Unlike any other consumer electronics company, Apple has been nailing product design for decades. Jony Ive and his incredibly talented team have produced countless iconic gadgets that rivals can only dream of, and it’s the biggest reason why the company is so successful today.
But there are suggestions that Apple’s design prowess is beginning to slip away. Under new leadership, Apple has rolled out a number of products — most recently the butt-ugly Smart Battery Case — that have led some fans to question various design decisions.
Are those fans right to be concerned? Is it downhill from here for Apple’s design team, or is this a whole lot of fuss over nothing?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over those questions and more — and weigh in with your thoughts down in the comments section!
Luke Dormehl (Writer, Cult of Mac): Well, this week’s big news was Apple’s hideous Smart Battery Case: an iPhone accessory so hideous that Tim Cook had to do the tech CEO equivalent of the angry dad coming to school to tell mean kids to stop picking on his son.
Let me get this out the way at first: The fact that this case is the smartphone equivalent of Quasimodo doesn’t mean Apple’s design department is goofing off and the company is six months away from declaring bankruptcy.
But is this piece of frankly shoddy design symptomatic of a worrying trend at Apple? Unfortunately I’d have to say “yes.” And the Smart Battery Case is far from the only illustration we have of this.
Killian Bell (Writer, Cult of Android): Look, I know that case isn’t the prettiest thing Apple has made, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the angry tweets suggest. All battery cases are ugly — that can’t be avoided — but at least Apple’s solves some of the problems you get with the others, like the long and complicated application and removal process, and the interference with cellular signals.
I think it’s a little ludicrous to suggest Apple’s entire design philosophy is going down the pan because of this case. We’ve seen some exceptionally well designed products from Apple this year, including Apple Watch, the new MacBook, iPad Pro, and more. We shouldn’t let an ugly case take anything away from those things.
I will admit that the Smart Battery Case is a rare example of Apple siding with function over form, but I just don’t think that could have been avoided here.
Photo: Apple
Luke: You and I discussed this the day the battery case was released. Taken in isolation, neither of us thought it was quite as massive a deal as some people were making out. But it’s also not an isolated incident. The truth is that a number of small design flaws have been cropping up with Apple products as of late.
How about the Lightning port on the bottom of the Magic Mouse 2, for instance? Or the bulge of the iPad Pro’s keyboard so that the Smart Keyboard cover doesn’t sit flush? Or the way you have to charge the Apple Pencil by precariously plugging it into the giant-sized tablet in a way that hardly looks particularly intuitive — or safe? Or even the un-intuitive UI elements that former respected Apple employees have described as “giving design a bad name?”
People can accuse me of nitpicking, and use the defense that — in cases like the Apple Pencil or Mighty Mouse charging — it won’t take more than a few minutes to carry out, so you can live with the sketchy decision Apple made. Hell, even Cook used that argument about the Smart Battery Case by saying that you’re probably not going to it every day.
But Apple was always about sweating the small details. And now it’s not.
It’s easy to find humor in stories about Steve Jobs taking a crazy amount of time to choose the color for Apple’s original logo, and obsessively insisting that the inside — as well as the outside — of the NeXT Computer be painted black, but it was that kind of attention to detail that made Apple great.
I remember hearing a story about how Van Halen’s David Lee Roth insisted on having it in his contract that backstage at every show there would be a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. This was the first thing he’d check when he got to a new venue, and he’d go crazy if there was even a single brown M&M in the bowl. At first the story sounds like typical head-in-the-clouds pampered rock star stuff, but the reality is that he was doing it to make sure people read the contracts properly. He wanted to assess whether the stagehands were paying attention, and getting all the technical details right.
It’s not all that different here. Do I care about Apple releasing one ugly iPhone case in a category that’s not exactly known for its aesthetic appeal? No. Do I think this is part of a worrying trend that suggests a lack of Apple’s typically high quality control? Sadly I do. As a long-time unabashed Apple fan, it’s more than a little concerning.
Killian: I’ll admit the Lightning port on the bottom of the Magic Mouse is kind of a silly idea, but it’s not the end of the world. Just charge the damn thing when you’re not using it, and you won’t have to top it up when you are.
And as for the Apple Pencil, how else would you charge it with iPad Pro? Where else could you put the Lightning port to solve the apparent charging problem? If you don’t like charging the Pencil in the iPad itself, just get the adapter and use a regular Lightning cable.
I’m glad you pointed out those ugly user interface elements, because this proves Apple has always had its little design hiccups here and there; not everything it makes is completely perfect. And many of those hiccups happened while Steve Jobs and his incredible attention to detail were still running Apple.
In your recent feature titled “5 Apple accessories as crappy as the iPhone battery case,” you listed the “hockey puck” mouse from the original iMac and the iPod Hi-Fi — both of which were launched while Jobs was Apple CEO.
There are lots of other examples of bad design that we forget, like the headphone jack in the original iPhone that only accepted certain cables, the buttonless iPod shuffle that required headphones with an inline remote, the awful expansion dock for the 20th Anniversary Mac, and of course, the iPhone 4 antennas that didn’t work if you held them too tight.
If Apple has a quality control problem now, then it has always been there and you’re only just noticing it. Apple’s a much bigger company now so these things get a lot more press, but the company has long been introducing products with little flaws that make you think, “who the hell approved this?”
Photo: Apple
Luke: The Hockey Puck mouse was a definite notorious failure, but I don’t think it was entirely the same as what we’re describing here. The iMac came out under a very specific set of conditions, and one of them was Apple redefining how a computer looked and felt. It was drastically new and, while a lot of its innovations worked, that particular piece didn’t. But it didn’t feel lazy — more like a company getting to grips with the right balance of design and functionality, while trying to make a big splash.
There’s definitely something to be said about the number of products Apple is putting out right now, in its efforts to grab a bigger and bigger slice of the pie. A lot of that is market driven, and difficult to avoid given the pressures on Apple to continuously grow, but you know what: I’m an Apple customer, not a shareholder. And as a customer, it feels like certain things are being overlooked right now.
But maybe I’m totally off-base here. Let’s turn it over to readers. Is Apple’s design prowess going downhill in some areas, or are we reading way too much into a few non-essential elements of the company’s recent devices and accessories? Whatever your thoughts, leave them below in the comments section to continue the debate. And have a good weekend.
Friday Night Fights is a series of weekly death matches between two no-mercy brawlers who will fight to the death — or at least agree to disagree — about which is better: Apple or Google, iOS or Android?
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
25 responses to “What happened to Apple’s faultless design?”
I don’t understand why people think the Pencil in the iPad Pro is such a bad idea. It’s so convenient it only take a few seconds to charge it that way to continue working. The adapter is for longer term charging. I don’t think that adapter was ever a second thought, just a second mode of charging (overnight, long term, etc).
And people going on and on about the design of the battery pack just don’t understand what design means. Design is not look, it’s function. The iPhone looks the way it is because it functions in your hand so naturally. No bumps or raised cladding, thin, light, well balanced, etc. The battery pack from Apple is the simplest functional point for a battery case. It still feels like a regular iPhone in your hand. It comes on and off in a jiffy (because who wants to walk all day with a giant battery strapped to your beautiful phone….oh right every other case basically forces you to unless you want to struggle getting it on and off. and it actually improves the cell reception instead of inhibiting it. Great article, but I think apple is fairly on point with the latest things, and they’re not misses.
Design is very much the look. Function and form come into play within the definition of the word. I personally don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s a horrible case and I won’t purchase it or use it. I also believe the next battery case design will be different.
I think the only real miss is the iPhone internal battery and slippery back. The charging port on the mouse of course would have made more sense on the top front like tradition wired mice. The new case once explained makes sense and I don’t think its That ugly.
I also actually like the hockey puck mouse :)
I have bigger issues with Apple lately. Like removing components from a product, but still charging the same price and having the consumer have to purchase those now external components. The Mac Pro and the MacBook are what I’m talking about. Also, making items like the Apple Watch and Apple Pencil that have a limited life-span. The battery in the Pencil is not replaceable so you either throw it away or recycle it when it no longer holds a charge. Doesn’t that go against part of Apple’s tree-hugger philosophy?
I have to wonder how many people actually asked Apple for a Smart Battery Case? And was it so many people that Apple had to make it? Are the problems it’s solving really so bad that they had to manufacture their own solution? Or is it that Apple saw a $99 Christmastime accessory that would likely be purchased with all those millions of shiny new iPhone’s (with the protruding camera and plastic stripes) to put under the tree?
I’ve bought Apple for 15 years and yes I can see the decline. There may have been failures under Steve Jobs, but at least he admitted them.
Progress comes from feedback. Nothing diabolical here, but i want innovation in the watch, more innovation, I want our personal tech from Apple pushing boundaries and taking us forward.
The designs are carefully crafted and on purpose. I think people ‘nowadays’ are too quick to judge without thinking. They are quick to assimilate another’s opinion, perhaps without even realizing it, and then perpetuate it. The magic magic mouse 2 and the battery case are great examples of immediately criticizing. Keep in mind that Apple has always done things the way they choose. They have their reasons whether the public knows them or not (and as Jobs would likely have stated, it doesn’t matter if the public understands) It is that concept which truly defines Apple and makes them what they are. There are subtleties in design that play into the larger picture. The charging port on the bottom of the mouse is by design. This is not an oversight. It purposely prevents the mouse from being used while wired. It is the decision of a design mastermind that takes the entire picture into account. If it were possible to use the mouse while connected, then many people would just leave it that way. Then the aesthetic of the Mac from a holistic approach is impacted. The battery case accounts for the antennas. But the subtle design magic is the absence of thickness at the edges. So while holding the phone, the subconscious impression of a thin phone remains. It is the subtle, sometimes, not consciously perceived aspects of design that make the huge, intangible differences. Apple does things their way. If people like their products they will buy them; if they don’t, they won’t.
A long time ago the dreaded Microsoft had a mouse that charged via a usb port, it even charged via induction, so the wire was near non existent. It used rechargeable, replaceable batteries, so in this regard it was in a way better than the Magic Mouse. But it was a MS product and it was butt ugly and the case for buying this thing in a sea of other mice made for windows was nonexistent so the “intelimouse” died. But you could use that thing as a corded mouse and it worked just fine, and it still works fine, years, and years, and years, and years after being remaindered in Marshals. I doubt you can say the Magic Mouse will have that kind of longevity. No, the business of not working while plugged in is all about planned obsolescence, nothing more.
“It is the decision of a design mastermind that takes the entire picture into account”
must be an evil mastermind
You guys really should get the equipment you review and bag on. The pencil does not have to be stuck within a lighting port. It comes with a female to female lightning coupler. Maybe it’s time to do some real thinking and research instead of just repeating what other blogs say because when one of you gets your shit wrong, all of you get your shit wrong. If you don’t want to do your jobs well, get a new jobs but please, stop being an agent of misinformation.
I’m pretty sure when Apple demoed the pencil sticking into the iPad Pro, they did it as a joke, so people like you guys would think that’s actually how you have to do it.
AND NO, you don’t have my permission to re-use my images. Get the gear and take your own if you want to be serious about what you’re doing. No other bloggers who want to copy everyone else can use my images either. I have all the mac blogs in my RSS feeds, if I see any bloggers reposting my images instead of doing this shit for themselves, you’ll be lambasted in your comments section and I’ll have a take-down notice sent to you and then that can make it’s rounds through social media.
If you’d have read it properly, you would have seen that I mentioned the adapter.
It’s all Jony Ive’s faults.If Steve Jobs was alive will never approve these design failures.Job’s was Apple.With Tim Cook in the driver position i don’t know if we’ll see revolutionary and beautiful products again.
1.Apple watch design – FAIL
2.iphone 6 Plus with same size as a 6 inch phone – FAIL
3. magic mouse 2 with the port on the bottom – FAIL
4.Apple’s battery case design – FAIL It’s UGLY as Steve would had said
5.New iMacs without DDR4 memory WTF??? – FAIL
6.Apple Pencil??? – FAIL
7.iPad Pro for same productivity as a Mac or PC? – FAIL
Jony you must go home.Thank you for your services all these years but your designs and ideas SUCKS!Without Steve this ugliness and awkward products is all you can do.
I don’t think you can blame Ive directly. He is now promoted to some overseer position and there are a couple of other instantly-forgettable bods in charge of design now. I imagine Ive is resting on his laurels somewhat nowadays, spending more time with his family, educating his offspring, playing in his cars, etc.
The worst think about the butt-ugly battery case is the ADMISSION that battery life (for many users) SUCKS.
And you must ask, why why why this obsession with THIN, if most iPhone owners slap a fat case onto their phones once bought?
The many Yanks who are of the opinion that butts are ugly should perhaps visit Brazil, where the ‘bumbum’ is a coveted feature. Many people even inject silicone or have implants to make their rear ends more prominent.
I think the problem for the battery pack from Apple is the lack of innovation on it, it looks like an other company solution, looks like a Chinese enterprise made it, they gave us the MagSafe for example.
Maybe in the next iPhone we’ll see a inductive charger battery pack with out the ugliness of having a case with the lighting connector on it.
Apple’s team needs to inconrporate the “new technologies that are in the horizon right now” the lighting conector should be in the graveyard of technology right now.
I agee that the Smart Battery Case has a certain Quasimodo look to it. And it’s hard to imagine growing fond of such an awkward design. But I’ve also noticed that many people are far too critical of the design features of certain Apple devices. I’ve seen multiple complaints that icons on the iPad Pro don’t take advantage of the huge display. The suggestion appears to be that the icons should be configured differently or much larger than the icons on the smaller iPads. A different configuration or an increase in the size of icons would occupy more space. However, I don’t think that’s as aesthetically appealing as the current design. The current size and configuration of icons on the iPad Pro appropriately place more emphasis on the wallpaper. The emphasis on whatever wallpaper that suits your fancy give this large device a cleaner, simpler, minimalist look – a look that belies the power of this sophisticated piece of equipment, a look that somehow makes this device familiar and blend seamlessly with your other possessions. I like this look and hope that future iterations of this device maintain this feature.
There are some nit-picking details that could easily be disregarded and the new iPhone case is not the least of them. However, their design decisions are not what they used to be. Take for example the Fisher-Price-inspired new Mac OS GUI, that we pray is short-lived, the antenna lines on the iPhone cases since v5, etc. There are lots of others too but I am not here to do all the work on my own.
I agree that the mouse should have had the port placed on one end. At least it would be usable while it charges. If you don’t like the battery case, there’s a really simple solution to the problem. DON’T BUY IT! See? that was easy.
I think this is a valid discussion to have. As a user, I like the new keyboard and track pad, but hate the port on the bottom of the mouse. The Apple Watch interface sucks and I know because I use it every day. Force Touch on the watch is clunky as a crank starter on a car. And 3D Touch on the iPhone isn’t much better. It is only cool in Maps where I can get instant info on a store or point of interest. Most of all, I hate the iPhone power button on the side, directly across from the volume buttons. Daily I end up pushing both together which prevents me from turning off my screen. Lastly, I am so exhausted with bug-ridden upgrades that take hours to apply to all my devices and then make them work worse than before until a fix is found in the next upgrade. Get them right the first time so “it just works” and I can use the device instead of waiting for the next fix (and being afraid of all updates). Updates are not a design element, I know, but they affect the design and the user experience.
Thanks for mentioning the updates, or as I like to refer to them the “downgrades” There are two that are getting very annoying Audiobooks and podcasts, maybe because that is where I live and breath. I had no problem with either implementation and Apple could have just kept the old and kludgy way of doing them in iTunes until rapture and I would have been just fine. But podcasts got spun off into that pile of skeuomorphism and Audiobook just became a part of iBooks for no good reason. Podcasts recovered from the goofy real-to-real nonsense until recently where it will no longer automatically download the podcasts, they just sit in the cloud. Since I usually binge listen to a podcast Apple’s decision to play the podcasts in chronological order is frustrating beyond belief. Audiobooks, it’s worse, each time I sync with the computer whatever book I’m listening to goes right back to the very beginning, chapter 1, introduction. It’s kinda frustrating three quarters in. I might have to reset my Audible password just to use their app to listen to their books, kind of silly since iTunes was having zero problems until the latest updates.
I guess I’m a skeuomorph at heart. I loved the desk blotter in Calendar, the book edges in iBooks, and the torn off yellow legal pages in Notes. Steve’s cute touches made me grin. So anti-IBM. That made it for the rest of us. My first iPad still is on iOS 5 and I love using it! I would like to happen upon a napping Jony Ive so I could whisper in his ear over and over and over, “If it ain’t broke, don’t effin’ fix it!”
Design is part art and part science & engineering. Aesthetics have always been subjective. Even usability depends greatly on the background and current use case of the user. What bothers some people is a feature to others. A company like Apple does its homework. They aren’t perfect, and they sometimes make trade-offs that don’t pay off. But most of the things Killian is being critical of are features to me. I appreciate the thinner edges, soft touch, and easy removal of the new case. I don’t know how anyone can consider the Apple Pencil a fail. I love it. And it’s a great design plus that I can plug it in to my iPad while I am out and about if it runs out of charge. Although I think the new keyboard for the iPad pro is designed well, I love my iPad because I love the tablet form factor. Keyboards defeat the purpose for me. Different strokes for different folks. These are accessories precisely because they won’t be useful or appealing to everyone. But don’t assume that because it doesn’t resonate for you, that it’s not finding its audience.
Ah, and thats just the point. What if Apple could deliver all these features AND have design that doesn’t feel rushed? I think THAT’s what Apple is all about.
Quasimodo is a fail. Do it again, this time out of Aluminum, make is svelte in the approved Apple livery and charge twice as much. Winner!