How Apple's "Grand Unification" went bankrupt

Apple's product design seems to be becoming more and more "contradictory".

Both the size of the product line and the technology used in the product are becoming more complex. Apple is no longer the Apple that "beats the world with one product".

This is very abnormal. As early as the Time of Jobs, Apple has always advocated a concise and easy-to-understand way to meet user needs. Faced with a problem, Apple prefers to provide a "standard answer" rather than multiple "workable solutions" .

This tenet, "design different products the same way," has been called The Grand Unified Theory of Apple products. Around 2015, Apple revealed the existence of such a "theory".

But this theory has gone bankrupt, and the recently published book After Steve (after Jobs) offers some new insider information. The protagonist of the story is the former Apple chief design officer, Jony Ive.

Ive brings a wonderful ideal into a dead end and ends up lost in the tide of the times.

Interactive "Grand Unification"

Many users who use Windows computers from a young age, when they first started with Mac, one of the least accustomed interactions is the Mac's mouse.

Unlike the logic of the mouse wheel scrolling down on Windows to turn the page down, the default "page turning direction" of the Mac is that the finger rolls up and the page turns down.

This logic originated in 2008, when the original iPhone had just achieved great success, and within Apple, everyone was convinced that the "multi-touch" technology on the iPhone represented the future of interaction and should also be used on the Mac.

In 2008, Apple introduced the first Mac with a "multi-touch" touchpad, the MacBook Air. The following year, Apple released the first mouse that supported multi-touch, the Magic Mouse.

On the new touchpad and mouse, Apple uses the same interaction logic as the iPhone: "natural direction page turning", that is, two fingers slide up, the page turns down, like turning a piece of paper. You can also use two fingers to zoom in and out of pictures and webpages just like you would with an iPhone.

This is Apple, if it feels that a certain function point, a certain way of interaction is better, then it should be used in all products, at the expense of breaking the user's formed habits.

Similar disruptions are nothing new in Apple's decades of history.

Steve Jobs was a computer designer who valued "interaction" very much. He has no technical background, can't write code, and doesn't know much about engineering. But he knew that if he wanted to let this machine called "computer" enter the homes of ordinary people, the most important thing to solve was the problem of "interaction".

Jobs saw the iPhone's multi-touch as the "third interactive revolution" | Getty Images

Jobs firmly believed that design defined the experience. So when he introduced the iPhone, he stressed that the "multi-touch" of the iPhone is the third interactive revolution brought to the world by Apple, the first two being the "mouse" on the Macintosh and the "Clickwheel" on the iPod.

In 2011, after Jobs's death, Tim Cook succeeded as CEO, but the power of product interaction design fell to the chief designer at the time, Jony Ive.

Since the 1990s, Ive has worked closely with Jobs to define the design of Apple products. After Jobs's death, Ive remains firmly committed to the roadmap it had set. One of the most core things, in simple terms, is to promote the successful interaction design and product features on the iPhone to the entire Apple product line.

This idea is also supported by Phil Schiller. As a senior vice president of marketing, Schiller believes that product concepts, including "multi-touch" and "retina screen", have been recognized by the iPhone because of the high user awareness, which can better reflect the product advantages of the Mac.

Therefore, from 2008 to 2015, Apple not only released a touchpad and mouse that supported "multi-touch", but also used the same logic to transform the remote control of Apple TV, and launched a MacBook, iMac 5K, iPad Air equipped with "Retina Screen"...

Jony Ive completed Jobs's unfinished business, and promoted the interactive logic of the iPhone with "multi-touch" as the core to the entire Apple product line, achieving "great unification" to a considerable extent.

There's only one question left for Ive: And then what?

The future of touch

As silicon Valley's most radical "innovator", Jobs was almost paranoid about loving new technologies, but at the same time, he had an unusual attachment to the product experience and perfectionism in everything.

Jobs has repeatedly expressed his view to the future, rather than dwelling on what has been achieved.

Apparently, Jony Ive remembered Jobs's teachings, and after getting the "promotion of touch" thing, he immediately began to think: the future of the iPhone, what is the future of "multi-touch"?

Soon, he handed in an answer sheet.

In the fall of 2014, Apple rented the Flint Center in Cupertino, California, as a venue for the launch event. It was here 30 years ago that Jobs released his proudest personal computer, the Macintosh. Before the press conference, Apple executives, including Cook himself, also revealed to the outside world in a rare way that Apple would bring "the best in history" and "really great" products.

On September 9, Cook introduced the world to this product that "redefines user expectations": the Apple Watch.

Just from the way it was released, you can feel how much Apple attaches to apple watch: rent the venue where the Macintosh was released 30 years ago; introduce it with One More Thing; adopt the highest level of confidentiality, release six months in advance, and prevent any supply chain and regulatory news from flowing out... Cook even used the exact same way Jobs introduced the original iPhone, defining the Apple Watch as a "revolutionary breakthrough in interactive interfaces."

"Stress Touch" was identified by Ive as Apple's next-generation interaction| Apple

And this so-called next-generation interaction is "Force Touch" (Force Touch).

In Jony Ive's description, "pressure touch" is equivalent to adding a new dimension to the "multi-touch" floating on the plane - depth. Not only that, but with the new Taptic Engine, the way users receive information has also been expanded, not only to hear, see, but also to feel.

With a new way of interaction, Ive will of course also promote it to the entire Apple product line to achieve "great unification".

This time, Ive's movements were much faster. In 2015, Apple first launched a new MacBook, which was equipped with a "pressure trackpad" for the first time. A shock coil is built into the bottom of this trackpad, which detects the pressure and gives vibration feedback at the same time, making the user feel as if he is "really pressed". The same technology was then rolled out to the MacBook Pro as well as the iMac 5K's standalone touchpads.

In the fall, Apple launched a new iPhone 6s series, equipped with a "haptic engine" and 3D Touch. Ive brought the "third dimension" of touch to Apple's highest-selling star product, the iPhone.

Ive's determination to promote stress touch is great and fast. But what exactly stress touch can solve is a much more vague definition.

On the original Apple Watch, you can "preview" by pressing the callout menu and changing the watch face; on the iPhone, it is also the pressure icon call menu, as well as the heavy pressure photos, emails, and other content to "preview"... None of them are killer application scenarios.

In the past, Apple, or Jobs, brought a new way of interaction, in order to create a new product form, bring a new experience. Not to mention killer apps, the entire product revolves around new interactions. Even so, the Macintosh suffered a big failure in the early days of its release, and the touch interaction of the original iPhone was also considered to be far less efficient than BlackBerry's physical full keyboard... It's always hard to promote something new.

For Jony Ive, this time, he can only bet all his chips on the future. But soon, things started to go sour.

The price of innovation

In 2016, Jony Ive made its last all-in bet on Touch Interaction.

In the fall, Apple launched the all-new MacBook Pro. This milestone is also significant for Apple: it is the 25th anniversary of Apple's release of its first notebook.

The biggest change to the new MacBook Pro is the Touch Bar. In one sentence, the Touch Bar: It put the screen of the iPhone on the laptop, replacing the traditional physical function keys.

In fact, this idea is not new, after the touch screen smartphone swept the world, there have been people who say that touch interaction should be brought to the computer. Pc hardware and software manufacturers, including Lenovo and Microsoft, have begun to try before Apple.

The first-generation Touch Bar design on the MacBook Pro didn't even have the ESC button | Apple

But Jony Ive's Touch Bar still has its innovations, even hinting at a more "crazy" future.

At that time, apple's product innovation on the Mac was threefold: one was the "pressure touch" that could sense pressure and feedback through vibration; the second was the "butterfly keyboard" with shorter, thinner, and more crisp hand feedback; and the third was the Touch Bar, which developers could design their own interface.

It is not difficult to find that if these three designs continue to develop, the future that ultimately points to is a MacBook with "no physical keyboard, C-side is also a whole screen". Many people think that through pressure sensing and vibration feedback, Apple may really be able to simulate the feel of a physical keyboard on a screen.

Of course, these are the more widely circulated speculations, how Jony Ive specifically thinks, and what level of implementation things have been promoted within Apple, we don't know. After the MacBook Pro in 2016, Apple never tried again, making a disruptive innovation in "interaction".

Looking back at this history, if Ive's innovative interaction design was just "unsuccessful", perhaps everything can be forgiven, and Cook's management can give him more time.

The problem is that the cost of this series of innovations is really too great.

iPhone 6s because of the use of 3D Touch, the screen module thickened, resulting in battery capacity being squeezed out; Touch Bar replaced the function key, resulting in a part of the programmers who just need the Esc key are very unaccustomed; not to mention in order to achieve what Ive wants, "almost perfect simplicity, thin and light", the new MacBook removed the fan, pro battery shrinkage, even most accessories need to use adapters, the entire Mac product line has fallen into a heat disaster... This series of criticisms is so overwhelming that even Apple cannot completely sit idly by.

Apple once launched a high-priced version of the pure gold Apple Watch | Apple

In addition to interaction, Jony Ive is constantly exploring the boundaries of industrial design, experimenting with a variety of materials and processes. Previously, in the more than ten years of working with Jobs, they had explored the use of colored plastics to make products, cnc to cut a complete piece of aluminum, and connect metal and glass together... It's all great innovation. Starting with the Apple Watch, Ive set its sights on high-strength stainless steel and gold.

He insisted on making a pure gold watch that sold for up to 126,800 yuan. Even at such a high price, the watch isn't as profitable as you might think, because the gold used is much stronger and more expensive than the average gold – something Jony Ive insists on using. These gold watches, of course, ended up being large-scale and unsold, costIng Apple a lot of money.

Another example is the use of the iPhone X generation of mobile phones, stainless steel curved frame. This design has since been used on the Pro series of iPhones, driving the price of the iPhone to rise until the iPhone 12 series was changed back to right angles.

It must be admitted that Ive's design at the end of his career at Apple became more and more "more form than content". In the summer of 2019, the last product designed by Ive, the Mac Pro (2019) and pro Display XDR, was released. The 7,799 yuan monitor stand and the 3,000 yuan chassis wheel caused a boo.

Booing, Jony Ive left Apple.

The new era of "great unification"

In 2015, when Apple had just released the new iMac 5K, Phil Schiller, a core Apple executive in charge of marketing at the time, was interviewed by the media about Apple's product design philosophy.

He said that all of Apple's products, from the Apple Watch to the Mac, are actually "computers", but each has its own unique features and forms. The ultimate goal of apple watch is to take over a part of what you were going to do on the iPhone, so that you can reduce the frequency of picking up the phone; and the goal of the iPhone is to take over some of the things you have to do on the iPad, and after that, the MacBook, the desktop Mac... And so on.

This explains why Apple has always wanted to interpret everything in a complete "interactive way". They want you to use the iPhone, you can naturally use the same way, the whole family bucket. But whether it is a Mac, iPad, or Watch, they are different in form, and they should not be "the same way" to interact.

Apple's increasingly complex product line | Apple

Today's Apple product line is becoming more and more complex, and many "sense of unity" are disappearing. For example, iPad Pro uses Face ID, Air, mini is equipped with Touch ID; iPhone 'bangs' have Face ID, MacBook Pro does not; for example, Apple's two monitors currently on sale, actually can not be compatible with each other's stand; and iPhone SE 3, 5 years later, has not been updated to the "full screen" design... The only Apple product that achieves unified compatibility may only be the wiping cloth.

But if you look at it from another angle, Apple products still maintain a certain degree of "great unification", and can even be said to be a new "great unification". You can automatically connect and operate the iPad with your Mac's keyboard and mouse; when you work out, apple Watch sports information can be cast on the Apple TV; including increasingly easy to use AirDrop, cross-device copy and paste, airplay sounds and images...

Instead of sticking to the design of individual products, Apple wants to achieve smoother cross-platform collaboration and provide a consistent service experience. This matter is mainly due to the self-developed chip of the whole platform.

The team at Johny Srouji, who is in charge of chip development, and Craig Federighi, who is in charge of the software, are redefining Apple's "family bucket experience."

Jony Ive has done a good job

"After Steve" records the development and turmoil of Apple after Jobs's death, and also reviews the history of Jony Ive's "grand unification theory" gradually collapsing and finally being liquidated.

In the book, Jony Ive is portrayed as a "god" with paranoid perfectionism and a very high voice within Apple. In his shadow, many of the voices of the hardware engineering team were not fully heard and adopted, and eventually led to product failure.

In a way, that's Jobs's character. However, the apple in Jobs's hand is far less powerful than in the past 10 years. As the founder who personally sent the company into the abyss and personally saved the company from the brink of bankruptcy, Jobs, although paranoid and bold, may know better than Ive where the "boundaries" of innovation lie.

In the post-Jobs era, Ive tried to design everything with a single logic, which was tantamount to carving a boat and seeking a sword, and in the process of pursuing "perfection", it paid more price. For example, in order to make the mouse charge with the Lightning cable while maintaining the beautiful shape he wants, he can only design the charging port at the bottom, which is ridiculed.

The charging method of apple mouse has long been the millennium joke in the mouths of netizens|sohrabosati.com

Today, 3D Touch and Touch Bar have long been historical terms, and the pressure touch on the watch has also been removed. New products released in the past three years without Jony Ive's hand are generally cheaper and more pragmatic, greatly improving "practical features" such as battery life, heat dissipation, interface richness, and keyboard feel.

The results are immediate. In the past two years, Apple's annual revenue has grown at a rapid rate of 20-30%, and user feedback has also improved visibly. Moreover, cheaper products, instead, have caused Apple's overall profit margin to soar from 21-22% to 26.5%, an increase of about 25%.

Ive's expensive designs, in addition to driving the price of products to rise steadily, are not so profitable.

After the publication of "After Steve", two voices began to clash fiercely. One believes that Jony Ive's series of design failures have greatly hurt the user experience and the company's interests, and it is also a matter of course to leave the company; the other believes that Cook's management, led by only the pursuit of profits, forced Ive away, making Apple completely lose its soul.

It's a very complicated matter. For example, in the book, Jony Ive borrowed Cook's hand and fired Scott Forstall, who was in charge of software development at the time. His successor, Craig Federighi, was reported to have a good relationship with Forstall. It's not hard to imagine that Ive and Federighi didn't fully cooperate in the years that followed. Is this one of the reasons why Ive's design can't land at the software level? To whom is the responsibility to go?

This period of history spans a long time, contains too many private factors, and as an outsider, it does not make sense to make judgments based on some details.

In 2011, when Jobs was dying on his sickbed, he told Cook, "(In the future) face problems, don't assume what I'm going to do, do what you think is right." With the relationship between Jobs and Ive, he most likely entrusted some things to Ive.

Looking back at the products that Apple has released in the past 10 years, it is not difficult to find that in the 5 years after Jobs's death, Ive worked very hard and methodically carried out his work, completely unlike the "daily fish" that was later reported and rumored.

So, when we look back at this history, it's hard to say who Cook and Ive did better. It can only be said that Cook conformed to this era, this era of "a single product is difficult to change the world", he achieved Jobs's trust, in the "right" way, led Apple to greater success.

The era of Ive stopped at the time when hardware innovation was booming and Jobs was at the helm.

Header image source: 9to5Mac