Jony says he felt "dispirited" by Tim Cook's lack of interest in design.<p>Jony's ideas about design caused apple to ship the non-functional butterfly keyboards for <i>FOUR YEARS</i> [1], as well as reducing the functionality of laptops by removing most ports and adaptors.<p>Now that he is gone, we have functional keyboards and ports again.<p>Designers will tell you that design is not only how something looks, but how it works. Where is the disconnect with the Jony Ive era of Mac hardware? He's a renown master of design, why doesn't it make sense!?<p>[1] Butterfly keys were offered in Macs between 2015 and 2019 <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/guide/butterfly-keyboard-issues/" rel="nofollow">https://www.macrumors.com/guide/butterfly-keyboard-issues/</a>
Apple made a hard U-turn from form-over-function to the current state which was much needed<p>The design iterations over generations are now fairly static and that's a good thing - because Apple high end bulk customers are mostly developers, not the eccentric designer or the lone musician. It matters to keep thousands of your $2000-wielding developers happy than a handful of $50,000 carrying artists who are finicky about post-modernistic aesthetics. The kinds Jonny Ive felt a natural kinship with. His design ethos were good to make a splash from the moribund vanilla boxes in early 2000s. But keep making those splashes (without Steve Jobs to rein in with criticism & engineering team getting second-classed), you got serious product troubles.<p>Thinkpads come to mind when I think about MacBooks lineage. Well maintained product line which has kept their hardware UX fairly unchanged - the net result being they are an extremely dependable product in corporate environment.<p>Edit: I remember talking to a designer who once worked at Apple. I am told Jonny Ive even seriously floated the idea of a smooth slab iPhone/iPad devoid of any power buttons, charging slot or rockers - only featuring touch sensitive edges & speaker grille. Glad engineering team didn't take up on it. Would have been a recovery & update disaster.