I think it’s unfortunate that Ive is only associated with the minimalistic sheet-of-glass-and-metal period here. The fact that people think his vision is compromised by the presence of an SD-card slot is a bit sad. I submit this as another example of Jony Ive at Apple.
I used this for years, and then my elderly parents did for almost as long. We all loved it.
Well, you have to realize that most individuals will only ever be remembered by their 'last thing' that they did. People have a way of living in the 'now' and using the immediate past to make judgements of others. I think it's safe to say that Ive had a wonderful, momentous heyday of design, but that heyday ended about a decade ago. We, consumers, have been becoming more and more discontent with his designs and offerings, and it became rather apparent that he was still trying to push design envelopes, but in ways that didn't change (fundamentally) his subjectively best designs.
For the portables, that meant that his unibody series began to emphasize the "ultimate" design language of portables - ie, that they be as light and as thin as possible. For reasons that are not entirely clear, form began to take preference over function, and not in a trivial way where one could say "Oh, sure, there's a bit of tradeoff
but look what you get in return". No...we were presented with extremely thin laptops, which was cool, which were then stuffed to the gills with high tech, which was also cool, but the marriage turned those thin laptops into ball-scorching, battery-charge-murdering, ******-keyboard-having nightmares. And all this at premium prices.
In addition, desktops largely got ignored aside from minor component upgrades, and Soldergate turned what was once a fun upgrade path from minimal specs to better than top-end into the walliest walled garden philosophy of "buy it at the specs you think you might need, because **** all the aftermarket upgraders". And when innovation in the desktop line
did come through, it was in weird ways that nobody really wanted (iMac Pro? So, it's like a 2012 cMP, only with some better processor and GPU options and way the **** worse thermals and a very minor upgrade path). Let's not forget about the aptly-nicknamed 'Trash Can' 2013 Mac Pro. It's like they didn't learn
anything from the G4 Cube debacle. Proprietary hardware on a 'pro' device? Are you
kidding me?! Having the sheer audacity to design a metaphorical dead end evolutionary path and casually slap 'Pro' onto the end was insulting to every workstation user who relied on PCI-E hardware devices for their livelihoods. In one fell swoop, Apple alienated practically every Audio and Visual professional in the business...which was a
huge percentage
of their business.
All of these changes were either created by or presented to Jony Ive, who gave 'em a thumbs-up.
It's not that Ive wasn't a genius who had, and has, a remarkable talent for aesthetics that will catch the eye favorably, but rather that his most recent designs for proper computers are pretty much just him metaphorically wanking himself off on his own brilliance, never mind that these are supposed to be more than pretty paperweights.
