Sloppiness: Apple’s inconsistent iPhone X design guides show attention to detail is no longer a priority
“Around the same time Apple rolls out each new major release of iOS, the Cupertino company also distributes its detailed Human Interface Guidelines to help appmakers design and build software in a more efficient and intuitive manner,” MIX writes for TNW. “The documentation essentially outlines the best design practices for its mobile operating system, accompanied by numerous tips on how to streamline the user experience for more meaningful engagement.”
“But it sure seems the Big A made a teeny-tiny mistake in the design guides for the new iPhone X,” MIX writes. “As you can see in the screenshot below, while the clock positioned left of the much-talked notch indicates the time is 9:41, the big clock in the first render shows a completely different time: 1:34.”
“As some Redditors have rightfully pointed out: There appear to be even more concerning discrepancies in the renders from the official guidelines,” MIX writes. “Showing two separate time indicators on the lock screen goes against anything Apple: It is counter-intuitive and thoroughly unnecessary.”
Apple’s sloppiness on semi-full display
Apple has shown that left “ear” space occupied with the time, blank, and with a carrier name, MIX writes, “This adds up to three different ‘best design practices’ Apple has so far suggested for the upper-left notch area in one way or another. Say what you will, but this makes me think the Cupertino titan did not entirely think this through.”
MacDailyNews Take: We don’t blast Apple for things like the ill-conceived, “inelegant kludge” that is iPhone X’s “awful notch” for kicks. It pains us to do it, but we do it because we follow Apple closely (after 60,000+ articles and Takes over 15+ years, you may have noticed; and, prior to the Internet, some of us here followed the company as closely since before the Macintosh, too). We do it because we know that APPLE’S KEY TO SUCCESS IS ATTENTION TO DETAIL, PRECISION, AND HIGH QUALITY THAT DELIGHTS CUSTOMERS WHO SUPPORT HIGH ASPs WHICH IN TURN SUPPORT HIGH PROFITS AND HIGH R&D, ENSURING AN UNENDING CYCLE.
Disrupt that cycle and you’ll lose everything for which Steve Jobs worked and stood. Apple will be right back to Apple of the mid 1990s with lackluster products, confusing out-of-control product lines, and decreased customer satisfaction. Once that snowball starts rolling, it’s all downhill from there.
We urge Tim Cook to appoint a perfectionist, fastidious czar to oversee Apple’s products and marketing. Someone who has real power, who’s a serious stickler for details, who has the taste to see things like the notch for what it is and who would nix things like inconsistent, amateurish UI and hardware design mistakes, and marketing that claims “It’s all screen” when it’s obviously not, before such embarrassments are made public.
Alrighty then.
Cook can focus on whatever it is he choses to focus on this week and this czar (who’s supposed to be Jony Ive, but look where we are today with inconsistencies and questionable design decisions creeping in) can focus on Apple’s products and how they’re marketed, like Steve Jobs used to do, thereby insuring consistency, killing bad design decisions on the drawing board, and keeping the quality level up to Apple’s high standard.
As with MIX above and a growing cadre who constructively criticize Apple, especially over quality and attention-to-detail concerns, we’re the canaries in the coal mine. Disregard us at your own peril.
One more time: APPLE’S KEY TO SUCCESS IS ATTENTION TO DETAIL, PRECISION, AND HIGH QUALITY THAT DELIGHTS CUSTOMERS WHO SUPPORT HIGH ASPs WHICH IN TURN SUPPORT HIGH PROFITS AND HIGH R&D, ENSURING AN UNENDING CYCLE.
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Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. — Steve Jobs
This is what customers pay us for – to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We’re supposed to be really good at this. — Steve Jobs
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations. — Steve Jobs
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A far better, much more elegant, better looking and better functioning design solution than the one at which Apple’s Jony Ive & Co. and/or Craig Federighi inexplicably arrived, courtesy of Nodus and Gordon Kelly via Forbes from back in July shows how iPhone X’s notch should have been handled:
iPhone X notch un-botched by Forbes’ Gordon Kelly and Nodus
iPhone X notch un-botched by Forbes’ Gordon Kelly and Nodus
Even if the status bars simply stayed “sideways” when in landscape, this is a more elegant solution than Apple’s current kludge. The simple solution is oftentimes better.
Ive & Co.’s design choice is even more inexplicable when you realize they already have the answer staring them in the face all day: The Mac’s menu bar. — MacDailyNews, September 15, 2017
