Roger Fingas
In an interview published on Thursday, Apple chief design officer Jony Ive argued for the company's sometimes controversial decisions to abandon common technologies — in the case of the iPhone X, foregoing a home button in favor of touchscreen gestures.
"I actually think the path of holding onto features that have been effective, the path of holding onto those whatever the cost, is a path that leads to failure," Ive explained to Time. "And in the short term, it's the path the feels less risky and it's the path that feels more secure.
"It's not necessarily the most comfortable place to be in when you believe there's a better way," he added. "[Because] that means moving on from something that has felt successful."
The original iMac was one of the first computers to skip floppy drives in favor of USB and CD-ROM. In 2016, Apple was widely criticized for dropping a 3.5mm headphone jack from the iPhone 7. Such jacks are still in wide use on headphones and many other electronics, and indeed even the iPhone 8 and X still come with Lightning-to-3.5mm adapters. Rival smartphone makers will sometimes tout a headphone jack as a competitive advantage.
Ive also defended the iPhone X's $999-plus pricetag, which is out of reach for many people.
"As you would expect, there's a financial consequence to integrating the sheer amount of processing power into such a small device," he said.
At last month's TechFest in New York City, Ive said that Apple had been working on the X's design — including its edge-to-edge display — for 5 years before its Sept. 2017 reveal. The company worked with oversized prototypes until it felt technology had caught up.
"And then at the same time, if you're going to do something new, that means that the reason it hasn't been done before is — there are 55 reasons why it hasn't been done before," Ive commented during his talk. "And so you have to be so focused so resolute."
Charles Martin
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74 Comments
Nothing new or particularly insightful from that interview apparently. Most of us here could have mocked up this article if someone had asked us a week ago "What would an Apple exec say about the removal of the home button?" At least Apple is generally consistent in the message on most topics.
The fact is that product development requires compromises and Apple makes more than its share of controversial ones (and in the long run is almost always proven to have made an excellent or at least reasonable choice). I whined about the loss of MagSafe, but in retrospect it's not that big a deal and being able to plug in from either side more than makes up for it, for example.
Apple execs like saying "it took courage" to do something. That's what they said when they removed the SD card slot from the Macbook Pro. I guess it took courage to ship a $3k under powered Macbook Pro that can't be upgraded... ever.
"As you would expect, there's a financial consequence to integrating the sheer amount of processing power into such a small device," Wrong statement. The X is sharing its "amount of processing power" with the 8 and 8 Plus because they use the same A11 SoC. He could better refer to the screen and Face ID sensors.
Jony Ive doesn't have to explain anything. Of course the internet know-it-alls who can run Apple better than Apple will cry about outdated features being removed but Jony and team are doing a good job moving the world forward.
"Under-Powered"? Yeah sure.
And you can upgrade it when the next version releases. Since Apple products retain value you can sell your old Mac for $300 less than you paid and get a whole new computer for $300 instead of buying new components for your old computer. Way better deal.