Did Apple Just Give Up?
There was once a time when the design industry looked up to the giant that is Apple. However with a recent shift in their shipping of substandard products, failing software and generally shoddy design this reputation is seemingly becoming increasingly tarnished. Is this something Apple can come back from?
The other week I opened up my Quora digest email with the opening line of “Will Apple Ever Go Out Of Business?” What a stupid question… I thought, of course they can, but what I didn’t realise is how quickly this could happen.
According to this Wired article, (referenced in the answer) the lifespan of a Fortune 500 company has decreased rapidly over the last 35 years
For instance what about RIM; there was a time when no self-respecting businessman would be seen without at least one Blackberry handset on them. Now with falling profits and struggling sales, the company seems close to collapse. So what happened there? Well I would argue that RIM fell behind, with the introduction of the iPhone and Android handsets, RIM left their Blackberry line swimming in the dark. The devices stuck to the same form factor, hardly improved from a hardware perspective and just completely ignored the shift in the industry. Now I’m not sure why this happened but it seemed like the company lacked the drive it once had.
This is what I think is happening at Apple. Now some of you may disagree, because you’re still Apple fanboys, but surely you can’t argue with the results of their design department? We all know that iOS7 was Apple’s first foray into “flat design” and well, it bombed. I personally didn’t upgrade until apps were telling me I needed it to either install them or update them. It was awful. There were misaligned UI elements, unconsidered design and overall it was very “un-apple”.
When iOS launched, one of my favourite sites to visit (albeit occasionally) was sloppyui.tumblr.com. Sloppy UI is a curated collection of “iOS Fails” and contains plenty of examples of bad execution and design throughout iOS. Now the guys/gals running this site weren’t haters, they were actually Apple Fans but felt let down by how bad the UI had got so thought they would try to highlight what they thought to be Apple’s errors.
iOS 7 was released on September 18th 2013. This was almost a year after Jony Ive was assigned to heading-up the user interface design division at Apple after spending 15 years working solely on the interface. With this appointment I was hopeful he was the man, along with Steve Jobs who many considered pulled Apple out of the fire and threw them back into the spotlight. He had led the team that designed the iPod, the iMac and the iPhone, now he was the man to head up the user interface and experience team; surely this was a good move? But then came iOS7, it was widely criticised by designers and people started to hate on Apple. Now in iOS9, most of the errors have been ironed out, but it still leaves me feeling a little wanting when I use the interface.
A few weeks back two well respected and ex-Apple designers, Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini co-wrote an article on FastCompany explaining their thoughts on how “Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name.” In it, they described their frustrations as to how Apple, once “known for designing easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products”, and “champion of the graphical user interface” had started to “[destroy] design.” Pretty strong words right?
Entering ‘define destroy’ into Google gives “end the existence of (something) by damaging or attacking it” as it’s definition. Norman and Tognazzini claim this destruction of design really started when Apple started to neglect their own principles of design. This principally happened with the introduction of the iPhone, then the iPad. The iPhone started to use a gestural based interface, no back button, just swipe. This leads to users taking a while to learn. Whilst Apple products are considered some of the most beautifully designed pieces of hardware (take the new Macbook for example), their insistence for removing what they deem to be ‘unnecessary’ is ultimately damaging the user’s experience leading them to “blame themselves for the shortcomings of their devices: [and to think] “If I weren’t so stupid . . . !””.
Apple’s emphasis of making things minimal and unobtrusive is actually having the opposite effect to what they’re after. Instead of increasing the beauty and simplicity of their products, they’re instead leading people to have to search for ways around things. Norman and Tognazzini talk about a woman that they met who complained that she had to use the accessibility options to increase the font size on her device just to be able to read it. Whilst this was ok on most of the system interface, “she complained that on many app screens, this option made normal fonts so large that the text wouldn’t fit on the screen.”
“Apple products deliberately hide complexity by obscuring or even removing important controls.”
Continuing down the article, Norman and Tognazzini make a poignant observation. “Apple products deliberately hide complexity by obscuring or even removing important controls.” If you’ve read the article then you’ll be aware they are again referencing the lack of more than one button on the face of the iPhone. The singular ‘home button’ has been ubiquitous to the iPhone home screen since launch, and is so far the only button to be placed on there. However Android went on a very different path, choosing to switch between 2 and three onscreen or on device buttons across the wide range of devices.
Now I know a lot of you reading may baulk at the idea of Android having a better implementation than iOS, but bear with me. With the three buttons accessible on the base of most Android devices they put simple but important user interactions front and centre of the devices. Now this may not be the most beautiful method, but it’s certainly the easiest to use. No more double tapping your home button to switch apps or moving to the top left corner to quickly tap back on the screen, everything you need is within a thumbs reach.
I’ve had the chance to play around with the newest Apple TV and if any of you have I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s shockingly bad. The amount of features that are missing mean that my £19 Amazon Fire TV stick not only works better but is easier to use. So why on earth would I want to spend £129–169 to buy one of these?
Firstly, the keyboard is a nightmare. Make a mistake? Sure just swipe all the way across to the backspace key on the right of the screen before clicking that and then trying to move back to the keys you actually wanted. Now I know that on-screen keyboards, especially those on a TV have always been a nightmare, but Apple have one major advantage over most competitors here, they have a team that make the iPhone, so surely you could connect your iPhone to your TV and type on that? Nope, sorry you can’t. You can however use your iPhone to set-up your TV so I’m not entirely sure why you can’t use it as a keyboard, but I digress.
Also the remote control is a nightmare to use, for one thing the “menu” button is generally used as a back button (in apps), oh and to also activate the menu. This is surely a user experience nightmare and not something I would expect from a company of Apple’s supposed design credentials.
As you can see from the above image, UIBlur is used in Apple TV too along with the ubiquitous UI Kit, Apple’s answer to Bootstrap of Foundation but for native apps. However as tvOS is brand-spanking-new a lot of app developers and content creators are making their apps entirely from this interface, leading to bland, ugly looking native tvOS apps with the only people leading in the field being game developers. Now I know Apple wanted to open up their software to as many developers as they could, but if you take a look through some of the biggest content publishers pushing applications (like ESPN for example) you will be underwhelmed by not only the apps look and feel but also by how ordinary it is. Everything on this new platform feels threatened by this uniformity almost enforced by Apple.
And that’s just the software. For the hardware, I don’t even know where to begin… Actually I do.
Oh my… So not only have Apple managed to create a product that even they admit needs a battery case, but they’ve also managed to make this case incredibly ugly. The silicone outer-shell and huge bulge that is has means that not only will it be a bit of a pain when you have it in your jeans pocket, but it’s pretty damn ugly. To top it all off the “soft elastomer hinge” that Apple describe is basically a flexible bit of rubber 😧 -revolutionary; and, for some reason… there is an LED inside the case, so you can’t see it if you have your iPhone in there.
While some of you may think $99 sounds reasonable for an Apple product, let me remind you that the battery capacity for this thing is quoted at 1,877mAh, which in comparison to its competition is firstly laughable and secondly won’t even give you a full charge. Well what’s the point in that? Sure it’s made by Apple (well somebody in China anyway), and yeah it feels nice (same material as Apple’s other silicone case); but it fails where it shouldn’t and that’s in both functionality and design terms.
But that’s just Apple’s latest poor product. And after releasing the Apple Watch and Macbook last year and then the Pencil and newest Magic Mouse this year it was clear that Apple have a problem with how to charge a device and keeping that charging experience consistent.
With the Macbook came the advance of USB-C; a new type of port designed with bringing uniformity to devices across the globe. Whether they were made by Apple, Google, Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung or HTC, this new USB standard is aimed at bringing the lot to one port. With the Macbook, Apple went full steam ahead on this approach, but what came with it was a huge range of compromises. For one thing, Apple only decided to put one USB-C port on the whole thing, not a problem you may think, I can always use another port. Wrong. That USB port is the only port on the whole device. So if you want to charge your Macbook and use an external monitor at the same time? Tough, you can’t; well not without buying an adaptor. I think this oversight of shifting towards a more and more minimal piece of hardware is further proof of the point that Norman and Tognazzini were making about Apple’s shift towards making more beautiful yet harder to use products (Smart Battery Case excluded from this bit obviously).
However bad design considerations do not stop there. For instance the Magic Mouse v2, still doesn’t fit your hand properly, it’s still too small and to charge it (well I suppose a built in battery is a plus), you have to plug a lighting cable into the base… So yeah you can’t use it when you’re charging it… great idea there Apple.
And then there’s the new iPad Pro and Pencil. Sure people have been asking for more screen estate for eons, but I’m not sure people were expecting such a price hike accompanied by two very sub-standard accessory additions (the only things that really differentiate it from the iPad).
First there’s the Pencil, Apple’s answer to well, Pencil (a product by the guys at Studio 53 who bought you Paper). It’s long, thin and surprisingly it’s white. It includes functionality like pressure sensitivity, a thin point (so it doesn’t rely on replicating a finger touching your screen then) and a tilt shader which is great for adding shading to your drawings. However its downfall is in the way you charge it. Sure it might be convenient that you can charge it from your iPad Pro’s lightning port, but what isn’t is the fact that the Pencil sticks out the whole time; ready to snap off.
Then there’s the “Smart Keyboard”. Great, another pointlessly named Apple product. When you visit the Apple page for this product however you’re met with language such as “The only thing we didn’t reinvent was the alphabet” and “The new Smart Keyboard completely reimagines this centuries-old invention” which fills you with hope. Then you see it. It’s just a case with a keyboard, much like the Surface Keyboard, but bigger, less beautiful and well more unsightly. With the Surface Keyboard, Microsoft have kept the keyboard entirely detachable from just the bottom of the device, Apple went for a more cumbersome wrap around approach to try and provide a stand (something the Microsoft Surface has built in). Also as Apple have insisted in having raised keys this results in the keyboard sitting up from the rest of the cover when folded flat on the device screen. Pretty poor right?
So what happened? Apple under the guidance of Ive and Jobs flew from near collapse to the largest company in the world, could we again be at another verge of collapse? It was the lack of innovation and product line-up that almost killed Apple before, but has it grown too big to even care anymore? I think so. Profit seems to play a bigger part these days (much like it did in 1997), and innovation is secondary. Steve Jobs whilst CEO refused to pay shareholders a dividend to build up cash for innovation, and I think he did that (Apple now have over $200 Billion in cash (maybe more like $150 Billion taking away their debt)) but yet we still see no innovation. Just copy-cat products or accessories that don’t inspire anymore just add to the profit each quarter.
Sure, I will probably buy the iPhone 7, but by no means think this is anything to do with Apple, but their 3rd Party Developers. If all of my favourite apps (and new ones) were available on both iOS and Android simultaneously, I think it would be worth the switch. Not only do I get a better designed and considered OS, I also get a wider choice in hardware and brand-new ground-breaking product integrations.
The bottom line; Apple became too comfortable with their success, and with comfort comes laziness.
