This hideous Sony Google TV remote is Apple’s poster boy for terrible design choices

Apple’s dedication to simplicity and elegance has been evident for quite some time. From the company’s first computers to its most recent portable devices, Apple has always put design first. But how does it instill those same values in its employees decades later? Reporting for The New York Times, Brian X. Chen was able to spend a day inside Apple University, the company’s internal training program which includes full-time faculty members who create and teach their own courses and attempt to pass on the values of the founders from one generation of employees to the next.

One Apple employee told Chen that in one course, “What Makes Apple, Apple,” former Pixar employee (and current instructor) Randy Nelson showed the class a slide of a Google TV remote with 78 buttons and then a slide with the Apple TV remote, which features just 3 buttons. Business Insider believes this is the remote in question:

Nelson says the designers of the Apple TV remote started with a concept and then went back and forth until they decided only three buttons would be necessary: a button to start and stop a video, a button to select a video and a button to go home.

On the other hand, the Google TV remote has every possible button a remote could contain. Everyone got their say and no one ever said no, so to alter an old proverb, a Google TV remote is an Apple TV remote designed by committee.