From Ann Althouse, we learn this about Steve Jobs:
From his father Jobs had learned that a hallmark of passionate craftsmanship is making sure that even the aspects that remain hidden are done beautifully.
One of the most extreme- and telling- implementations of that philosophy came when he scrutinized the printed circuit board that would hold the chips and other components deep inside the Macintosh. No consumer would ever see it, but Jobs began critiquing it on aesthetic grounds. ‘That part’s really pretty,’ he said. ‘But look at the memory chips. That’s ugly. The lines are too close together.
I’ll be up front- I find it hard to believe Jobs would do this. It’s just plain stupid. Design means different things in different disciplines. When designing a product like a piece of furniture, aesthetics obviously matter- no one is going to buy something ugly. There are other arenas where aesthetics can actively work against good design because the design objective is robustness and functionality. Printed circuit boards are one of those.
If Jobs did, in fact, do this then I can only imagine the engineer rolling his eyes at the buffoonery of the suggestion. The board is going to be hidden in an enclosure, unseen by anyone except a technician. It’s sole purpose would be to provide for the user experience. Mucking with a printed circuit design because it isn’t “pretty” is nonsense on stilts. Making it pretty could very easily render the board useless. There’s nothing to be gained whatsoever from making a PCB pretty.
That’s why I suspect the story is bogus- made up as some kind of silly anecdote in the book to “prove” Jobs’ extreme fastidiousness or some such. I’m not a Jobs fanboy, but even I would give him the benefit of the doubt here.
2 replies on “Design and Aesthetics”
I, maybe as much as anyone, can appreciate beauty as a product of organization. I think everything, even advanced electronics and circuitry, even code and programming, can benefit from logical and concise organization. Things flow more smoothly, wires, distances, spacing, soldering, all those things that become a factor on/in a circuit board, HAVE to have some kind of measurable affect on performance. I am not sure, but if a circuit board was the size of a 16″ pizza and chips were randomly spread around it versus a 2″ by 2″ sheet with all the same components neatly arranged and connected…I would think the latter is better and more productive.
My point is that this statement is taken out of context. Typical of every form of writing and media and whoever talks about the accomplishments of people far greater and more accomplished then the writer could ever be…Jobs meaning to the word “pretty” could have been much more expansive than it belongs on a wall in a museum for all eyes to gaze at for eternity. My bet is that the board was disorganized and lacked any proper flow of substance, meaning that it was an “ugly” board. Point being that because they had all the pieces and just threw them together, they did not achieve the ideal build to maximize functionality.
If I was building my dream, I would know how it looked from the inside out and I would want every element to be perfect. To me, and I would bet to Jobs also, being able to market the fact that inside and out this product had been designed to the highest and most stringent standards, is extremely important, if not essential.
Just my two cents, but without having Stevie boy here to explain his definition of the word “pretty” in context, it is tough give him a hard time about it.
In terms of furniture, if on the inside basic structure of the framing of a piece, you use screws to hold it together and those screw heads are visible ONLY at the time that they are inserted, because they are later buried SO deep in the finish work of the finalized piece, is it insane to believe that a Master craftsman would find an alternative to screws or utilize a method that, even in that circumstance, those screw heads are hidden even at the point of the framing being a skeleton?
Think about it, everyone has different definitions of perfection, which is ultimately why one so many people in the world can actually be considered Masters at something. Maybe Jobs’ definition was to a higher standard than most if not all others and he demanded the most efficient and clean construction all the way around, inside and out. He, in this interview called this definition of construction…”pretty”…
I am not a Jobs lover either, I really don’t care. But I hate media hacks who try to make their point or talk about something they don’t know by brushing over the details and painting someone improperly. If I had to guess, Jobs would probably say that this interview, that this quote was dragged out of and then pieced together for this article, also was not pretty.
In retrospect, I should have thought that it was a misinterpretation of Jobs by the writer. Oh well, I was too focused on the daftness of the idea as presented. But your interpretation makes sense as well.