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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"
I thought they werent that great either, but once you actually hold one, you see what they were talkking about. i wouldn't trade my 40 gig ipod for the world, but the mini is a pretty well designed music player.
Actually in the past year or two -
Apple designs have been very lackluster in my opinion.
The G5 is nice looking but was a BIG step backwards. Removal of one PCI slot and removal of a second 5.25" expansion bay.
The keyboard that won here doesn't match - the white does not match the Pro line like the silver and black Pro input devices did.
The only real update to the iMac line in the last year has been a 20" screen - which is nice but that design one it's awards 2 years ago.
If the rumors are true about the new 20 23 & 30 inch displays coming - they too will be a step backward from the current design.
Apple should be winning kudos for software lately. Hardware, I'm not so sure
The iPod has admittedly gotten better.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I have friends who never even WANT to open their computer, and they happen to have Macs. Want to add storage? Buy an external, supported FW drive. Network? Built in.
PC owners are a different breed. They LIKE opening the case. They LIKE planning their next upgrade. They LIKE replacing heatsinks and then benchmarking the performance improvements.
This being said, the vast majority of people really should buy Macs.
But don't pretend that PCs and Macs are the same, just with a different OS and mouse - they're different concepts.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
How would this help, i only imagine people being confused because their phone looks upside down?
Jonathanjk.com
The reason Apple make good designs is that rather than trying to fit as much as they can onto everything, they try to take as much off, so that there isn't anything unneccesary.
;)
Take the iPod Mini for instance, they only have one control, but they have all the functions that you could do with 6 buttons (left, right, buttons 1-4).
However, The most important lesson is that we should all make everything out of Aluminium. take a look at Lian Li cases, which are also very attractive
Well Slashdot could be like some other sites and just put out news of all the cool stuff and awards that Microsoft produced and won. 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. Besides there is a lot of stuff that Slashdot doesn't display on the site that is apple related. Checkout out macslash and many of the apple related sites it will make slashdot seem calm in comparison. Basically now that OSX is unix based it has became Geek Friendly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Should we make it any easier for the average user who doesn't know what they are doing to get into the computer case? Or would we all be better off by only allowing people who at least have a screwdriver or a hex driver into the case. I would really be scared to see someone in my family touching the inside of my computer.
how does that make the buttons any easier to press? all it seems to do is block the display with my hand/wrist
The fireWire and USB2 Ports are there to be used.
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It's price, in my experience at least. There are standard PC component manufacturers who come close to (although not quite as good as, IMO) Apple but to build a system using absolute top quality bits you'll be paying a similar premium to buying an Apple. Apple don't just invest money in design, they put it into making their hardware from the best materials - you won't find liquid cooling in a Dell, Toshiba notebooks don't come in titanium/aluminium cases. Equally though, Dell and Toshiba machines don't cost anything like Apples.
If you notice, everything that won an award, is, no matter how complex, relatively simple.
None of the winning products had useless features or sails hanging off the side. These products had what they needed, and only that, to fulfill their purpose. take the winning website design, it is one of the most basic and simple designs for a site you can probably find, its simple to navigate, and is quite fast.
What is hard to understand is that why more compaines - mainly pc hardware companies don't take note. There weren't any tower PCs on the list, or websites filled with pop-up and banner ads. I think we can all learn alot if we just pay attention.
And with that attitude, you thereby insure they remain average users who don't know what they are doing.
By the same logic, the hood of your car should be bolted shut, only to be opened using a wrench or some other more specialized instrument.
Making it harder to get inside of your computer is just silly. If you don't want someone getting inside, put a lock on it. The "Access Is Everything" section shows that the latch on the G5 has a spot for a lock.
This story should be here, but why is it about Apple?
The first thing when you go to the site: "The 130 winners of the 2004 Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) won are listed in the categories listed below."
130 winners!!? And Apple won a whole 4 awards! Well, I guess this story should be filed under 'Apple' and not 'computer stuff' or 'inventions' or 'design' or whatever. There are 12 categories and each one seems to have 3-6 gold awards in it, so there are about 30-40 gold awards, let alone silver and bronze.
A great many people here like Apple, respect Apple, but do not think the light shines out of the lower orifices of Apple. There is really no reason to classify this as an 'Apple' story. It would make a great story about modern design aesthetics, but instead some Apple fan decides to post it as an Apple-centric piece of news. Nokia, IBM, and Samsung seem to have done quite well too - but this would never be posted under 'IBM roxx your world' or 'Samsung recognised as world's greatest computer designer' or whatever. So why antagonise the non-Apple-fanboy majority by needlessly politicising this story?
Read Pynchon.
Why should we miss out on a story about innovative designs of all kinds just because we are sick of hundreds of boring pro-Apple stories? The issue is partly categorisation, not just the high numbers of Apple stories.
Read Pynchon.
How did you learn how to fix hardware? I'm guessing most of the people on slashdot started by fearlessly cracking open their computer case, without any real clue what they'd find inside. And I bet I'm not the only one that first did it at least 10 years ago, before we all had easy access to the internet, where we could quickly find lots of specs and photographs to help us. Trial and error is one of the best ways to learn, and computers are getting cheaper all the time, so why not let someone poke around inside?
Yeah, if someone in my family was touching the inside of my computer, I'd be upset too. Not because they didn't know what they're doing, but because it's MY computer, paid for by me, and them messing with it is just disrespectful. If I was still living at home, and it was the Family computer, I don't have much right to complain, even if I did spend most every waking hour on it. My mom has just as much right to look inside that computer as I do. In fact, I wish she would, because the more she learns, the more she can fix herself, and the less I get annoyed.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
It no longer matters how clean the code is; it matters how nifty the case is.
Completely untrue, both in the case of Apple and Google.
For Apple, the software they write is tight, powerful, well designed, and elegant. You can reach common functions easily, and the consistency between applications means you don't ever have to do such things as guessing whether "Preferences" is under "File" or "Window".
OS X, iLife, and other Apple software are examples of what well-designed software should be. As a software architect, I am consistently impressed at the dedication Apple has for putting out not only beautiful but rock-solid pieces of software.
Well it's great to see that you speak for all of us here at /. Thinking for myself was really starting to warp my fragile little mind.
Stating that you are not a Troll doesn't make you any less of one. And the flame bait is a nice added touch.
Speaking as someone who uses Apple every day at work in an IT environment I welcome the Apple stories here. As pointed out earlier OS X is UNIX and if you hadn't noticed a lot of *NIX users frequent this place. So what's the big surprise that a lot of Mac stories show up?
If a story shows up on a subject I don't care for, you know what? I don't read it and get on with my life. Maybe you should invest in a mouse with a scroll wheel? I did and I'm on a Mac!
Unless I'm missing something, most ergonomics experts recommend that your keyboard is in a position that keeps your wrists from bending; i.e. without the back of the keyboard elevated.
It's a DESIGN award, not a technology award.
The whole point is that things that look nice win; if someone had a beautiful box with a 286 in it that served some function, it would be considered.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
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Uhm, I can use it without looking at it at all. You memorize the positional relationship of the 4 buttons - back, menu, playpause, forward. The scroll wheel is just that. Since they're indented into the case, you can feel their locations. Someone who's blind wouldn't have any trouble using the buttons.
The bigger problem for a blind person is one I don't believe any MP3 player has solved - they all rely on an LCD. How do you navigate when you can't *see* the navigation interface?
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)