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Interview With iMac designer, Jonathan Ive
rleyton writes "The Independent has an interesting interview with Jonathan Ive, the designer of the new imac (and the iBook, the iPod and original iMac...)" It's actually a pretty interesting
even if you think the new iMac is repulsive. Personally I dig it.
Personally, I think the decision to leave out the sub was a good one. A subwoofer can be placed under a desk or in another inconspicuous place, and Apple took that into account when designing the iMac. An integrated subwoofer would signifigantly increase the footprint of the iMac and take up valuable desk space.
Plus, not all users are avid music listeners. The speakers that come with the iMac can adequately handle the dings and whistles from normal PC use. Not all users need a subwoofer in the first place, and including one would add to the cost of the unit.
Did anyone else notice that if you open up the bottom of the unit for service, you have to reapply thermal paste to prevent excess heat from damaging components? That is the first case I have ever seen where opening it requires adding more thermal paste.
Granted, it doesn't require more paste if you only open the hatch to the RAM and wireless card, but it does if you actually open the case itself.
See page 12 in the manual:
Replacement Note: Whenever the bottom housing is opened for service, you must clean
and reapply thermal paste to the surfaces joining the thermal interface layer. Failure to
reapply this paste could cause the computer to overheat and possibly damage the internal
components. Refer to the next topic, "Thermal Paste Application" for detailed information.
I think because the digital hub is not yet fit to be the home stereo, and I don't think that it will be for awhile.
Audio playback on a computer, at it's best, is still pretty bad. Even if you have an iSub Woofer and some fancy Altec Lansing speakers, the CD drive isn't a very good audio CD player. The sound card isn't a very good preamp or amplifier.
If Apple were to begin adding all the hardware that would be required to make an iMac good at audio, the thing would be as big as your desk.
As cool as iTunes and the iPod are MP3 is a lossy format, even at the highest sampling rate, it tosses out some information (=sound) from the ripped CD.
More fundamentally, CD audio itself is "lossy" because even its sampling rate misses too much information from the original analog sound recording (most records are still originally recorded in the analog domain, then digitized).
Until the widespread adoption of audio DVD (which stores much more information and allows for a much higher sampling rate) digital audio playback will remain inferior to analog.
New from Apple and Harmon Kardon, the iTurntable!
Need to look that one up? Me too. The Anglepoise table lamp, modeled on the muscles and bones of human limbs, was invented by George Carwardine in 1933. You know your standard adjustable desk lamp? That's an Anglepoise-derived design.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Apple's... (err who ever manufactures the LCD panels) ... LCD's are some of the best in the industry. I've owned 4 different PowerBooks and none of them have ever had a dead pixel. I've never actually seen a dead pixel on a quality Laptop from _any_ company.
Including the 4 PowerBooks, I've owned 7 different Macs (9600, B&W G3, original (rev A) iMac, PB 5300, PB 3400, "WallStreet" G3, "Pismo" G3). None of them have ever had any sort of hardware failure. None. My little sister has been using that Rev A iMac since it was introduced nearly 4 years ago.
I'd say that purchasing Apple equipment is a pretty safe bet.
Of course, there are some people who have problems, but given my experience with Apple hardware, I'd say it's some of the highest quality stuff on the market.
STEVE JOBS ON DESIGN
Fortune Magazine: What has always distinguished the products of the
companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with
design an inborn instinct or what?
Steve Jobs: We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior
decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me,
nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the
fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in
successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just
the colour or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the
iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element
plays together.
On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it
is much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the
time. That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it
required an enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power
better and do a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That
is the furthest thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the
day we started.
This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy
and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really
good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's
hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything
remotely like it.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/2000/01/24/app6.
--
I thought a more squarish (dare I say cube-shaped) base would have allowed for built in stereo speakers. And I think it would have looked a lot cooler than the lump base.
The Independent interview with Ive finally explained it for me:
Well if lump is the most functional form for the base, then lump it is. As Ive mentions in the interview, you don't really appreciate all the subtle decisions that go into an industrial design until you start to understand all the constraints.
I like the G4 iMac more now.
You do realize that you're an idiot, don't you? Cocoa is not Java for anything. Cocoa is an API for Mac OS. You can program for the API in two languages: Objective-C and Java.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Funny you should mention that. Actually, as you'll discover if you ever install Linux on a Mac, there are several "hidden partitions". These include:
Those are what I've discovered on a single Macintosh (Blue & White G3 model) which had been running Mac OS 9 and onto which I'd installed Debian. I'm sure there are even more on a modern system with Mac OS X. And no, the Mac doesn't use the PC partition format with its "primary" vs. "logical" limitations.
Thing is, you're mostly right ... in Mac OS
itself, you never have to worry about these things.