Another one of those interesting, readable articles with an unfortunate headline.
If you can get past the “Apple’s greatest flaws” sensationalism, this is actually pretty interesting.
Katharine Schwab, FastCompany:
It’s been a decade since the British designer Imran Chaudhri first imagined a user interface that would introduce millions of people to the smartphone. Chaudhri joined Apple in 1995, soon rising to become the design director of the company’s human interfaces group–where he was one member of the six-person team that designed the iPhone.
Credentials established.
Very early on, when we first started building prototypes of the phone, a couple of us were lucky enough to take them home… By using the phone and living with the phone, I had friends all over the world who were hitting me up all the time and the phone was pinging and the light was going on, so I realized for us to coexist with this phone, we needed to have something to act as a gatekeeper. Very early on, I designed what ultimately became Do Not Disturb.
And:
Inside, getting people to understand that [distraction] was going to be an issue was difficult. Steve [Jobs] understood it…internally though, I think there was always a struggle as to how much control do we want people to have over their devices. When I and a few other people were advocating for more control, that level of control was actually pushed back by marketing. We would hear things like, ‘you can’t do that because then the device will become uncool.’
And:
You might install about 10 applications on an afternoon and say, ‘yeah, you can use my camera, you can use my location, you can send me notifications.’ Later on down the road, you find out Facebook’s been selling your data. Later on down the road, you realize that you’ve developed a sleep disorder because these things are blinking every night and you actually don’t really care about them until the morning.
These are just snippets, just a taste of what I found to be a truly fascinating interview.
FYI, Imran I believe designed the iOS “jiggle” mode when rearranging apps, as well as iOS’ folders implementation. The guy was a big part of the original iPhone.
He presented on-stage at WWDC when they launched the revamped Messages app with stickers and message effects. Thats the only time I’ve ever seen him at a keynote, and was quite surprised.
“So for the people who understand the system really well, they can take advantage of it, but the people that don’t–the people that don’t even change their ringtone, who don’t even change their wallpaper–those are the real people that suffer from this sort of thing. They don’t have that level of control.”
I disagree with this. Everyone has that level of control but you have to care enough to find out how to use the controls. Saying that they don’t have the control simply because they are too lazy to even change a ringtone etc places the responsibility in the wrong place. Technology products can only give us options… they can’t force us to use them. Over the weekend the Washington Post published an article about iOS 12 parental controls, whining that they’re left open (i.e. everything is permitted). But… that’s just the default. They’re parental controls. The use of them is up to each set of parents. If the parents don’t alter them, that’s their fault, not Apple’s
In 2018 I’ve lost patience with people who throw their hands up and go “I’m just not into all this technology!!!” Not only is that an abdication of personal responsibility, it reduces that person to the level of an idiot. “Oh, woe is me, I’m too dumb to figure this out…”. No, you’re not Typical Person. You can easily do it, you’re just too lazy to try.
Now… can such controls be done both well and poorly? Yes. Companies (not just Apple) should strive to make these easier to use and understand too – but at the same time, if someone is concerned about, say, apps knowing their location it’s all under Location Services. Even if someone doesn’t know that, there’s a thing called Google. I hear it searches well….
Man, a terrible click bait headline if ever there was one.