How can you call yourself a designer if you don't have idiosyncracies?
The reason the people who work there in 2025 don’t want to hear us talking about the way things were is because they don’t want to admit to having less responsibility than they did.
In 1999 when I joined Apple, the company only employed 6,960 employees worldwide. In 2024, that number was 164,000.
You wear a lot more hats 🎩👒🧢⛑️🪖🤠💂🧑✈️👮👲👷♀️🧑🍳👨🌾🧑🚒🧑🎓🧙🕵️ when the company was as small as we were.
This is what having earned my respect among HI designers on the Apple design team and the Apple HI Alumni directory means:
• I get to work my own hours.
• I get to call my own shots.
• I get to work where I want to work.
• I get to work with who I want to work with.
• I don’t have to apologize for who I am.
• I get to introduce change in ways that most teams will find unexpected.
• I get to be the change I want to see in the world.
My enemies go back and forth between accusing me of not being Michael Darius (if they know I'm in the Apple HI Directory) or accusing me of fraud so that nobody will learn anything about design that differs from industry norms or the way they want to lead their team.
People who did nothing for the company don't get listed in Tom Erickson's Apple HI Alumni (AHA) page.
Tom Erickson—a former Apple HI designer—maintained stringent inclusion criteria:
• Direct Employment: Members must have worked in Apple’s HI teams.
• Project Impact: Contributions must align with HI’s mission of advancing user-centric design principles.
People who did nothing for the company don't get listed in Tom Erickson's Apple HI Alumni (AHA) page.
“We think radio is a great case of an old world technology that can be integrated into the new world.” ..a quote by me from page 18 in Radio & Records magazine from a 2008 article about the wonderful world of widgets just as the marketplace for widgets and single use applications were becoming standardised with the iPhone and across the industry.
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Archive-RandR/2000s/2008/RR-2008-05-09.pdf
The early (vaulted) treatments of the iTunes Music Store had a shopping cart system because we needed to see what the experience would feel like if Amazon didn't let us license 1-Click™️.
At the time, Amazon had a patent on purchases that required only one click.
Artists are getting paid less and less every year, not more and more and streaming services are to blame for the decline in digital downloads...
New article: The digital music revolution was supposed to benefit artists
Artists aren't getting paid as digital downloads are on the decline and music streaming services soar
https://skeuomorphic.design/p/the-digital-music-revolution-was
Please unfollow me if you believe design thinking and design doing is just an excuse to appropriate ideology instead of a toolkit for addressing wicked design problems facing humanity.
In “how might we meetings” there are no wrong answers but my comments section isn’t a “how might we meeting”. If you aren’t here to learn from me I don’t have time for the activism, rhetoric and constant posturing.
Tell me the humble beginnings of Michael Darius
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/tell-me-the-humble-beginnings-5JVDYx.YTN6KsTTuDvk7Zg
I had my Twitter/X account since 2006 (within a year of Twitter existing) and there was not one complaint about my usage until Elon Musk acquired Twitter.
Now my @darius account is suspended and my audience has been left in the dark as to why.
The @dataarchitectures for this year's 🖥️, next years 💻 and the following year's 📱will ship with @dataarchitectures that I personally built which means that I don't ✅ for you, you ✅ for me.
When @somebody tells you, they need a relocation package in order for @dataarchitectures to be @sustainable, you don't ⏱️ for the Olympics to be over.
Sorry, but the Apple logo made to look like a deadbolt wasn't designed by us.
There are probably some @dataarchitectures here that we don't want to completely lose access to.
This should say "Designer of @serviceengineered Applications"
This is what happens when you talk to @reliabilityengineers like we're yesterday's news.
Introduction by Jony Ive
Steve rarely attended design conferences. This was 1983, before the launch of the Mac, and still relatively early days of Apple. I find it breathtaking how profound his understanding was of the dramatic changes that were about to happen as the computer became broadly accessible. Of course, beyond just being prophetic, he was fundamental in defining products that would change our culture and our lives forever.
On the eve of launching the first truly personal computer, Steve is not solely preoccupied with the founding technology and functionality of the product’s design. This is extraordinarily unusual, as in the early stages of dramatic innovation, it is normally the primary technology that benefits from all of the attention and focus.
Steve points out that the design effort in the U.S. at the time had been focused on the automobile, with little consideration or effort given to consumer electronics. While it is not unusual to hear leaders talk about the national responsibility to manufacture, I thought it was interesting that he talked about a nation’s responsibility to design.
In the talk, Steve predicts that by 1986 sales of the PC would exceed sales of cars, and that in the following ten years, people would be spending more time with a PC than in a car. These were absurd claims for the early 1980s. Describing what he sees as the inevitability that this would be a pervasive new category, he asks the designers in the audience for help. He asks that they start to think about the design of these products, because designed well or designed poorly, they still would be made.
Steve remains one of the best educators I’ve ever met in my life. He had that ability to explain incredibly abstract, complex technologies in terms that were accessible, tangible and relevant. You hear him describe the computer as doing nothing more than completing fairly mundane tasks, but doing so very quickly. He gives the example of running out to grab a bunch of flowers and returning by the time you could snap your fingers – speed rendering the task magical.
When I look back on our work, what I remember most fondly are not the products but the process. Part of Steve’s brilliance was how he learned to support the creative process, encouraging and developing ideas even in large groups of people. He treated the process of creating with a rare and wonderful reverence.
The revolution Steve described over 40 years ago did of course happen, partly because of his profound commitment to a kind of civic responsibility. He cared, way beyond any sort of functional imperative. His was a victory for beauty, for purity and, as he would say, for giving a damn. He truly believed that by making something useful, empowering and beautiful, we express our love for humanity.