Apple is getting richer and richer, but phones are getting boring, let's talk about design again

For Apple, Chief Design Officer Jonathan Ive has lost his "childhood excitement". He will leave the company this year to start his own independent design firm, LoveFrom.

This year marks his 27th year working at Apple and the 8th year since Steve Jobs left. After the death of Jobs, the outside world's evaluation of Apple tends to, less and less talk about design, more and more talk about the stock price. After all, it was the first company ever to break the trillion dollar market capitalization.

Apple is getting richer and richer, and our phones are getting boring. Folding screens? Bangs? Curved screens? For the time being, these are only exciting to tech bloggers and tech journalists, but not to the general public, who can't afford to miss out on them.

The cell phone has long been more than just a machine, it has become an "inseparable" part of our bodies. What defines all of this is, to a large extent, Apple, Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive behind the iPhone.

So, design, let's move on to design, and the departing Ivor.

"Pure" design principles

Compared to Steve Jobs, the name Jonathan Ive may not ring as true in markets outside the United States. After all, even Ivor himself has complained that Ivor felt battered and underwhelmed "when Jobs took credit for the design" and "when press articles said that Apple's innovations all depended on Jobs."

Nevertheless, Ivor and Jobs worked together for fifteen years. Jobs' wife said of Ivor, "Most of the people in Steve's life were replaceable, but not Joni." Jobs said of Ivor, "He understood the core philosophy of Apple better than anyone else. Jonny was my 'spiritual companion' in the company."

This mutual understanding is based on their agreement on "design principles".

"We were on the same page about how to make our products look pure and seamless."

"Today, Apple is reinventing the cell phone." So said Steve Jobs when he unveiled the first-generation iPhone in 2007. "It's a cell phone, an ipod , a superior Internet device."

Ivor, who contributed to the multi-touch and "infinity pool" screens, redefined what a cell phone should look like.

At the time, Ivor's design team was working on multi-touch input technology for the MacBook Pro's trackpad, and they experimented with multiple ways to use this technology for computer screens. Jobs realized that this idea was very good and could be used to solve the problem of cell phone interface. So Jobs temporarily shelved the development of the tablet and used the multi-touch technology on the cell phone screen.

The "infinity pool" analogy "is to make people understand in their minds the complete importance of the screen, and we wanted to develop a product that featured the screen as a top priority."

The iPhone was originally designed with a glass screen embedded in an aluminum case. This design "juxtaposed the metal casing with the screen. The whole device felt too masculine, too performance-oriented, a task-driven product." What was once a nine-month design started from scratch. In the new design, the front of the phone is entirely adamantine glass that extends all the way to the edges and seamlessly connects to the thin stainless steel beveled edges. Ivor insisted on the fact that "every part of the phone seems to serve the screen. The new design has a simple, intimate look that you can't help but touch."

What is the true meaning of simplicity?

At one point, sitting in his design studio, Ivor expressed his views on "simplicity" to Steve Jobs: "....Why do we think simplicity is good? Because for a tangible product, we like that feeling of controlling them.To get simplicity, you have to dig deep enough. For example, if you're trying to put no screws in a product, you might end up with something that's extremely cumbersome and complicated. A better way is to understand the word "simplicity" more deeply, to understand every part of it, and how it's made. You have to grasp the essence of the product so deeply that you can determine which unimportant parts can be taken out."

Before the release of the first generation iPhone, the cell phone market was the world of Microsoft and Symbian. Smartphones had styluses and keyboards, and users had to go through a lot of tedious steps to realize various functions on their phones. The iPhone removes all the redundancy and focuses on the screen, allowing even a 6 year old to use it intuitively, realizing "the feeling of controlling them".

The same goes for accessories like AirPods. "Most products peak in popularity at launch and continue to decline afterward. But AirPods' popularity continued to rise for two and a half years after its release, with the search rate rising 10 times from the time of its release." B station digital area Up master "teacher good my name is He student" in the evaluation video commented. "The most reasonable explanation for this is that AirPods, by virtue of their excellent use experience, have formed a word-of-mouth effect among the crowd, which has continued to ferment into an explosive model."

Maybe the AirPods are bland to use and look like EarPods with the cord cut out, but that's exactly where Ivor's design philosophy comes in. "A lot of people look at design as a powerful means of differentiation that can set their product apart from others, and I really hate that view. That's just business-oriented, not consumer and human-oriented." Ivor has said.