Sabino Maggi
– Source: The London Standard.
Jonathan “Jony” Ive, after thirty years, is leaving Apple to start his own company, LoveFrom, which will have Apple as its first client. The news has filled tech (and non-tech) headlines worldwide for days (as you can read here, here, and here). Almost everyone, after overcoming the surprise of the announcement, expressed hope that the collaboration between the English knight1 and the California-based company could continue just as before.
I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think that would be a mistake. Jony Ive was overdoing it.
Jony Ive is (or was?) a great designer, and over the course of his long career, he created outstanding products. I’m thinking of the various iMacs, from the G3 that marked Apple’s revival to the lamp-like G4 and the all-in-one G5. I’m thinking of the iPod, the iPhone, and iOS 7. But, like many star designers, at some point, he went overboard, embracing an anorexic aesthetic that prioritized design over functionality. Everything became too thin and minimalist, with zero accessibility and repairability.
This gave us the ultra-thin MacBook Pro, aesthetically perfect but technically incomprehensible – a laptop that forces you to carry around a plethora of adapters just to connect a basic USB stick. Or the horrendous butterfly keyboard, whose keys feel like tapping on glass and can be rendered unusable by a speck of dust, forcing you to replace the entire top case (and sometimes the whole laptop!) for a single malfunctioning key.
Then there are the AirPods, which, when their battery dies (two years if you’re lucky), have to be thrown away because even Apple can’t replace the battery without destroying them. Or the iMacs, Mac Minis, and MacBook Airs with soldered RAM that can’t be upgraded. Whatever configuration you choose at purchase is what you’re stuck with forever.2
And let’s not forget the most spectacular flop of all: the Mac Pro, now good only as a (very expensive) trash can. A professional computer so minimal that, to truly use it, you need a bunch of external accessories, all precariously connected via cables. A professional computer that’s not upgradeable (it’s still stuck in 2013), a true contradiction for anyone wanting to preserve the hefty investment it requires. A professional computer that overheats, overheats a hell of a lot!, making it unsuitable for the heavy workloads it’s supposed to handle. Is this the fault of engineers who can’t do thermal calculations or a designer who cares little about the actual function of the product?
Is it just a coincidence that the latest Mac Mini once again offers easily upgradable RAM? Or that the new Mac Pro has returned to its old design — a large, perforated metal case for better heat dissipation, easy to open, with plenty of space for adding drives, RAM, and interface cards? Or that the MacBook Pro keyboard is being redesigned for the umpteenth time in three years?
Perhaps Tim Cook and Apple’s board concluded that Jony Ive had gone too far and decided to finally get rid of him, despite the narrative of a mutual agreement.
It was about time. As Apple users, we deserve better.
– Source: The London Standard.