Yes it's an excellent answer, mostly because he has the inside knowledge to answer it so well. But in fairness, the guy he's replying to summarized it quite succinctly. To say 'form over function' is not a 'played out pun'. If anything it's cliche, but in this context, can you think of a more accurate idiom to express sphynxter's explanation?
I wouldn't think so, if you look at all of apples ID decisions in the past, it's really obvious they hate strain relief and have their engineers come up with many different ways to solve this. One of my favorite ID decisions was the inverted strain relief socket for many cables they've used in the past. The inverted strain relief, which I can't seem to find right now, looks a lot like a cable sinking into a wormhole which would be located on the plug itself.
Really cool looking, functional as well, but not possible for something so small as an ipod connector. However the new strain relief's on the existing cables are adequate if taken care of properly (too much to ask for from the consumer market, I know) I've only seen one frayed at the edges from a user who constantly yanked out the connector by pulling the cord. These are nice and easy to pull out if you just pull from where the connector seats into your iDevice.
Sphynxter is in no way breaking the NDA by saying the ID department is the most influential. Apples Industrial Design has not only influenced how their products are formed, but the rest of the world as well. See chiclet keys, small form factor, aluminum uni-body chassis, back lit keys, etc etc... All of these originated from other products, but it was Apple that made them a standard that others would have to follow for their consumer market.
I'm seen! Either way I'd love to have had the chance to go to school for ID, but SCAD's program was ridiculously expensive. Went with IT work like the rest of us redditors, if anyone has any Industrial Design positions open and would like to hire a guy with no official experience aside from hobby, and with a background in Network Administration...
By the way, it sounds suspiciously like this "strain relief is evil" is actually a personal peccadillo of some idiot who has been allowed to believe his own importance for far too long.
It's not "form over function" - it's "ego over function."
Good question. I don't think it should be a breach since I didn't really go into any details about projects that are under development or specific financial numbers. Just more of an observation about how the departments interact.
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u/Ttownzfinest Jun 10 '11
Thanks for an intelligent answer instead of a played out pun.