from Hacker News

Ive’s Legacy, the Post-Ive Apple

by quanganhdo on 6/28/19, 1:06 PM with 38 comments

• by pazimzadeh on 6/28/19, 11:02 PM

  Maybe Steve Jobs' greatest accomplishment was getting titans like Jony Ive and Steve Forstall, who could each run their own successful design and/or tech companies, to put aside ego and work together under one roof.

• by blunderkid on 6/29/19, 6:20 AM

  I liked iOS' "skeuomorphic" design and despise the flatness that Mr Ive introduced, i think 5 years back. The first iPhone was mind blowing because it seemed to make apps pop out of the screen and invited you to tap on them. Flatness is two steps back and made iOS Androidish, not a great design inspiration.

  Also the ridiculous obsession with thinness of macs and iPhones probably at the cost of making them do something useful, if that is Mr Ive's doing, he has clearly outlived his usefulness.

  Those iMacs though were pretty. Never used one but Ben is right about them being Ive's best work. Wish him a happy and most well deserved retirement.

• by ryeights on 6/28/19, 11:04 PM

  >In their separate interviews with the FT this week, Mr Cook and Sir Jonathan insisted that no single person at Apple decides which innovations graduate from its R&D labs and which are sent back to the drawing board. “The company runs very much horizontally,” said Mr Cook. “The reason it’s probably not so clear about who [sets product strategy] is that the most important decisions, there are several people involved in it, by the nature of how we operate.”

  This would certainly explain Apple’s apparent lack of direction in recent years. Between this, their recent refocusing on “services”, and the clusterfuck of ports, dongles, and redesigns on new products, I am fearful for the future of Apple hardware.

• by myt6fore on 6/29/19, 6:04 AM

  Does anyone else miss 'early' Ben Thompson?

  Ben of Then would easily spend an hour meticulously crafting around the topic whilst carefully rationing his listeners' attention. Once listeners are thoroughly primed, Thompson would then proceed with a sudden, massive contextual leap shifting the laid groundwork (vertically) into potential energy, lifting us along.

  Ben of today, writes mechanistically, with two main pillars: 1)catering to his technocratic subscriber-base 2)asserting himself as an expert historian of the industry.

  Technocrats demand affirmation of their worldview (that is what they do), so static narratives provide an important anchor. The preeminent historian supports this rigidity as his main competitive advantage (over lesser historians) is his cultivated cache of (niche) interlinks.

  In our (violently) changing world we need thermonuclear Ben not the historian Ben.

• by amelius on 6/29/19, 11:05 AM

  I hope Apple goes back to Frog Design, I think those designs had much more character.

  Also, if you make a design slimmer and slimmer, you're bound to end up with something flat and uninteresting.

  I also don't like the sharpness of the aluminum at the edges. The plastic designs were much more friendly, imho.

• by mekpro on 6/29/19, 6:10 AM

  "even Ive’s exit was beautifully designed."

• by IloveHN84 on 6/29/19, 2:31 PM

  The best Ive's product is the Magic Mouse... How could you put the charging port UNDER the mouse?