back to article Jony Ive: Apple isn't here to make money. And students shouldn't use computers so much

Cupertino design don Jony Ive has claimed that Apple is not out to make money - even though it does happen to be the most valuable company in the world. Speaking at an event at London's Design Museum last night, Ive also said that bad design was "offensive", and criticised design students for using, um, computers. "We've …

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  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

    "It's not copying, it's theft. They stole our time, time we could have had with our families."

    Decide on that upfront.

    Cretin.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

      Also to the point, they don't have those ideas in a vacuum. New production ideas and capabilities are coming along, the wider design community is having ideas that get pushed around. The world is not really like J Ive and his fellow gurus sitting in an isolated cabin in the woods for eight years and then suddenly launching something radically new.

      In fact, if they were it wouldn't work because public expectation is also constantly changing. In eight years the design language of everything from cars to razors evolves, and Apple will be affected by that.

      Case in point; a long time ago I was part of a group designing an industrial computer. A company in the Isle of Wight showed us their capability for making membrane keyboards, with the result that our product launched with one shortly after Mr. Sinclair's ZX80. Did we copy his design? Of course not. We just used the same production technique which resulted in a vaguely similar look and feel to our keyboard.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

        It wasn't 8 years making a phone design, it was also about how do you design a modern smartphone to be operated with fingers only.

        Up until that point every touchscreen phone used a stylus.

        1. jelabarre59

          Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

          > Up until that point every touchscreen phone used a stylus

          Yeah, and they were far more usable back then, with the stylus, than they are now.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

          > Up until that point every touchscreen phone used a stylus.

          Great revisionism there.

          They use stylii up until that point because most displays were resistive and pretty crap.

          The iPhone like all touch phones were a design that had come of age due to the state of the technology.

          Apple happened to be there at the right time, which is valuable and visionary in itself.

          But don't make the mistake of thinking that they were the only ones working on touch screen phones.

          Also, the original iPhone (as most people seem to forget) was a shit phone functionally compared to everything else that was around at the time. It did look nice though.

          1. Mage Silver badge
            Mushroom

            Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

            They used resistive to get resolution. The low resolution capacitive existed at least late 1980s. The "holy grail" was handwriting and annotation. Because only BUSINESS users could afford the data.

            Apple did deals for cheap data contracts.

            They used 1980s gesture ideas from a bought in company (Fingerworks?) married to a cut down OSX to make iOS. The first iPhone was Samsung 6400 series ARM and commodity hardware. 8 years is 8 years WATCHING till they could do a phone by only some GUI development and commodity HW.

            Ives then slaps it into a Dieter Rams inspired box that Braun would have done in 1959 if smart phones had existed.

            Then MARKETING plus the first attractive for CONSUMER contracts.

            The whole Jony Ive story is a fairy tale.

            1. Dave 126

              Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

              @Mage

              > The whole Jony Ive story is a fairy tale.

              Is it?

              The story is: son of a northern craftsman studies product design, is noted by his tutors for thinking about how products are actually made, doesn't find a British company that sees that good design can further its business, decamps to California, is hired by Apple and eventually noticed by Steve Jobs who wishes to mark a change in company he has returned to.

              Ive isn't a genius, and has never claimed to be. It isn't that Apple are 'magical', but that their competitors don't always get the importance of good design. These companies may have some talented designers, but have some ignorant managers who were promoted out of the sales department. Jony Ive's designs would count for little if they had been released at the wrong time, or at the wrong price... instead they worked in concert with Apple's strategy, supply chain, and yeah, business muscle. Had Sony not made a few mis-steps, we might be talking about them here today (they were exploring music download and steaming services plus associated devices and UIs in 1998 and, like a c 2001 Job's 'Digital Hub' keynote speech, were planning to place their VAIO - visual audio input output - PCs to be that hub. Before the iPhone, Sony had the Palm-powered Clie, and some experience of phones... Whatever.)

              To follow Dieter Rams' principles of good design does take time and effort - and this doesn't happen when the management just want to ship a box with 'good enough' specs. It also doesn't happen when the consumers are only buying the product with the biggest numbers - witness the nineties PC market (Mhz! MBs!), or the digital camera Mega-pixel race.

        3. Simon Taylor 1

          Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

          If wouldn't if it was true. I wouldn't mind if people said, "oh, I didn't realise it wasn't true, sorry". But to hear the same old BS trotted out time after time is galling. The LG Prada was the first capacitive touchscreen phone. By your logic, are you now willing to admit that Apple copied LG?

          I can't think of a single, significant technical innovation which Apple were first with.

      2. Bleu

        Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

        The design 'language' of cars seems to me to have been largely static for a long time now.

        The only big differences between new cars now and, say, fifteen years ago, are the shape of the hybrids to fit the giant batteries, and the absence of slightly charming products like Nissan's several retro designs at the time, though I gather they were not for export.

        I still feel minor elation when I see one.

        The New Way (rampant greed) got rid of such whimsy in short order.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

      I'm guessing you don't work in a creative industry?

      The pictures of the original Android prototype show a Blackberry type device, small screen, qwerty keyboard. Then all of a sudden it becomes a touchscreen device.

      Same with Samsung's phones:

      http://leadingstrategicinitiatives.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/samsung-smart-phones.png

      1. Ammaross Danan

        Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

        "Then all of a sudden it becomes a touchscreen device."

        Perhaps that was because someone (LG, Sharp, Samsung itself) came along and said: "We will be mass-producing these new screens with touch capabilities in a few months....Want to make a new device with them?" Of course one would abandon the old Blackberry look when touchscreens became viable. Apple didn't move to touchscreens because they were ludicrously expensive and they were willing to take a hit just wanted to help humanity....

      2. fishman

        Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

        LG Prada.

        http://www.lg.com/uk/images/lg-mobile-phones/p940/gallery/medium01.jpg

    3. TheOtherHobbes

      Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

      >"It's not copying, it's theft. They stole our time, time we could have had with our families."

      Dieter Rams called. He wants his ideas back.

      1. Dave 126

        Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

        >Yeah, and they [phones] were far more usable back then, with the stylus, than they are now.

        Comparing multiple fingers to a single stylus is akin to comparing oranges to a single banana. The stylus gives you more point accuracy and perhaps pressure readings, but the use of multiple fingers gives modifiers. Horses for courses: a drawing app will be better with a stylus, whereas an app that simulates an audio mixer may work better with fingers. Sometimes you use a mouse, sometimes you use a joystick.

        It is clear to anyone with a stopwatch that the act of removing a stylus from a phone (or from your pocket, or from behind your ear) incurs a time penalty... looking for the damned thing when you've dropped it even more so. In product design, this is known as an 'offline' issue - an aspect of a product's design that affects the user when they are not actively using it.

        Now, some older phones are more efficient for some tasks - one could literally navigate an old Nokia blindfold, because the menus were numbered, so [Menu] [6] [2]* would bring up the voice recorder before you'd brought the phone to your lips.

        * These are made up numbers, so don't blame me if you accidentally set your old Nokia to Japanese.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

      > They stole our time,

      Wow. It's like he's accusing them of being Weeping Angels or something.

      Do they cease to have time once it's been stolen?

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Those "6 months" are your advantage to make money, eejit.

      > They stole our time

      No sense of irony...

  2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Theft

    Apple a company that started by making boxes to steal from ATT

    That then copied Xerox's gui

    Then LG's touchscreen phone

    If your only innovation is making things shiny and rounded then you are lucky to get 6months

    1. Steve Todd
      FAIL

      Re: Theft

      It's amazing that so much wrongness can fit in one post.

      Woz built blue boxes for phone freaking, Apple didn't try to sell them.

      Xerox didn't invent the GUI, and Apple licenced what they had done (and then added a shedload of stuff to make it into the modern GUI that you'd be familiar with).

      Apple didn't claim to invent the touch screen phone (I remember using HTC units branded as XDAs here in the UK years before the iPhone), what they did was to invent a GUI that worked on a multitouch capacative screen, on a small, compact, easy to use phone. There's a big difference between pre and post iphone smart phones, and even the Android development team admitted that.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Theft

        > Xerox didn't invent the GUI, and Apple licenced what they had done (and then added a shedload of stuff to make it into the modern GUI that you'd be familiar with).

        Bullshit.

        Do you perchance work at Apple? If so, you guys need to hire a better PR firm. The one you're using right now sucks.

        Here's a link to a video showing Steve Jobs' take on the facts. The video is from a while ago, so Jobs wasn't as prone as believing his own mythology back then:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpMeFh37mCE

        About on-screen keyboards:

        http://homepage3.nifty.com/tsato/xvkbd/

        See, some of us were born before 1991, we studied CompSci in college and we learned C and X. The notion that Apple invented the on-screen keyboard is just another steaming pile of Apple Bullshit.

      2. Deryk Barker

        Re: Theft

        If Xerox didn't invent the GUI, perhaps you'd care to tell us who did?

        1. Steve Todd

          Re: Theft

          The first GUI and mouse was created by Doug Engelbart at SRI International (go look it up if you like),

          The whole "Apple stole the GUI from Xerox" myth is debunked here http://obamapacman.com/2010/03/myth-copyright-theft-apple-stole-gui-from-xerox-parc-alto/

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Theft

            > http://obamapacman.com/2010/03/myth-copyright-theft-apple-stole-gui-from-xerox-parc-alto/

            Wowser.

            Some Obama/Steve Jobs/Celebrity/Apple Fanboi site. The apex of credibility.

            What's Kim Kardashian take on this? Would you happen to have a link to her site? I can't wait to read it.

            Is there any other - and hopefully better - Horseshit you can entertain us with?

            1. Glen 1
              Holmes

              Re: Xerox didn't invent the GUI

              The Mother of All Demos

              That was at the Stanford Research Institute, Demo given in 1968.

              From the Wiki artice:

              "As the seventies started, much of Engelbart's team departed ARC and went their own ways, with many of them ending up at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC)"

              So Xerox didn't invent the GUI, but a lot of the team who did, ended up working there.

              1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

                Re: Xerox didn't invent the GUI

                Lord. Even Wikipedia knows the history of the GUI better than the people posting in this thread.

                1963: Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad. A CAD GUI. This was a GUI application, and not a general-purpose OS, but was clearly a graphical user interface.

                1968: The Mother of All Demos. Doug Engelbart introduces the mouse (Sketchpad used a lightpen as the pointing device), multiple application windows, etc. But Engelbart & Co's NLS was not entirely a GUI shell in modern terms; for example it mostly used text windows, with some embedded graphics.

                1972: The Alto at Xerox PARC. While not a commercial machine, the Alto is the first graphical workstation produced in significant quantities and running a GUI OS. It's the first thing that would be generally recognizable today as a general-purpose GUI machine. There are numerous contributors, such as Alan Kay.

                The Star came 9 years later, in '81; it was the first commercial GUI system. Two years later, GUIs appeared for Apple and IBM PCs (the Lisa and Visi On, respectively), as did SunView. Then the Macintosh and X Window System in '84 and Microsoft Windows in '85. (And who could forget Presentation Manager in '88?1)

                So roughly speaking, the GUI was invented at Sutherland at MIT, Engelbart and his team at SRI, and Xerox PARC, from '63 to '72. Major innovations leading to the dominant GUIs of today (iOS, Windows, Android, X) date from the mid-80s onward.

                1You did, didn't you. You forgot Presentation Manager.

      3. Fluffy Bunny

        Re: Theft

        If Xerox "Xerox didn't invent the GUI", then they were the first ones to put it onto actual working hardware. I used the Xerox Star and it worked a lot like an Apple product of the time (except it wasn't slowed down by an underpowered processor with too little RAM*)

        And if you listen to Apple now, it sounds an awful lot like they are claiming they did invent the smartphone.

        * and it cost a shed-load more.

    2. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Re: Theft

      LG's touchscreen phone?!?

      Apple Newton, development started in 1987 and the product was released in 1993. It has many of the features of a modern smartphone and was released a year before the first smartphone (IBM Simon).

      To develop the Newton Apple needed a low power mobile CPU and helped fund the development of it with ARM.

      So the whole modern ARM smartphone world is thanks to ARM and Apple.

      1. Missing Semicolon Silver badge

        @ GilesJones

        Rubbish

        The Amstrad PDA600 preceded the Newton. And outsold it. And worked better. Z80 :-)

        Hitachi Possible - IP connectivity via a plugged in phone, email, work processing. Hitachi SH3 - another low-power 32-bit micro. 1995.

      2. Fluffy Bunny

        Re: Theft

        Except the Newton had no phone capability. It also had a really crap user interface.

  3. splodge
    Trollface

    Well, he's certainly encouraged me to go out and queue for my first ever Apple product.

  4. btrower

    Piling on...

    Apple isn't here to make money. Apple is here to *take* money. Plus lock out competition. Plus claim 'ownership' of ideas built on the work of others or even obvious ones like: "let's polish this and round the corners".

    The richest company in the world is not out to make money. If only I could accidentally accumulate 50 billion bucks.

  5. fruitoftheloon

    Diddums

    I think their stockholders may disagree

  6. Professor Clifton Shallot

    So should we have good design or not?

    If people are not allowed to copy good design then there will be more badly designed things around to offend him.

    If he cares about the design more than the money why would he mind being copied?

    1. Ammaross Danan

      Re: So should we have good design or not?

      Yes he would be offended by being copied. Hence the author's comment of "presumably devices without an apple on them." He's simply offended by all devices he didn't design, because only he can design good things.

      1. Dave 126

        Re: So should we have good design or not?

        er... Jony Ive uses many things other than computers, so therefore we can assume he uses many things that aren't made by Apple. Toothbrushes, cars, shoes, ovens, pencils, knives, whatever.

        Shit, when he started at Apple, he didn't even use an Apple-branded computer for his design work because that kind of CAD software wasn't available for Mac OS (it may well have been still on the mainframe).

        I don't own any Apple kit, and I'm still offended by bad design - in hardware or in software. Sometimes when using using a product you just get the sense that the designer doesn't use this thing themselves - because if they did, they wouldn't have made it so annoying to use.

        Bad design is the standard British light switch - a 100mm x 100mm square of plastic, and the only useful bit is 12mm x 25mm, of which only a 12mm x 10mm will actually do anything and even then it has sharp uncomfortable edges and requires some force to actuate. The French have switches where the entire 100mm x 100mm surface is a switch, so the lights can be turned on with your elbow as you enter a room whilst carrying a tea tray.

        1. david bates

          Re: So should we have good design or not?

          You can get light switches where the switch covers virtually the whole plate. The UK light switch is as big as it is so it uses the same box as the UK power socket, which is as big as it is to take a UK 13 amp plug.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: So should we have good design or not?

            It is also as big as it is to allow double switches. The British system is not perfect but is highly standardised for flexibility - a concept alien to Apple.

          2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: So should we have good design or not?

            >as big as it is to take a UK 13 amp plug.

            Which is as big as it is in case you ever need to stop invading tanks

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: So should we have good design or not?

              The UK 13A plug is as big as it is because it is fused, and it needs to dissipate the heat. In the early days it was mainly being used with electric fires which could drawn nearly 13A, so this was important.

              Nowadays there are many purpose built power supplies integrated into plugs, so the size of the UK plug is no real disadvantage - it is big enough to dissipate the switching losses in a 2A mobile phone charger without becoming hot. I particularly like the BlackBerry and Apple phone chargers which fit entirely into the envelope of a traditional 13A plug, much neater than the version needed for the US 110V supply.

              1. Dave 126

                Re: So should we have good design or not?

                >highly standardised for flexibility - a concept alien to Apple.

                Actually, it seems to be a familiar concept for Apple:

                If I walk into any supermarket or electronics retailer, I will find a wide choice of 3rd-party headphones designed to work with Apple devices. Not good for me, because I have an Android phone. Likewise phone cases and speaker docks... This is the case because whilst Apple headset sockets aren't an industry standard, nor are their 13 or 9 pin connectors, they command a large enough market share to be an ersatz standard.

                Annoyingly, not all Android TRRS 3.5mm connectors the same... I have seen some Sennheiser headsets sold as being for Samsung Galaxy S4/5 phones, and I know that Sony have used some different resistor values across their range... Grr! I sometimes wish Google had exerted some influence to bring about a standard wired Android headset spec, and a standard Android docking solution.

            2. Dave 126

              Re: So should we have good design or not?

              >>as big as it is to take a UK 13 amp plug.

              I much prefer British 13 Amp plus to the French ones, and I believe they are safer, too.

              However, whilst I know the reasons why British light switches are mounted in a large mounting plate, nobody has answered why we don't put lovely big switches on them!

              And another thing: Why aren't all newly built houses fitted with some Cat6 cable between rooms? It would cost eff-all to do before the walls are plastered. It is just a lack of thinking, a lack of care.

        2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: So should we have good design or not?

          I don't own any Apple kit, and I'm still offended by bad design - in hardware or in software

          I'm annoyed by bad design, but my idea of "good design" is clearly very different from Ive's, since I haven't liked an Apple product since the //gs. I think he (and most designers) rather drastically underestimates the subjective aspect of his "good design". It's not a Platonic essence.

    2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: So should we have good design or not?

      If my designs were [bjust copied[/b] then I'd be peeved.

      If my designs were copied and improved then I'd probably say 'well done'.

      See the difference?

      The same goes for my source code.

      Copy it and leave my name on it. Good

      Copy it, add nothing, remove my name BAD, very BAD.

      Copy it and improve on it [leaving my name on it and adding yours...] Good.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good to know what offends him

    not famine, murder, plague, pestilence, oppression, etc.

    It's badly designed throw away gizmos. They are culturally offensive against fellow humans. Killing, maiming, raping, starving, torturing, that's OK as long as you do it with well-designed gizmos.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good to know what offends him

      "Killing, maiming, raping, starving, torturing, that's OK as long as you do it with well-designed gizmos."

      You forgot your concluding fact:

      "We can only conclude from this that Jonny Ive is cunt of the first order"

      1. Dave 126

        Re: Good to know what offends him

        >"We can only conclude from this that Jonny Ive is cunt of the first order"

        Er? So, your logic:

        Ive is offended by badly designed objects. On the basis that there are far, far worse things in this world, this makes him a "cunt of the first order" according to you. Um... so what order of cunt do you consider the people who are committing the murders and torturing etc, since the very idea of downgrading their offensiveness offends you?

        Confused.

    2. disgruntled yank

      Re: Good to know what offends him

      So can I stop by and spray-paint graffiti on your house? That falls substantially short of any of the offenses you name.

      1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
        Pirate

        Re: So can I stop by and spray-paint graffiti on your house?

        Only if it's well designed.

        GJC

    3. kmac499

      Re: Good to know what offends him

      1) Apple kit is slick and 'well designed' , but so it should be with 100% control.

      2)The more I hear of Ives the less I like him. He obviously believes that he can sit on his ivory cloud drinking skinny unicorn milk decaffe lattes dreaming up concepts that no one else can. Once dreamt he will hand his thoughts down to the morlocks in the unterverse who will toil alway to meet their masters demand whilst lauding the creators genius..

      Bollocks..

      I would draw the similarity between Architects and civil engineers. Clothes designers and tailors, Car designers and production engineers. In all cases the former has the freedom to think without the constraint of what's possible or practical The latter professions then go. How the fuck do we build this.. and at that price, by next wednesday.

      I would love to see an example of Ives code that he personally wrote to implement any of his ideas or even the API calls he specified; or is he just a sketch book fairy that has lived in the shadow of a well renowned control freak and corporate bully?

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: Good to know what offends him

        I never realised that cunts of the first order even exist...

        I mean - in my experience, cunts are normally of the second or higher order, so that an arbitrary line intersects them in at least two places...

        1. Dave 126

          Re: Good to know what offends him

          >"I would draw the similarity between Architects and civil engineers. Clothes designers and tailors, Car designers and production engineers. In all cases the former has the freedom to think without the constraint of what's possible or practical The latter professions then go. How the fuck do we build this.. and at that price, by next wednesday."

          I think you've just identified the difference between an Industrial Designer and a Product Designer - Ive is of the latter camp.

          Here's an example: The designer of the first Sony Playstation insisted on a vent design that required the injection mold tooling to pull away in two directions when the case was being formed, even though the engineers had wanted just a simpler, cheaper perf pattern. The designer, a Mr Teiyu Goto, knew things that the engineers didn't - he knew where Sony where aiming to pitch the product in the market against the incumbents Sega and Nintendo (Sony had been working with Nintendo on a 'Playstation' in 1990, but Nintendo pulled out). The strategy extended to the marketing of the Playstation, as well as the games commissioned for it (such as the clubber-friendly WipEout) - creating its image as a console for young adults, not just children. The Playstation hardware and software accounted for nearly 25% Sony's profits for 1997, so Mr Goto was vindicated. He went on to design the first VAIO desktop and laptop.

          A Product Designer will understand the production techniques, and will be able to make an informed decision on whether a design decision is worth the extra production cost - or other costs, such as battery life vs weight. The engineers won't have all the information to make these decisions - they won't know, for example, projections of many units will be manufactured over the next 12 months. The key points here are teamwork and communication between experts in different fields, and for that to work the designer (or as Dieter Rams calls it, the 'Form Engineer') needs at least enough knowledge to converse with these experts. He needs to understand their input, and to communicate his/her views to them.

          An Industrial Designer just makes a pretty case to stick over the box that the engineers have already made. As William Gibson will tell you, the first Industrial Designers were recruited from Broadway, as they were theatre set dressers.

          - Digital Dreams - The Work of the Sony Desaign Centre 1999 ISBN 9780789302625

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