I'd suggest there's a difference between "I don't understand how this is supposed to work" to "I do understand how this is supposed to work, and I don't understand why it isn't working."
Seat belt story seems to be Type 1. But what if a lot of "stupid" design decisions are actually Type 2?
And the reasons may or may not be good - somewhere on a scale from real budget and/or time constraints, lack of insight, indifference, penny pinching economics, to passive aggressive user hostility.
When Apple removed Magsafe no doubt there were perfectly good internal justifications for that decision. But ultimately the people outside the company who said it was a poor move from a user POV turned out to be right.
I think it's a case of defining what you know, and asking questions for what you don't know. But, of course that's easier said than done. Maybe you chase after a red herring, maybe you ask the wrong questions. But I think asking the right questions comes from expert understanding of the fundamentals of anything, which is really hard, maybe for a lot of new fields, impossible because no one has established fundamentals, unless you're really smart. Maybe you permute the thing, or its joined with another thing, so it really becomes it own new thing.
I personally hate the non-magsafe charger because I trip over it and yank the laptop around, but I can see the trade off in being able to use a single charger for everything. Because of that, I see the magsafe issue being a permutation, because by changing the environment that laptop chargers operate in, with the addition of usb-c, you've changed the game.
> I personally hate the non-magsafe charger because I trip over it and yank the laptop around, but I can see the trade off in being able to use a single charger for everything.
So why the *ck didn't they just include a little bit of magsafe-to-USB-C cable with the phones, and keep the wall-plug-to-magsafe charger? Then they could have transitioned the laptops over to USB-C at any time without inconveniencing users, added the safety of magsafe to the phones, and allowed users to mix-and-match chargers and cables.
But no, that's exactly what they didn't do. Funny that, for this vaunted "customer-centric" company...
> But ultimately the people outside the company who said it was a poor move from a user POV turned out to be right.
Survivor bias? I'm sure there were people outside the company who said removing the headphone jack was a poor move, removing the CD drive was a poor move, moving to Intel was a poor move, removing the HDMI was a poor move, removing the F-keys was a poor move etc.
- you can please some of the people, some of the time.
- some mistakes will be made along the way. That's good, because at least some decisions are being made - when we find the mistakes, we'll fix them.
At some point it boils down to profits. The MagSafe decision was made to increase profits. Apples assumptions turned out to be wrong and they realized it didn't increase profits.
Sorry, you lost me there. It was a bit of an annoyance at first, but I am all-in on the USB-A to USB-C/DP/Thunderbolt/PD unified port transition. I plug in my laptop to a Thunderbolt 5K monitor and also get power for the laptop as well as a bridge to USB devices plugged into the monitor hub. I have zero interest in going back to USB-A.
The monitor has three USB-C ports on the back. I have a couple of tiny USB-C to USB-A adapters in my backpack. No dongle, just an adapter that connects between the A cable and the C port. However, I am using the adapters less and less. I only bought USB-C peripherals for the last 2-3 years.
I'd suggest there's a difference between "I don't understand how this is supposed to work" to "I do understand how this is supposed to work, and I don't understand why it isn't working."
Seat belt story seems to be Type 1. But what if a lot of "stupid" design decisions are actually Type 2?
And the reasons may or may not be good - somewhere on a scale from real budget and/or time constraints, lack of insight, indifference, penny pinching economics, to passive aggressive user hostility.
When Apple removed Magsafe no doubt there were perfectly good internal justifications for that decision. But ultimately the people outside the company who said it was a poor move from a user POV turned out to be right.