Six Colors
Apple design’s luxury bubble (Link) https://sixcolors.com/link/2025/12/apple-designs-luxury-bubble/
Apple design’s luxury bubble

I enjoyed this thoughtful post from Garrett Murray, itself a link to a post by Louie Mantia about the departure of Alan Dye from Apple: I sometimes think about what we lost along the way as Apple c…

Six Colors
Dec 30 at 5:53pmWeb
Show threadJohn EllenichDec 30

@sixcolors I think their environmental goals also sometimes get in the way of some of the unique, colorful, plastic, pin striped designs of old.

Much easier to recycle unibody, metal and glass vs a barrage of colorful plastic and rubber pieces glued together.

Show threadSon of a SailorDec 30

@sixcolors "But without Steve Jobs to rein things in, Apple’s design sense got more insular, more obscure, more minimal."

This really resonates with me. Tim is a fine CEO, but his strengths are not Steve's strengths. Steve was a great foil to Jonny. The Lennon to his McCartney, if you will. Without Steve's tempering of Jonny's ideas, they became a bit self-serving.

I love devices without needless nooks and crannies and grooves and such, but a bit of color or curves would be nice now and then.

Show threadleehindeDec 30
@sixcolors I think Ives needed an editor. A role the Steve filled.
Show threadJay 🆘Dec 30

@sixcolors

Steve Jobs: “Deisgn is how it works, not how it looks.”

Jony Ive: “Desgn is how it looks, not how it works.”

Show threadSumocat 🐈‍⬛Dec 31
@sixcolors “…without Steve Jobs to rein things in, Apple’s design sense got more insular, more obscure, more minimal.” — This isn’t quite right. Jobs didn’t just rein in Ive; he was the audience. Ive designed to Jobs’ taste. Without Jobs, Ive had no one’s taste to guide him. For the second time in a week, I ask: Apple has many engineers in charge, but who are the tastemakers?
Show thread🇨🇦 Maverick ✊🇲🇲🇺🇦🇻🇪🇬🇱Dec 31
@sixcolors I go a different direction when attempting to describe the descent of Apple design… Apple became an absolute behemoth in the industry – the world, actually – and in so doing, the people that Apple hired were no longer “the best of the best” & probably didn’t really buy into “the Apple way”. Basically, Apple started hiring Windows programmers. (1/7)
Show thread🇨🇦 Maverick ✊🇲🇲🇺🇦🇻🇪🇬🇱Dec 31
What this article is talking about is Apple hardware (how stuff looks) but where Apple has obviously lost its way is Apple software (how it works). In that regard, the shift has been huge. The software simply doesn’t work for users. It gets in its own way. All the OS 26s are *HORRIBLE*, you can’t convince me Steve Jobs would allow an invisible UI to ship. It’s so obviously a stupid idea. (2/7)
Show thread🇨🇦 Maverick ✊🇲🇲🇺🇦🇻🇪🇬🇱Dec 31
But beyond the OSs, Every bit of software I can think of grates me the wrong way now with some Ui or UX decision that I don’t believe Apple would have shipped in the Jobs era. Two “close boxes” beside each other (safari), dithering issues on menu bar text (Apple TV) – these people would be fired in the Jobs era, no doubt about it. But Apple is too big & the core of Apple executives that remember the old ways is too small or don’t care anymore. (3/7)
Show thread🇨🇦 Maverick ✊🇲🇲🇺🇦🇻🇪🇬🇱Dec 31
While writing this my wife was trying to play a song on the HomePod. She used a voice command but no audio played (it was playing on the Apple TV), so she switched to the Apple TV remote, changed the output to the HomePod and… it stopped playing. She told it to resume. Nothing. She switched back to the Apple TV remote and went to the search function in music & then pressed the microphone button and recited the name of the song… nope. (4/7)
Show thread🇨🇦 Maverick ✊🇲🇲🇺🇦🇻🇪🇬🇱Dec 31
She’s was doing a general system search , not a “music” search and gets movie titles returned. I told her she needs to select the “search” field and then recite the song name. (5/7)
Show thread🇨🇦 Maverick ✊🇲🇲🇺🇦🇻🇪🇬🇱Dec 31
She does this correctly, but the song still doesn’t show up… oh you have to go down to that tab and select “Apple Music”, I tell her… then the song she wants is 2nd in the list — a super famous song by the original artist but that version is displayed after a totally different song by an unknown artist first. — omfg, how are real humans supposed to use this stuff! (6/7)
Show thread🇨🇦 Maverick ✊🇲🇲🇺🇦🇻🇪🇬🇱Dec 31
That interaction my wife just had is the stuff Apple used to sweat over so users would never have that shitty experience. I get it. It’s hard and these systems have gotten exponentially more complicated but if Apple isn’t going to solve these types of problems for real users then Apple isn’t really Apple any longer. (7/7)
Show threadChancerubbageDec 31

@sixcolors

Apple also seems to ignore ‘the rest of us’ with the products they have made and sold and we have.

They do not test their products under real world condition ms (and I don’t think a ‘Public Beta’ is the answer). Example: If you live and work under ideal and robust WiFi conditions, are you catching the far less than ideal conditions your customers may be dealing with?