MATT BOLTON...
There’s a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The
Little Prince, that I think about often when it comes to product
design. “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing
more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Its
applicability to Apple, and especially the design work led by
Jony Ive, is obvious... but so is the potential for it to lead people
down the wrong path. It’s not about taking away everything
until it will stop working if you take away more, it’s about doing
that until it becomes actively worse for the user if you take
away more. Design, as Steve Jobs said, is how it works.
Ive’s approach to product design could be described as
minimalistic, but that’s oversimplifying it. Certainly the design
of the original iPod was clean, but a whacking great wheel in
the middle isn’t more minimal than discreet ‘up’ and ‘down’
buttons. Simplicity is more the way to think of it, both in terms
of the looks and how it it’s operated. It is simple (and even fun)
to scroll a long list in one motion with a slick wheel, but fiddly
(and dull) with buttons.
The iPhone was the pinnacle of
this simplicity in physical design,
cutting almost all physical buttons
for smoother options – momentum
scrolling feels very much like the
idealogical successor to the scroll
wheel, for example. The iPhone
launched with just four essential
buttons, and it simply didn’t need any more. There was nothing
left to take away without making it worse.
Lots of Apple’s designs have made things thinner, lighter
and more minimalist – it would be easy to see these as Apple’s
design principles, and miss the all-important usability aspect.
It feels like that may have happened with the new MacBook
Pros. Swapping to USB-C ports only is
simpler in design than a mish-mash of
connections, but it’s not simpler to the
user, because now an array of dongles
needs to be carried everywhere. The new
keyboard means it can be thinner, but if
it’s less reliable, it’s hassle for the user.
Apple took too much.
Some people attribute a supposed
penchant for thinness over the years to
Jony Ive, with him putting it above all
other design considerations. But some of
Apple’s recent decisions feel to me moreAPPLE CORE Opinion
Shining steel handles evoke the Watch, the
shape recalls the Mac Pro/Power Mac G5, the
grid is similar to one from the Cube... lovely.
The MacBook Pro design is more streamlined than its
predecessor in theory, but more awkward in practice.14 | MACFORMAT | SEPTEMBER 2019 macformat.com @macformat
ABOUT MATT BOLTON
Matt is the editor of Future’s flagship
technology magazine T3 and has been
charting changes at Apple since his
student days. He’s sceptical of tech
industry hyperbole, but still gets warm
and fuzzy on hearing “one more thing”.The iPhone was
the pinnacle of
simplicity in
physical design
SAYS THAT JONY IVE LEAVING
APPLE IS A CHANCE FOR THE
DESIGN GROUP TO STEP OUT
OF HIS SHADOW
like a team trying to emulate his work without
the full understanding of why it works, or
perhaps lacking a Steve Jobs-style ‘editor’ to
point out when the design is clashing with
boring usability.
This might seem like a cause for concern,
but I see a glass-half-full situation: if Ive’s
shadow is causing people to focus on what
they think he would do, rather than look in a
new direction, maybe we’re about to enter a
new era. I think about the new Mac Pro
design – a glorious combination of form and
function, made with elements that reference
designs that stretch back to the Cube, as well
as post-Watch Apple. Apple DNA runs
through it, but it feels like a fresh approach.
I think we’re on the cusp of more of that.