Apple Went Against Steve Jobs' Will with New TV UI

A former Apple TV user interface (UI) designer and “professional hobbyist” is spreading the word on Twitter that Steve Jobs was reluctant to implement the current Apple TV’s interface.

Now that Jobs is gone, “there is nobody to say ‘no’ to bad design,” says Michael Margolis, the founder of Sugarcube, a company developing iPhone software, and currently iPhone Software Connoisseur at Massive Health.

He tells his followers that he also does’t like the top-bar-navigation on the app store UI.

Margolis implemented much of the Apple TV 2.0 UI a few years back. “The new home page UI makes me cry,” he says.

He clarified in a subsequent tweet that his comments shouldn’t be interpreted as “a sign of a doomed ‘post-SJ’ Apple.” In fact, he says,  “it’s a logical step given [Apple’s] desire to match the iOS home page.”

That doesn’t mean Steve Jobs would have agreed with it, but it certainly doesn’t make it an appalling alteration either.

Margolis further clarified his statements in an interview with The Next Web.

“The new UI shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” he said. “There is a clear effort at Apple to make everything match the look and feel of their popular iOS products – starting with Lion and increasing momentum with Mountain Lion.”

Speaking of Steve Jobs and his disliking of the UI concepts that ended up in the latest Apple TV software, Margolis added: “To be clear – he didn’t like the original grid. This was before the iPhone was popular and before the iPad even existed.”

“Given that the iPad is far more successful than the AppleTV, migrating the AppleTV to look more like the iPad was probably a very smart move – even if some of the users of the old UI don’t prefer the new one,” he explained.