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Industrial Design Excellence Awards 2004
burgburgburg writes "The IDEA 2004 awards (Industrial Design Excellence Awards) have been announced. Apple won 2 Gold (for the iPod Mini and the G5), a Silver (for the iSight) and a Bronze (for the Apple Wireless Keyboard). Some comments: 'Like a modern touchstone the iPod Mini is a product people will love to hold. The designers skillfully integrated the satin aluminum case with flush controls and a simple touchpad interface to create a jewel-like piece of technology.' - Monty Montague, IDSA, Design Principal, BOLT. 'The G5 is impressive with visually lithe qualities and a host of thoughtful and innovative user features wrapped in aluminum. Its well-engineered technical features, such as its cooling system and internal component mounts, are honestly and elegantly executed. The G5's aesthetic is a pure and graceful expression of Apple's philosophical precept of leaving no detail un-designed. This is what results when engineering and design play nice with each other.' - Christopher Alviar, IDSA, Principal, CG/A"
go stick an apple in your butt you fucking wank.
what? you mean like the early imacs that used to overheat so much that you couldn't upgrade the cdrom to a burner. yeah, great design by them there.
"most PCs nowadays still require you to remove a handful of screws to get inside the case."
for the average computer user who doesnt upgrade his computer all the time whats the downside? And for those who mod there computers, they would get the right case for there needs.
for others, the more screws the better. I dont want some casual thief getting quick access to computer to nick its parts. 6 screws in the back, a padlock on the top lid keep the case shut and its bolted to the 24' long table.
... and after that tell me about the excellent design and how it easy it was again...
Please tell me again how easy it is to change the battery on an ipod.
Most people don't care how easy it is to open up the case of a computer. The average computer user doesn't. and when he does it's NOT hard to use a screwdriver. The modder who opens his case a lot would probably buy a case thats quick to open though so it's not gonna affect him when theres so many to choose from.
Hint: fire wire and usb is slower than ide/sata/scsi
plus the drives will run hotter in a caddy than they will inside the case.
Apple products are often ahead of its time in a lot of details. So viewing apple products is like seeing what will be available in the future.
Wow, I'm surprised you have the time there in the Apple marketing department to browse slashdot. Shouldn't you be churning out hip looking ads featuring trendy twenty-somethings enjoying the latest iLifestyle iAccessories or something? Or at the very least posting dubiously sourced benchmarks in business magazines?
Read Pynchon.
If Apple keeps losing 0.5% marketshare or so a year, in less than a decade it'll be history. That's sad when you consider just how impressive OS X is in comparison with Windows. It's sad when you consider that, unlike Microsoft, Apple really is innovative. It's sad when you realize that Macs really are far more hassle-free.
Apple's problem is that it's too obsessed with winning design awards like these--awards that are likely translate into maybe 1000 additional sales a year. That's a tiny drop in the great ocean of desktop computer sales and a recipe for disaster.
Apple needs to realize that Windows (and soon Linux) have improved visually to the point where most untutored buyers can't see a difference. They're buying a computer to do something other than make a fashion statement, and by that standard Macs simply don't measure up.
I've own Macs for almost 15 years. But when I consider replacing my seven-year-old beige G3 I balk. Apple's dismal desktop sales reflect the unpleasant fact that, unlike their laptops, their desktops are grossly uncompetitive. In the PC world, I could find a dozen and more models that have a blend of features and price I like. With Apple I find nothing making the hassle of an upgrade worthwhile.
In desktops, Apple has the same mindset that almost sent Henry Ford into bankruptcy. Ford's problem was a "any color you want as long as it is black" mindset. He paid no attention to the market and let General Motors steal away his customers. Apple's 'don't listen to the market' mindset is identical to Ford's. I've got two perfectly good monitors. I don't want to pay more for an eMac or iMac to get a computer that forces a monitor on me and leaves me no option to add a second. I want what the PC world provides in abundance--a box that lets me mix & match to get the features I want at a reasonable price. I don't want optical audio out or a WiFi card built in. I don't want a low-end machine that probably cost Apple more to make because they deliberately crippled it in comparison with pricer models.
Apple is, unfortunately, still mired in the Eighties, when it was different enough to maintain market share despite the fact that it didn't deliver what the market was really wanting. But now isn't then. If if doesn't want its computers to become mere appendages to iPods, it needs to look at the sort of computers people are buying, and build models just like them. It needs to copy as well as innovate. Wise people know how to do both.
In short, Apple needs to listen more to us and less to a bunch of elitist, stuck-on-themselves artists and designers. A computer is a tool. It isn't an object to be placed in an art museum to be "ouuud" and "ahhhhd" over.
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
The Blue-and-white G3 with the faulty IDE controller that corrupts a second hard drive, the short-lived battery on the iPod, the faulty headphone jack. Great machine (I started off with one myself), but too many problems associated with it. Besides, nothing you can do on a Mac that can't be done on a PeeCee for a fraction of the price. I recall a joke award given to apple (NYT or somethin')"Designed-Like-a-Picasso-and-Priced-Like -One"