YD Talks: Looking at the new iPhones and why Jony Ive and Apple are better split apart… - Yanko Design

Would you rather pattern the world'due south first diamond band that'south entirely made out of a unmarried diamond stone? Or would yous endeavor to design an 8mm slab of a smartphone that practically looks the aforementioned as the 8mm slab of a smartphone you designed last year, because it needs to?

This keynote marks the first of many without Jony Ive lending his suave baritone to the background audio as Tim unveils the new iPhone. Jony Ive left Apple tree earlier this year, moving on to forming his own design studio LoveFrom along with long-time friend and design collaborator Marc Newson.

There's little room for Apple to innovate in industrial design, as the company isn't really set to launch new products anymore. They scrapped AirPower and pulled a disappearing act on the entire 'smart-car' project. The last product that Ive could really go wild with was the infamous 2022 Mac Pro, and that design isn't changing at to the lowest degree for the side by side 5 years.

https://world wide web.youtube.com/watch?5=ZA3MV2V–TU

I remember a time when Ive allegedly expressed intent to leave Apple tree (a yr after Jobs' passing), and was made to stay by being promoted to the position of Master Design Officer. Now at a position that is but second to the CEO, there isn't much room for Jony to motion up, and the company's pivot to services like Apple Pay, Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade means Ive tin finally move out of Apple's construction, extending and experimenting with new products instead of designing notches on 8mm slabs of metal and glass, putting arguably the most disastrous keyboards on their flagship laptops, and over-designing a $1999 display stand for a $5999 cheese-grater-esque reckoner.

So onto the new iPhone. The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro are, like every iPhone, the greatest iPhones ever made. They showcase blueprint similar to their predecessors, but with major upgrades to the inner hardware and software, including a flake that provides ameliorate CPU and GPU capabilities with lesser power consumption, and camera features that are really professional-grade. The merits of the new iPhones aren't really visual, but rather strictly technological. Think the visual jump from the iPhone 3G to the 4, from the 5 to the half dozen, and from the 8 to the X? They were all spaced roughly 2-three years autonomously, simply the iPhone X is perhaps the last stop for the iPhone's industrial design journey (I hope to stand corrected). With an aesthetic that'due south now sort of in the sweetness spot, Apple'south focus is now on making each subsequent telephone perform improve than the last.

To reiterate, the new iPhones aren't actually NEW LOOKING iPhones. They're old iPhones with new tricks. There's no way in hell that Apple's teasing a folding iPhone however, or a 5G iPhone before the infrastructure is prepare… or even a bezel-less iPhone considering that would need a sliding photographic camera module which would make the iPhone thicker, a primal sin in Jony's pattern playbook. In fact, the iPhone can't even get much thinner than it already has, cheers to the limitations of Moore'due south Law.

Tim'southward pivot to services is probably his lasting legacy as CEO, and information technology doesn't have much room in information technology for radical industrial blueprint. Ive stuck around to assist complete Jobs' vision of releasing the all-time consumer products, but if anything, those products are at present Apple tree's undoing. iPhone sales have gradually seen a steady refuse, in part because information technology isn't worth spending over a one thousand on new phones each year, but also because Apple tree's gadgets stand the examination of time, with people on an average using their phones for over 3-four years before finally making the switch (my flatmate still uses a 6S; pretty happily, if I might add). The bendgate debacle was mayhap a blip in Apple tree's otherwise long-continuing record of making products that final longer than the competition (they'll last fifty-fifty longer now, ever since Apple's begun advocating for the Correct To Repair Act that allows third-parties to officially fix cleaved Apple tree gadgets). Couple that with the fact that each flagship iPhone now costs more than than a grand, and you've got a product line that's losing its almanac hype.

And so, I inquire again… would you willingly choose to play 2d fiddle to engineers, strategists, UI/UX designers, and service designers, condemned to a lifetime of minutely redesigning old products? Probably non for long, right? The new iPhone is remarkable in many ways, but information technology also marks the perfect departure for Apple's design legend who deserves to be able to practice MUCH more.

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Source: https://www.yankodesign.com/2019/09/10/yd-talks-looking-at-the-new-iphones-and-why-jony-ive-and-apple-are-better-split-apart/

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