Apple has successfully transitioned into a Fashion Company.
Yes, I would like more cheese with my whine, but I would also like products which are well designed. Designed, as in “how things work” designed.
Apple started as a computer & electronics company. They built some nifty hardware for their time, with a slight hint of good user experience and design. Apple engineers cared, they even designed the initial startup sound.
A little bit later, as Apple truly understood the power of design, they transitioned into a design-driven company, where they used clever ideas to deliver truly outstanding software and hardware. They delivered products which followed principles of ergonomics (well, mostly, hello iMac Puck), good human-centered design, and similar. It was Jobs who coined the phrase “Design is how it works”.
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
This era, primarily driven by the rules of good design, brought us truly outstanding products.
And today, it’s obvious Apple shifted yet again the position of the company into, what can only be summarised as a — fashion company.
Nearly all of Apple’s products today, or at least the big breadth of them, are driven not by design, but by aesthetics at the expense of everything else.
The first point a product has to satisfy today is purely fashionable point. Second is probably price point. Then around point 5 we have “oh, and it has to be well designed, and follow some basic principles of human-centered design”.
Seriously, look at the hard hitters recently.
Apple Watch, well, sure, it has its uses. But that thing is fashion more than anything. Apple of the old (second gen Apple), would never release a watch that has to be manually charged every day. That’s just insane, it burdens the user. They slapped solid gold cases, and partnered with fashion industry to make straps. Bling bling fashion!
MacBook. The most useless laptop ever made. Purely a fashion statement. With MacBook Apple introduced the new keyboard layout:
This keyboard, for pure aesthetic reasons, has arrow keys of different sizes (left & right and full keys, and up & down are half-keys). In comparison, here’s the old layout:
You’ll notice that the old arrow keys are all of the same size, and there’s a gap above left & right. That gap allows users to feel the arrow key block with fingertips, as fingertips just fall into that space and position the hand properly on the keys.
Any designer will tell you that this is a super important feature, as most designers spend their days nudging with those arrow keys objects in their favourite software. I for example, now have to look at my keyboard every time I want to use the arrow keys, and I have been using the new stand-alone Bluetooth keyboard for months now.
This is simply a bad design decision, but a good fashion decision. It looks better. But it works worse.
For crying out loud, an entire Apple event at the beginning of this year was about new Apple Watch bands & bracelets and Rose Gold MacBook! No design which helps people, but pure fashion.
Apple TV remote is poorly designed. It’s fashionable, yes, but poorly designed. It’s nearly impossible to just pick it up and use it in the dark room because it feels the same facing forward and facing backward. Countless times have I pressed “Home” button instead of “Pause” button, because they are in the bottom/left (if you flip the remote and grab it the wrong way). A remote which you first have to look at in order to establish orientation is simply a bad design decision.
People are actually glueing a little bit of sandpaper on the bottom side just so they can feel the sides.
New iPhone 7, hey, no 3.5mm audio port. I won’t go into much debate here, but we can all agree — this is not good for the users at this moment. No matter what the solution here, until we get better wireless standards and headphones which seamlessly switch from device to device, removal of headphone port is simply inconvenience for the users. There’s no real benefit for the users, just inconvenience. But hey, fashion-wise, it’s great!
The workhorse machines Apple makes are totally out of sight. MacBook Pro was last updated … aeons ago. And Mac Pro, the thing which is aimed purely at hard-core IT professionals, was updated over a 1000 days ago.
And look at the update cycles 10 years ago. Less than a year per cycle.
Essentially, look at all of the Apple’s decisions in the past few years. They are all purely fashion and aesthetic driven, at the expense of ease-of-use, and good human-centered design.
So why does this even bother me? It bothers me because I, and many others, bought into an ecosystem which valued human-centered design, and it’s nearly impossible to wiggle out of it now. I have too much devices, and generally my life, tied into Apple’s ecosystem. Yet, Apple has now shifted into making poor work devices, and are making fashion accessories. I cannot work on a fashion accessory, I need a real workhorse, designed from the ground up to help me in my life, and in my work, not hinder me.
The solution is not “hey, buy another dongle” or “well, you will get used to it”. That’s not the solution, that’s lazy design. Solution is to come up with hardware and software which enhances life and helps people along the way, not bog them down. Human-centered design is the solution, not New York Fashion Catwalk type of “design”.
Well, if this is such a problem, how come people still buy Apple products?
— Smart Guy
People buy them because people buy fashion in any case. There are numerous fashion companies which make horrible non-usable products, but hey, it’s fashion, veneer, it looks nice, and people buy it. You just have to understand that the motifs for people buying Apple stuff, as well as Apple’s intentions to produce said stuff, have shifted into fashion & fashion accessory business.
