Bryan Wolfe from AppAdvice on what the inside of Scott Forstall’s house looks like:
“I’d love to see Scott Forstall’s house, although I already have an idea what excites Apple’s Senior Vice President of iOS Software. As such, I envision room after room of leather and wood paneling. While this combination may look great in a “man cave,” on an iDevice, not so much.”
Like fashion, it’s always changing, evolving. There are fads, and good ones seem to stick around for a while. Steve Jobs understood design and did everything he could to plant Apple firmly at the intersection of Art and Technology. High fashion. High tech.
If Jobs pointed the way, then Jony Ive got them there. He is the mind behind the sleek bold industrial design Apple has mastered over the years and his commitment to design is what makes them different. They obsess over the little things. It shows and is why people love Apple and it’s products. It’s why I could never consider using anything made by someone else. It’s offensive to me when a company throws as many half-assed products as possible at the consumer, hoping one sticks.
Apple doesn’t do that. They have a simple line up, with products that don’t overlap, releasing upgrades on a yearly cycle. It’s somewhat predictable and doesn’t confuse people. They throw designs against the wall, in-house, only releasing the best to consumers. It’s also not afraid to hold something back, like the white iPhone 4, until it’s perfect, because anything less just won’t do.
Not everything Apple does is a home run. Apple has had its share of flops and bogus product ideas over the years. The cube and circle mouse are two that stick out. I’d say Apple’s recent software design choices on Lion and iOS5 are going into that category. It has reached critical mass.
From James Higgs great piece on Apple’s aesthetic dichotomy:
“The newly popular word for this type of design is “skeuomorphism”. Strictly speaking it means retaining design features from earlier designs when those features previously had a specific reason for being that way, but do not any longer. A good example would be iPad synthesizer apps that include “knobs” that you can “turn”, or “cables” that you can “plug in”.”
It’s a cheap trick and tricks are for whores. I’m over it and ready for something new, something digital. The wood paneling, leather textures, 3D stitching and other realistic imitations have to go. It made sense 20 years ago when computers were unknown it helped people visualize and understand what the hell was going on. Were past that.
The Linen texture works because its clean, simple and unobtrusive, but apps like Find My Friends look offensive compared to it.
Recently every time Apple releases an update or shiny new toy, the design is amazing and makes me want it instantly. The Air, iPhone and iPad hardware all do this. Parts of the software look great, and others look so far removed from the sleek industrial design of the devices it’s hard to imagine they even go together.
When I saw what Microsoft was doing with Windows Phone and Metro it instantly made me want it. I couldn’t believe it was coming out of Microsoft, that feeling is something I only ever got from Apple. Metro is minimal, beautiful, and digital. It doesn’t try to mimic something in the real world we already understand. Were past that. It’s unnecessary, childish, and clunky and Apple needs to realize it.
