Great, but... Ive only does industrial design, as far as I know.
The other side of the coin is the software, and if that declines, Ive's going to be creating very well-designed paperweights. So who does Apple's software design?
I’ve also wondered this. iOS and Mac OS both have a penchant for faux-realism and pastiche which always seems strangely incongruous with the austere industrial design. It’s a trend that seems to be getting stronger, just look to the most recent version of iCal for example.
Apple’s current industrial design patterns seem to have a solid foundation in quite traditional modernist values, such as ‘truth to materials’, so for instance you would never see Apple ship a product with a plastic case coated to look like brushed aluminium. They would always use real aluminium.
It seems the software design team isn’t grounded in quite the same set of principles as the industrial design team.
I do wonder if the ID guys would rather see their designs running an interface such as WP7 (or even Plan 9, xMonad etc.), which isn’t as tied to real world metaphors and in a sense show more ‘truth to software’ (or to put it another way, there is certainly no ’true’ interface for digital information, but if there were one… I can’t imagine faux leather would be it.)
> to put it another way, there is certainly no ’true’ interface for digital information, but if there were one… I can’t imagine faux leather would be it.
I've wanted to make this argument in favour of sometimes using skeuomorphic (e.g. faux leather) design for a while:
All the other applications that come with Mac OS (say, iTunes, Mail.app, or iPhoto) have clearly-defined, strongly-typed content "atoms"—respectively, songs, messages, and pictures. The apps themselves just serve as magical databases with filters and specifiers to find and manipulate that content. They don't have to look like anything, because they're just "the box you put your music in" or "the box your get your mail from."
iCal and Address Book are the two main applications in the default set that break this pattern: they don't hold a clearly-defined type of content at all. It's just raw information: information about events, and about people, respectively. Because of this, you could get away with simply using text files for the same purpose, and nothing of value would be lost. It would even be as easy to sort and search, if you have a good text editor.
So Apple needs to offer a value proposition that makes a user want to use Address Book rather than a text file: familiarity in function and ease of learning curve. In a more design-oriented view, in cases where the data itself is arbitrary (you could technically store anything in a vCard), the software must bring over the rules and constrictions of the physical medium to give the proper context for the controls in the UI to actually afford their proper use.
A set of overlapping boxes means nothing; a set of overlapping boxes on a screen that looks like a calendar suggests what you should use the boxes for. A set of blank index cards seems to suggest no use whatsoever, until you bind them into a familiar rolodex-like facade.
You can see the same thing play out with the iOS apps that Apple has given design awards: the kind that hold strongly-typed information tend to get the UI out of the user's way, and let the information stand paramount; while the kind that hold raw data retain a strong skeuomorphic metaphor to suggest use over-and-above "put text here."
Interesting point. There were some rumors that surfaced last week that Ive only met Forestall in the presence of Tim Cook, and did not talk to him otherwise. Not very probable, but still too bad if that is so.
Scott Forstall is responsible for iOS. My understanding is that Eddy Cue is responsible for the iTunes Store, including the App Store, and now, iCloud. He was promoted to Executive Vice President back in August. I'm not sure who's in charge of Mac software.
It used to be Bertrand Serlet until he left last March. I'm not sure why he hasn't been replaced, at least from an outside perspective (no one is shown as in charge of Mac on the page you linked to).
That's a good point. Jonathan Ive is in charge of Industrial Design and when you hear him, he's talking as a designer.
On the software side, we don't really hear so much about the UI/UX design process the same way we do on the hardware side with Ive. What I mean is that I don't get the same hands-on feel from Scott Forstall when he presents new features of iOS.
I've been curious about who is behind some of the UI concepts and details of iOS but I can't point to a specific person like I could with the hardware. (NB: though I understand well that it's probably not just a single person :))
edit: I was watching this video again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0fe800C2CU In it, you can see Jonathan Ive touching the products and you can tell he would personally make sure that it would be changed if something didn't feel right. On the software side, someone has to make a decision on how much bounce the lists on iOS should have, on how fast animations should be, etc. but it doesn't seem to be Scott Forstall. I'd like to hear more from the software/UI designers at Apple.
I imagine he has some voice in the aesthetics of the software design. But it's true that the whole package (hardware and software) is the combination that makes apple products great.
The other side of the coin is the software, and if that declines, Ive's going to be creating very well-designed paperweights. So who does Apple's software design?