needed character to the iPhone line, much like the XRs.

Yeah i often look at my iphone SE and think it really needs some character.

>Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors are horrid, and when you add those Crocs-like cases it looks more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen holding.

Except Apple has previously found wild success in selling brightly colored devices down market, see the original iPod Mini for example. A selection of colors both appeals to the sort of person they are targeting with the lower end device (teens/young adults) while also preserving the marketshare of their higher end device by turning off the kind of older, more reserved buyer who might otherwise buy the less expensive option. There's also the entire Apple lineup in the early "Second Coming of Jobs" era with the iMac and, to a lesser extent, the Power Mac G3.

The 5C was a 32-bit phone released at the same time they started moving to 64-bit. That’s a device with a built-in “use by” date.

Design-wise, I really wanted one. Technology-wise, I couldn’t justify it.

> This is what some prominent people have said about iOS 7

Prominent finance people criticize other finance people for their decisions all of the time (Buffet et al). I think I could name a hundred other professions where this is also true (I use finance as a good analog). Just because <insert prominent professional> makes a criticism doesn't make it suddenly true.

I personally hated iOS7. Guess what, it clearly didn't stop people from buying more iPhones[0]. At the end of the day, Arment, Heliemann, and Gruber can all take a seat while iOS single-handedly rakes in billions for Apple. This is how business works.

[0] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/276306/global-apple-ipho...

Are you arguing something can’t be poorly designed if it makes a lot of money?

The problem in arguing about design is that many things may be subjective (I do not believe all of it is subjective) whereas profit at least gives an unarguable metric.

That's kind of naive no? Everybody in this town buys Comcast, but that's not because it's a great product.

the original meaning of naive is natural, I suppose that monopolies are unnatural and as such fall outside the normal argumentation about business quality.

Furthermore I also thought I put in enough qualifiers in my statement that I did not have to defend it as being my overarching philosophy regarding every situation it might possibly be applied to. After I wrote the preceding sentence I proceeded to write another 3 paragraphs until I realized that I was actually writing a bad version of an essay on aesthetics and requirements for being able to speak with critical insight, so I erased those paragraphs and here we are.

It makes perfect sense! That's why Transformers is a better movie than the Godfather...

> None of those things were mistakes, they were choices made as a result of tradeoffs that people agonized over.

You can put a lot of thought into something and still make a mistake.

Absolutely, but the tone of the OP was not one that I felt reflected that viewpoint.

I got the sense there was a conflation of "didn't do things the way I wanted" and "poor design choices".

> None of those things were mistakes, they were choices made as a result of tradeoffs that people agonized over.

Every design choice is a tradeoff and industrial design is about making the right tradeoffs. He did not make the right tradeoffs. He regularly sacrificed functionality for the looks, and preferred form over function. While I do respect many of the things he did, I am glad his time at Apple is coming to an end.

Exactly. Which is why Apple went out of business.

>I gotta eyeroll pretty hard when some internet expert points out the basic design mistakes in something. None of those things were mistakes, they were choices made as a result of tradeoffs that people agonized over.

This is something I have had a hard time with over the years... I even emailed Jony in hte past abt some of the design "choices" that were made that REALLY irkd and cost me and MILLIONS of users too much money.

The overall body design of the iphone has been "sleek and slick" -- meaning that it was WAY too easy to drop and break.

The physical phone should have been more heartily designed from day one - and allowed for a lanyard attachement bracket on all models.

Screw the people who claim things like: OH that was a design decision to keep the 'vision' blah blah blah -- esp. and including specifically Ive.

The reason is that 'aesthetic design decision' cost consumers billions over the years.

I have a 6S+ -- my ~27th iphone

The argument is "why dont you go get a case!"

Why should such a 'perfect' design, so perfect where it doesnt want a lanyard or other safety features interrupting its elegance, require a case?

So, Fuck Ive worship.

I like the phone, I've had every iteration up to the 6S+ (which is my favorite, and I have had many of them. but I am not going to praise the shortcomings of the device and hero-worship the guy.

Sometimes a design is bad and people make the wrong tradeoffs. Look no further than the Magic Mouse 2, which requires placing it in an awkward upside-down position and that you completely stop using it in order to charge.

The original Magic Trackpad should've had a port for wired connections. That would've allowed you to avoid having to constantly change batteries, as well as avoid the flaming garbage can that is bluetooth. At least they listened and fixed these issues with Magic Trackpad 2.

iOS had a ton of mistakes, not just trade offs. I understand that yeah, I didn’t figure them out myself, but just looking at the Nielsen Norman usability studies you could see there was a lot to be improved on (and they did, to their credit)