Daring Fireball: ‘This Is Our Signature’: iOS 7:
This is the first product of the post-Jobs Apple. The result shows that in some ways Apple’s software design has gotten better, because it was Jobs (and Forstall) who had a penchant for exuberant textures and gimmickry. Jobs’s taste in hardware was nearly perfect, but his taste in software had a weakness for the saccharine. Wood grain, linen, Rich Corinthian leather, etc. It was all just sugar for the eyes. This is a weakness Jony Ive’s software taste clearly does not suffer.
A lot of questions were answered with the keynote today, although obviously, not all of them. One thing we need to remember, there is much to be seen in the details, and many of the details won’t be known until fall when all of this ships and people start using it (for real, en masse).
But many of the things answered today were answered quite positively.
One thing I hope we can all come to terms with now is that while Steve was an exceptionally intelligent person and a genius at understanding what a thing needed to be to succeed, he was not perfect. A complex man, he had his strengths, but also his weaknesses and his foibles and blind spots.
It should also be painfully obvious to everyone who’s job title does not include the word “analyst” that Steve Jobs is not the only person at Apple with a clue and was not the only person who could actually design something people wanted. In fact, it should now be pretty obvious that one of Steve’s main strengths was not product design — but it was his ability to define what he wanted, find the right people with the right skills to create those things, to get the hell out of their way, and to critique the details until what they created was aligned with what he believed would be successful.
It should also be obvious that both Tim Cook and Jony Ives have that same skill, but see the world somewhat differently than Steve did. Not better, not worse, but differently. Apple has put the stake in the ground showing they will continue to BE Apple and continue to innovate as Apple, but that those innovations are clearly going to be different than they would have been under Steve. Not better, not worse, but different. And if today’s keynote is any indication, wildly successful.
It should also be noted now that some of the executive and management changes that happened after Steve died were not a ‘brain drain” or not signs of the death of Apple, but because whenever the head person changes, the management chain tends to, also, because they have to be aligned with the strategy and management styles of the boss. And that includes someone like Scott Forstall, who’s management style was clearly more closely aligned to Jobs than it is with Cook.
I found it fascinating, and I haven’t seen anyone else comment on this, that Apple made a decision to switch away from cat names and align OS X “for the next decade” of using names of significant locations within California — and yet didn’t bump the version number from 10 to 11. it’s OS X 10.9 Mavericks, not OS X 11.0.
I am not entirely sure what the significance of the naming/version decision is, but if you look at it, there were significant reasons why most of us probably would have bumped the major version number for this release. And yet Apple didn’t, and Apple doesn’t do these things without significant thought and a damn good reason. So there’s a message in here, somewhere, that they are telling us but which they haven’t illuminated.
The obvious possibility is that the REAL technological upgrades to the OS X line of software are still down the road, and what you see today in Mavericks is just an appetizer.
I also found it curious that their first naming choice for this was Mavericks, and not, say, Yosemite or some other higher profile landmark. That also says to me that bigger and more significant things are down the road and that some of the more “obvious” names are being reserved for them.
But really, the big message from today’s keynote is a simple one, but a huge one. And that is this message: “That was Steve, this is now. And we’re just getting started”.