Apple Sucks III

Every mouse Apple Computer has designed since the imac sucks.

First we had the puck. Which way is up? My hand cannot tell because this object has no tactile indicator of "up". Cute and unusable.

They fixed that when people got tired of buying jelly bean computers and we got the one button mouse. Up was easy. Clicking and dragging? Impossible. You have to awkwardly grip two side-nubs (the only part of the mouse that is not the button) to get the contrary force to allow you to tell the computer you are down-clicked-and-holding. It's like buzzard attempting to turn some knobs: Hard to do.

Then we got the mighty mouse, which had magic right clicking technology for the first time in a first party mac product. Welcome to decades ago. Still suffers from the buzzard claw issue. At this point I want to see what the hands of Apple's testing department look like.

I think what this showed them, along with the ipod, is that no one cares about interfaces. They care about shiny, or gumdroppy, and smooth.

To say that their design trumps it's intended function would be to mis-define the word design. The design of any thing should take into account how it's used. That's part of it. If you are making an unusable art object based on a computer mouse you can get away with this. If, on the other hand, you are designing an interface object whose sole purpose is to make controlling a computer more intuitive, then you have failed.

Apple is now in the business of making shiny art objects that can also, with some finagling, compute stuff.

This post came about because Apple's new notebook monitors are shiny. You used to have the option of getting a matte monitor. Matte is superior for viewing; it has less glare. Shiny is 'prettier' especially when the monitor is off, and I suppose for all your people with DWR furniture it's the computer to get. For those of us who make a living staring at these things, it's a big waving middle finger.

Apple doesn't want to make your computers, and the fact that Johnathan Ive is the guy they say is gonna replace Steve Jobs confirms that. Ive wants to make pretty things. I wish I could believe the guy gives any thought to how we might interface with his pretty designs, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards.

I'll be watching paint dry until another company can step it up.