Apple’s hardware products are no longer the beautiful, sleek designs they once were, Nielsen Norman Group Principal and early Apple employee Bruce Tognazzini told CNBC on Monday.
“They’ve gone with making everything so ultimately thin that it has one port, and you walk around with a satchel of hubs, dongles and wires — and when the whole thing is setup it looks completely ugly. Not like that beautiful thing they bought in the showroom,” he said.
While Apple is expected to continue to put a heavier emphasis on software services than hardware, Tognazzini said the company should focus on maintaining its reputation as the world leader in making beautiful products. “Where they have slipped since the death of Steve Jobs is in making products that are beautiful to use, and that are efficient and powerful,” he said on Squawk Alley.
“They’ve been consistently stripping important capabilities out of their operating system to make it appear simpler,” said Tognazzini. “We’ve seen Tim Cook wake up to this and start talking about turning out a Mac Pro that’s useful,” said Tognazzini.
His comments were made leading up to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, an event that is as important for software engineers that build on the iOS platform as it is for investors.
“I’m gonna be watching to see whether Apple [is] … going back to the twin focus of beautiful-to-sell as well as beautiful-to-use [products],” he said.