Kevin Lee calls it “Steve Jobs Syndrome.” As the former head of product strategy and user experience design at Samsung Design America, Lee watched as the $100 billion Korean tech giant wrote check after check to countless Western design firms to develop future products for the Korean company. The designers would dig in their heels, refusing to budge on their grand idea or see how it might fit into Samsung’s vast production line. And Samsung management would either discard the idea entirely, or water it down so much that the product became another meaningless SKU in the hundreds of products Samsung sells today.
The ‘Steve Jobs Syndrome’ thing makes no sense – clicks! Clicks! Clicks! – but the rest looks accurate. You can’t buy taste – the rumoured one million gold Apple Watches are proof enough of that.
Link problem
Article: Samsung is a huge mess of a company that can’t bring well-designed products to market, like Apple can.
Thom: Pretty accurate article as long as you understand that Apple products are actually not well designed or successful.
As always, the Apple trolls cannot read and put words in my mouth. Nowhere am I saying that “Apple products are […] not well designed or “[not] successful”. This is entirely in your head. You’re making it up just to smear me.
What I ACTUALLY said is that the fact that Apple is making one million gaudy gold watches is proof enough that you can’t buy taste (i.e., gaudy gold watches are tasteless). This is something COMPLETELY different.
Go back to reading school.
I totally agree with you here Thom, BUT
[quote]The ‘Steve Jobs Syndrome’ thing makes no sense – clicks! Clicks! Clicks! – but the rest looks accurate. You can’t buy taste – the rumoured one million gold Apple Watches are proof enough of that.[/quote]
So in 1 sentence you say that adding Apple into the article is done for clickbaiting.
In the next sentence you mention a rumor about Apple as proof for something.
(And just to be clear, I have lots of complaints about Apple, but they certainly make well designed and succesful products)
And I suppose you are the arbiter of taste in all of this.
Since I’m the writer of the blurb… Yes.
You talents are rather wasted then, writing on this blog. You should be helping Sansung, Apple of whichever company you might fancy make tasteful products. Who wouldn’t want that!
You go back to writing school and we can car-pool
I’m not a troll Thom, I’ve been reading your site for 16 years now. You just can’t pass up an opportunity to slam Apple, even in an article praising them.
This is tasteless?
http://www.designscene.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Liu-Wen-Vogue…
Yes, it is.
This is tasteless for me and it these are Swiss watches.
http://img.brothersoft.com/screenshots/softimage/s/swiss_watch_wall…
or this
http://www.watchesimage.com/images/31287-zenith-watches.jpg
or this
http://swisswatchwire.com/images/2012/03/hublot_heat.jpg
But considering the design of your web site, well, I can understand that we do not agree on taste
I have to agree. Just because Apple paid Vogue to put a product on the magazine, it does not magically make it good tasting. Alas, the world of fashion is full of tasteless things that, well, sell a lot because of name or some stampeding effect.
You know, sometimes Apple does create tasteless products, they are not perfect because the great majority of its products are great.
Yeah, Apple was individualistic under Steve Jobs. If the individual happened to be Steve Jobs. People need to stop glorifying Apple under Steve Jobs. He was an authoritarian tyrant. And it worked and people put up with it.
And there’s nothing individualistic about products that look the bloody same and doesn’t change.
Meh, Apple, in particular after the second coming, was all about making products for the use of one man, Jobs.
Consider that the ipod basically had the equalizer set to his ears, for instance. That the rest of the world also wanted the products were either genius marketing or a happy coincidence (and maybe force of habit form the press, as the buggers seems to run on Mac by rote repetition).
I like the fact that the batteries are user replaceable. I don’t think there is anything wrong with plastic either. I don’t get why so many american sites (specifically sites like the verge) insist quality == metal + glass, both of which are fragile when dropped.
Did anyone complain about phone design pre smart phones ? All of the old Nokia’s (practically all except for the N91) were plastic and practically indestructible drop a smart phone now and its likely to smash.
I also find it quite funny that none of the US publications batted an eyelid over the iphone 6 camera jutting out of the body. I’m pretty sure one of the older htc’s or LG’s had a camera lens sticking out and they deducted loads of marks from the phone as they said it would scratch easily.
There is a massive bias for apple hardware and design from US publications, I wonder what it would be like if Samsung was a US company.
With all that said, Apple hardware design is some of the best out there, but it is very much form over function.
Also nothing wrong with Gold watches — You need to have some class to understand what good taste is !
I wont be getting an apple watch though, if I ever get a watch it’ll be a tag, or a watch that can replace the phone entirely.
Edited 2015-02-18 15:49 UTC
Samsung’s designs stink because everyone fancies themselves experts in design these days. I look at phones like the stereotypical TV sitcom man looks at his stereotypical TV sitcom woman trying on different outfits.
Yeah, rather than “Samsung design stinks”, it would be more accurate to say that Samsung design is pragmatic. This works well for TVs, where you often want it to blend it rather than have something distinct that will clash with many rooms, but for phones, people are more willing to make sacrifices, such as less battery life for a sleeker profile It probably helps that phones get replaced a lot.
Of course, there’s still a market for pragmatic phone design, and Thom greatly exaggerates the ugliness of Samsung phones – they mostly look unobjectionable.
There’s also the fact that familiarity often breeds fondness. The Galaxy S3 looked a bit goofy the first time I saw it, but now I rather like the design. It’s not on par with, say, Sony, but it looks good enough.
Enjoy that while you can, since they’ve dropped that as of the S6.
They’ve dropped it and gone all metal because sites like the verge have been saying oh plastic so tacky
-2 points.
Once they go all metal, then they are just copying apple -2 points, its a finger print magnet -2 points Will be interesting to see the “issues” they will find with the phone.
I also cant stand people that knock hardware manufacturers for daring to modify android. If they don’t modify then its all the same no differentiation – negative, if they do modify then its different – negative. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
Stock android sucks, because Google has been stupid enough to listen to all of the critics constantly whining about design, which leads to constant change. At least all of the manufacturers that modify keep the damned design consistent, which removes the learning curve for older folks.