Both of those had contributed to this rather long article, this long screed that was entitled “How Apple is Giving Design a Bad Name”. Now aside from the reference to the ’80s Bon Jovi song “You Give Love a Bad Name” which always rings out in my head as a child of generation X, that’s a pretty strong statement for these two guys who basically came out of the Apple shop at one point, helped establish Apple as a design powerhouse and they’re not looking at what have we wrought, what is the incarnation of Apple currently. It is not as some would like to think of it as the paragon of design anymore. There are lots of reasons for it but I wanted to get your reaction to that first and then dig into that topic a little bit more.

I don’t know, it would be interesting to speculate where was the true peak of it. It was probably before the iPad and after the iPhone, somewhere in there. Probably early iPhone time was when they really peaked. They starting coming in the late ’90s, they peaked ten-ish years later. I think stayed near the peak for a while even after the iPad. Since Steve left they’ve done nothing notable, they’ve done nothing innovative, interesting. Their hardware design has only deprecated, the iPhone 6 versions, it’s a piece of garbage, this is a product that would never have been released under Steve’s watch. The decay is real and accelerating across all front. Frankly I don’t know that the software is any worse now than it was before, it’s just always been putrid. Maybe it is worse, maybe it is also getting worse actually, but it was terrible to begin with.

When those things are made concrete, you suddenly say “Oh my gosh, now I know why I prefer doing certain things on my laptop because I can undo them, or why is this so frustrating? You can’t necessarily put it in words. That’s a real key thing I think that this article brings to the table is the specificity of the critic and the experts from which it comes, that’s very important. I think on the other side of it is also the level of attention that’s being paid to design by other companies now is really upping the game at the same that that Apple seems to be headed in a “Let’s just make this look beautiful direction.”

What I find interesting about that is that the design conversation is shifting, especially in the case of Google they have at least some aspect of Google are very open, they’re not the walled garden that Apple is. You have on one side of the table the walled garden, sort of “Here’s what good design is, you will enjoy it.” versus on the other side “Here are lots of experimental ways that we’re going at creating the digital world. We don’t know all the answers but here’s some stuff to play with.” Which I think of more of an engineering mentality and that’s coming from the Google side.

I’m really fascinated by that because it’s a multi-input environment. They’re doing a lot of things, not all of them good but they’re doing lots of iterations on them. Even though it never feels like it’s completely baked, Google’s really been at least pushing into the design space in new ways. I don’t know if they’re going to end up being the same kind of design force that Apple has been for so long but they’ve made some promising moves. Your thoughts on that?

Mobile is a whole different beast, we have less than a decade now of mobile. We’re still, we collectively meaning the whole, everybody is still figuring it out. Mobile doesn’t lend itself to the point and click paradigm that desktop personal computing lent itself to. They’re bringing all of those old rules and guidelines and patterns and saying “What the fuck? Where is this stuff?” I’m not going to make the case that the things Apple is doing or any of the manufacturers are doing are correct, but I think it’s just a new animal. They’re saying “Here’s all these best practices, why aren’t they there?” Those are old practices and we need to really reinvent what mobile computing looks like, taking lessons where they’re appropriate but …

I don’t know man, the point and click, that whole frame isn’t relevant and you have a tiny of pixels when you’re dealing in direct manipulation. Even on the hardware side, the whole Apple watch thing now, to me that is just one of the many gyrations of what does mobile computing truly look like? Because I don’t think the form factor is correct of a mobile phone. I also don’t think the watch form factor is correct. We’re trying to figure all of this out on the hardware and the software side. I thought their take down unfortunately showed their grey hairs more than was really making crisp salient points that were germane to the paradigm we’re in today.

In terms of Google, yeah, if there’s a main stream consumer tech company that I’m going to buy the stock of it’s going to be Google. I’m very bullish on Google for a lot of different reasons but on the design side I don’t know. They’ve never been great at design, they’re really engineering driven. I don’t know, their newest Nexus phone just came out and it was produced by a different hardware manufacturer. Whereas Apple controls their hardware, controls their software, the design that emanates for that Apple takes credit for. Google can’t take credit for those, it’s a very known, I’ll mispronounce it, it’s H-U-W-A-E-I is the company, Huwaei or however you pronounce that, Chinese company. The phone is really beautiful but it’s not Google, it’s this other hardware manufacturer.

The degree to which Google’s going to be a design leader and/or practice exceptional design, I’m not sure. It’s never been a staple or a hallmark. A big picture of what’s happened is that the decay of Apple over the last 5 years has just brought them back to the pack. Now, who’s the design leader? I don’t know. I don’t know that there is a leader, they’re all kind of similar-ish. Nobody is this perfect … Apple used to be this clear cut above. There ain’t the clear cut above anymore.

The forward looking nature of that company attracts me in a lot of different ways. In the same way that I used to really adore Apple. Maybe I’m just switching my fan boy allegiance, not quite yet, I’m still up in the air about it, I still enjoy Apple products but I feel like Google is nipping on their heels.