Alex Washburn/WIRED
The leader in technology design just introduced three very good products that should have been great.
As ever, Apple’s software environment is innovative and clearly superior in cohesion and experience, but its industrial design is what we were all watching for this week at the launch of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and Apple Watch. The centrality of Apple’s industrial design is Steve Jobs’ legacy; it is what dictates Apple’s brand dominance, its marketing storyline and its strong effect on every one of us.
Gadi Amit
Gadi Amit is the owner and principal designer of San Francisco-based NewDealDesign. Working with Silicon Valley’s top technology companies, he has created iconic products, including Fitbit, Lytro Camera and Google’s new modular and 3-D-printed Ara phone. Reach him @NewDealDesign.
And it is here where Apple went slightly wrong.
First, the iPhones
The two iPhones are more troubling than the Watch, as they deal with a known set of problems Apple has answered better before. These ‘6’ twins are large devices with much softer styling than the ‘5’ and ‘4’ predecessors. Consider the styling lineage of the iPhone family: first soft lines, then sharp, and now softer again… what is going on? What is the guiding principle?
Great brands seek to instill a sense of clear direction and progression in their design evolution. For example, good car companies use show-models to communicate purposeful orchestration of their evolving roster of products. With this flip-flop, Apple’s choices begin to look arbitrary.
Yet styling is the least of the issues with the large iPhones. A fundamental problem of usability affects people every moment they physically experience either object, namely, the conflict between a barely graspable object and the size of the human hand. Similarly, “pocketability” is already a known problem in devices of this size, especially for women. Now, Apple was exceptionally positioned to modify the UI to fit larger phones. The company was also singular in its ability to optimize the form-factor around the screen, minimizing access thickness, width or length. Yet none of that happened: the iPhone 6 twins are plain and seemingly technical, even tactical, in their design approach.
Is Apple leading from behind, or refusing to lead? Samsung or LG are trying hard to bend and morph screens to fit humans, and Sharp developed a truly zero-border screen with the Aquos Crystal… why won’t Apple?
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus deal with a known set of problems Apple has answered better before.
A Watch for Everyone and No One
Apple’s watch is a very hard object to design. The Apple Watch must appeal to many people with many tastes, wrist sizes, and personal preferences regarding interaction, usage, and daily routine. It is also aimed at a market that is young and yet to coalesce around a clear culture of use (which means there’s a huge opportunity if it’s done right). It would admittedly be nearly impossible to answer such a broad spectrum of design issues with a single design. However, Apple made a strategic choice to try.
What Apple ended up with is an elegant, crafted and refined object in a limited color range with essentially a single form. It has an original and intriguing interaction paradigm. And it has an exciting user interface. The Watch is also familiar in an instant. But therein lies the first problem: Who is this elegant fashion object for?
When it comes to fashion, people seek to clearly announce their persona—whether it be subdued or overt. The Apple Watch is somewhere in the middle of an Apple–esque style universe, many miles away from either cutting-edge fashionistas or the middle of America. It’s possibly too feminine for some men and too masculine for some women.
As a rectangle rather than the classic circle—or the alternative square—the Watch is not exactly a watch. It is a micro-terminal on your wrist. Yet you already carry another terminal in your pocket—so what exactly is the task division between your phone and your “smart” watch? Apple could have answered this dilemma emphatically and set itself apart from the Android competition with a standalone device. It did not do that, opting for the same ambiguous dependency between the watch and the phone.
I’ll assume someone opted to keep the big questions open for mass-culture to decide, but then why not then excite us with some digital wizardry? Say, unique screen size or form, a curved screen, a wrap-around screen, no screen, gesture controls, wireless charging? Many of these ideas filled the blogosphere with renderings and rumors circulating constantly.
After all the expectations many had for true greatness, Apple delivered merely a very polished smartwatch. Yet, a watch among a pack of other smart watches is not what many—me included—had hoped for. Though the two iPhones and Watch are better than the competition, the trio is late, years after large phones became dominant and smart watches became the hottest trend in “wearables.” While each of these new devices presents us with superior craftsmanship and dexterous attention detail, none is exceptional, groundbreaking or outstanding in its approach to design.
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