Apple’s New Taste

That we know of on the outside, Apple has had four people highly influential in setting the company's taste during its golden era: Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Ron Johnson, and Scott Forestall. Singling out these folks alone is an oversimplification, but they certainly have had outsized influence.

Ive is now the design chief for both hardware and software, but Jobs, Johnson, and Forestall are gone. Ive certainly will continue on setting trends and direction, but he alone can’t do it for the whole company.  Tim Cook is generally known to be a numbers guy and not really a replacement for the taste making roles that Jobs and Forestall had.

The hire of Angela Ahrendts along with the Beats acquisition might be Cook’s way of injecting some new talent in that whole area. It feels odd to think about Apple turning over its chief taste makers all at once, but the old guys were around forever. Ive became an Apple employee in 1992, and Jobs and Forestall came in the NeXT deal in 1997. Johnson was the newbie, only coming on in 2000. The positions haven’t been open for a while (except Johnson’s retail head position, of course).

Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre joining Ive and Ahrendts as the company’s top taste executives makes as much sense as anything for the Beats acquisition. Cook’s internal letter talks as much about those two as it does Beats itself, and Beats as a brand is held in much higher regard than any of its products are.

Part of Apple’s corporate DNA is having a distinct sense of taste and style. With some of the most important people responsible for its past placement there gone, others have to step in. Iovine and Dre are just the latest two to do so.

Monument Valley Is a New Super Mario Galaxy

Monument Valley is a pretty great iOS game that came out not too long ago. If you like impossible objects and M.C. Esher, this is the game for you.

Gameplay-wise, it’s pretty simple. It’s like a point-and-click adventure game, in that you simply tap on where you want Ida to go. If she can get there, she goes; if not, she won’t. You have to step on switches to alter the level architecture, avoid crows that block your path, and use a movable block tower to help you at times.

It reminds me a lot of Super Mario Galaxy in a couple of ways. The obvious one is that Ida can walk on walls and ceilings, just like Mario can in some levels. Some levels in Monument Valley require rotating the stage all 360°, again, like some Galaxy levels.

The other way it reminds me of SMG is that it’s not terribly difficult. With few exceptions, Galaxy is not that hard of a game for anyone who’s not a complete beginner to 3D platform games. It itches your brain in some novel ways, but once you learn its conventions, it’s not overly challenging.

Monument Valley is also fairly easy. The only time I felt stuck to any degree was in an early level where I didn’t realize I could tap and drag a piece of the building to open up a new path. Once I learned to recognize what is movable, it really flowed easily from there. Some parts felt more like a “click to continue cutscene” experience more than playing through a game.

It’s also pretty short. It only has ten levels, some with multiple screens. Combine that with the low difficulty level, and you’ve got a pretty short game. The reviewer at Polygon needed three hours to complete it; I didn't time it, but it took me about one hour, if that. I don’t feel bad about the $4 I spent on it because it’s beautifully designed and forges an interesting path. It leaves me wanting more, but fortunately, more is on the way.

Super Mario Galaxy left me wanting more too. With that one, it had nothing to do with length. It has 120 level variations to complete, and I did it as both Mario and Luigi (their controls are different, so it’s a somewhat different experience). It almost never upped the difficulty though, and I wanted a challenge. Super Mario Galaxy 2 fulfilled that wish, thankfully.

I don’t know if future installments of Monument Valley will be significantly harder. It seems like the game is more about the design and atmosphere than really being a challenge. And that’s fine! It’s OK for some games to be like that. I just hope the difficulty curve ramps up at some point in the future, even if it’s not the next release.