Fish in a barrel
Apple came out with updated Mac Pros and iMacs today. I’m an iMac man myself, so that’s what I checked out. Looks nice! Of course, The League of Internet Commenters is busy finding flaws and comparing it to similar offerings from Apple’s competitors. Hardware isn’t my strong suit, but I know half a thing about website design. So let’s look at the websites for Apple’s primary desktop computer, and the same from Dell and HP.
Computers should be more like sports cars and kitchen appliances. You don’t connect with … consumers by listening to Silicon Valley. Techies, even after all these years of Apple watching, still get bogged down in specs, speeds, and developer contracts. Magic doesn’t happen in an echo chamber.
Core77 speaks with Jonathan Ive on the design of the iPhone 4: Material Matters
The best design explicitly acknowledges that you cannot disconnect the form from the material – the material informs the form. It is the polar opposite of working virtually in CAD to create an arbitrary form that you then render as a particular material, annotating a part and saying ‘that’s wood’ and so on. Because when an object’s materials, the materials’ processes and the form are all perfectly aligned, that object has a very real resonance on lots of levels. People recognize that object as authentic and real in a very particular way.
Jonathan Ive describes the Apple design lab environment
“We have assembled a heavenly design team. By keeping the core team small and investing significantly in tools and process we can work with a level of collaboration that seems particularly rare. Our physical environment reflects and enables that collaborative approach. The large open studio and massive sound system support a number of communal design areas. We have little exclusively personal space. In fact, the memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.”
Sounds awesome, I hope we get a peek in there one day.
How great leaders inspire action; a talk by Simon Sinek.
It’s a transactional world Dell lives in. It’s all about numbers. Everything they say about Apple making products for themselves is true. Apple — it’s about changing the world. For everyone else, it’s about the money.
Apple
Today you find only a few companies that take design seriously, as I see it. And at the moment that is an American company… it is Apple.
— Dieter Rams
