Well. Aren't Velvet Underground basically a Genghis Khan of 20th century western music, as in 95% of people who attended their shows started a band, and roughly 37% of contemporary bands carry their DNA? :)
That said, baity title but the subtitle is better in terms of Roxy not really sounding like anyone before (or since). Also grateful that the universe allowed Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno to occupy the same space long enough to make choice music without collapsing into a singularity.
He made his point. Apple’s design has turned into a performance piece for other designers at the cost of UX. That’s a substantive loss for the end user.
I gave two examples of Apple’s recent designs in my first comment: one looks great but is bad, IMO, and one is great. I’m just saying that there are too many of the first category in the last few years. Does that make it more clear?
It didn’t need clarification. I vehemently disagree with your assertion that treatment of the stairwell boils down to poor UX. Let’s flip your opinion on its head; why compromise a space with heavy ballustrading when the technology and materials exist to hide them in plain sight? The stairs are immediately obvious when you approach them. Isn't that the very idea of good UX?
Not in how I see design. Design should be obvious and easy to use. Assume I would design an app so perfect and beautiful that a settings icon would ruin its look, so I would hide it under a swipe. That’s not good design. Dieter Rams’ “good design is unobtrusive” is about that. So is the famous Steve Jobs quote: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Ok. Let’s take those quotes in context. First Rams - my hero at design school. Any kind of balustrading in the space would be obtrusive. It literally gets in the way of the space the designer is trying to create. The space performs the function of an entrance to a hidden theatre. It’s primary goal is to evoke feelings of excitement and awe. To paraphrase Jobs, it’s supposed to be magical.
Next the Jobs quote. It’s also not just how it works! In fact, I disagree with that quote. Design isn't about any of the those in reality, it’s about solving problems. This is a quote that gets banded about a lot and one that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the design process. The end goal may be how it works, looks and feels. Good design is an elegant solution. Balustrading in the space is inelegant.
The Principle from Rams 10 principals that I’d apply is the one about honesty as hiding the stairs and balustrading could be considered dishonest - however that’s tenuous.
> It’s primary goal is to evoke feelings of excitement and awe.
lame design-school whackery. The only thing that should be giving me feelings of excitement and awe is how well the space functions. Not your tacky visual tricks.
Actually, yes. I need to know I have to walk towards them so I need to see them from afar.
Your attitude is exactly the problem I have with Apple, and the way you think is exactly why you don't see any problem with Apple:
you're building the stairs for those who use them, not for yourself.
People don't care if a laptop is 4.7 millimiters or 4.9. We need battery life. We actually use the headphone jack, and we don't care if the phone is 0.2 millimiters thinner if the tradeoff is we can't use the expensive headphones we have without a dongle. We might use the USB-C port, but we're still using USB, SD cards, etc., keep them there, please.
You might argue that these are silly requests, but then I guess I won't spend $2000 for an Apple laptop again, and I won't be using your stairs. Luckily there is a lot of choice.
“Actually, yes. I need to know I have to walk towards them so I need to see them from afar.”
That is a really weak argument. It’s a strawman. Your ability to see stairs from a distance has no bearing on their usability or functionality. So long as when you’re in the space, it’s obvious that they are there, which from what I can see, is indeed the case.
Your beef seems to be Apple’s apparent arrogance at removing ~4% of battery (realistically closer to 2% when covering and fixings are accounted for) and moving forward with newer connectivity options like headphone jacks (which when looking at how compact the internals of the iPhone X are, make more sense) and older USB ports. I remember when they dropped ADB and parallel/SCSI in favour of USB. I remember buying an iMac without a floppy drive. Apple have always done this. And even when at their lowest, the pack have generally followed. Ask yourself why when you’re next saving a file in Dropbox...
> That is a really weak argument. It’s a strawman. Your ability to see stairs from a distance has no bearing on their usability or functionality.
Really. If I don't even realize they're there, they don't seem to be successful as something that is supposed to take me upstairs.
> Your beef seems to be Apple’s apparent arrogance at removing ~4% of battery (realistically closer to 2% when covering and fixings are accounted for)
Really, 2%. My MacBook Air lasted at least 3 hours more than my MacBook Pro. _At least_.
> and moving forward with newer connectivity options like headphone jacks (which when looking at how compact the internals of the iPhone X are, make more sense) and older USB ports.
Who cares about the internals of the iPhone X? I have headphones and I want to use them. The internal of the iPhone X should serve me, not some other goal (thinness, I guess? I have no idea).
> I remember when they dropped ADB and parallel/SCSI in favour of USB. I remember buying an iMac without a floppy drive. Apple have always done this. And even when at their lowest, the pack have generally followed. Ask yourself why when you’re next saving a file in Dropbox...
I bought the MacBook Air when people complained about no CD drive. It happened 0 times that I needed to use a CD and didn't know where to put it. With USB-C _only_ (if you noticed, I didn't say they shouldn've put 1 or 2 USB-C ports, just that it's completely retarded to have USB-C only) it's a _daily_ annoyance to not be able to connect my stuff without a dongle--which I often don't have at hand. No gain, and just hassle. That's the difference between the "old" Apple and the "new" Apple. They just have no idea what the hell they're doing anymore, and have a history of being right which makes them arrogant that they're right today.
All your arguments seem silly to me, but I care very little if people keep spending 2-3 times as much as they should for phones and computers, as long as it's not me. I ditched the iPhone for a Moto G5 that I bought for $285 and it works great in both hardware and software (the software is better than iOS actually IMHO), and a Surface Book which has both good design and it's functional.
People can only use stairs they can find. If you can't find the thing you want to use, it's useless.
There is a trade-off here that's being glossed over. Features that are unobtrusive to the point of being hard to find initially are perfectly fine in a space that is meant to be used almost exclusively by people that have been there before, such as an office space. Those same designs are very poor choices if a large percentage of users of that space have not been there before or will likely not be there again any time soon.
All iOS updates fall into one of these categories:
1. New bugs are introduced
2. The text messaging app has some new feature or widget I'll never use adding a button to misclick or taking up more vertical space, and I need to figure out how to hide it
3. Some stock app has been completely redesigned for no discernible reason whatsoever, and the new design is more visually appealing but renders some or all of the app completely unusable or broken in some way
4. A new stock app has been introduced that does nothing and doesn't matter at all, and can't be removed
I can't think of a single part of any recent update to iOS that wasn't one of those 4 things.
The most recent victim of #3 is the Podcasts app. What could be simpler than this? I want to search for podcasts, maintain a list of my favorites, and then view a list of their episodes starting with the most recent.
Apparently this is no longer possible.
There's a list called "Listen Now" that's showing me episodes from weeks ago. Who the fuck knows how that list is populated, and what I'm seeing is outdated, so moving on and never looking at that list again.
Then in "Library" there's a list of "Shows." When I click on a show it shows me "My Episodes", which doesn't show me the most recent episodes, so moving on and never looking at that again. Also, what exactly is "My Episode" supposed to mean? What exactly is "mine" about an episode of a podcast?? Does this imply all the other 7 lists of podcast episodes contain episodes that aren't mine? So then whose are they?
Also in "Library" there's a list just called "Episodes." This also doesn't show me the most recent episodes as far as I can tell, and certain podcasts are missing entirely. Moving on and never looking at that again.
Below that is "Recently Updated" shows, which is identical to "Shows" except ordered by update recency. Most every podcast is constantly being updated, so this is functionally a random scramble of the Shows list. Completely pointless, moving on and never looking at that again.
All in all, there are literally 8 separate lists of podcasts and podcast episodes (outside of browse and search), and every single one of them is completely useless except Library > Shows > [Show] > (Scroll all the way to the bottom) > Available Episodes, and it's the single most deeply buried list out of all of the lists.
For the life of me I cannot understand why they're going to such great lengths to improve upon and bury a simple reverse chronological feed of episodes. You can't improve it, you don't need to improve it, nobody asked you to improve it, it's FINE. JUST SHOW ME THE EPISODE THAT HAPPENED THE MOST RECENTLY ok I'm done.
I never understood why Apple made a podcast app, there were several really good ones in the store already matching a number of different tastes. Creating their own took away from the overall environment rather than adding to it.
If you consistently lose money whenever you transact with someone then you're going to stop doing business with or try to limit how much you lose. They're not rigging the actual game in any way. But if they're not throttling you it's a pretty good indication that you're not coming out ahead.
If there was an obscure way to play craps that made the house advantage negative they would either change the rules or ban the practice. You could call it rigging but by that token every game is rigged, that's the whole point, you're playing in the hope of beating the odds. The rules and odds are completely transparent, 'rigging' would be like using weighted dice.
That said, baity title but the subtitle is better in terms of Roxy not really sounding like anyone before (or since). Also grateful that the universe allowed Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno to occupy the same space long enough to make choice music without collapsing into a singularity.