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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"
Apple: Winner of the 2004 Homosexual Design Excellence award
I sure am
Go ahead, mod me down, but I'm pretty damn sure loads of other slashdot folk agree with me on this one.
Sunny Dubey
I'll have to link to this at AlbinoBlackSheep... The Truth About Apple Users (Flash required).
:-P
I suppose I should justify myself for the above. This isn't an anti-apple, and I refuse to block apple stories. But i'm tired of lots of useless Apple news being posted to slashdot right next to the stuff that actually matters. (Ie: This story versus Xgrid info.)
Its kind of like what has happened to the hardware topic on slashdot. Most of those stories aren't even that useful. ("OOoh! its another cool mod!" BLEH!).
There needs to be some sort of story-moderation mechanism by the readers on slashdot.
Sunny Dubey
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.
Thanks for your letter. Being Catholic myself, I know exactly what you're talking about! It has always been our plan here at Apple Computer Inc to revolutionize personal computing with our high-quality and highly gay products.
I'm happy to answer your letter by letting you know that YES we will be releasing an entire hLife ("homo-life") software line. You'll be able to recognize it in stores by the small stylized logo depicting a large cock entering a tight anus with an Apple logo on it. ("Suddenly it all comes together" indeed!).
Anyway, I hope you and other members of our community will join us on our mission, and purchase the exciting new hLife boxed set. Only the boxed set comes with translucent cock rings!
Sincerely,
Harry Rodman
Vice-president
Homosexual Liaison Services
Apple Computer, Inc.
There are plenty of other companies who have excelled in these awards. I see multiple awards to HP and Samsung and awards to IBM, Nokia and other tech companies.
So why should this be classed as a story about 'Apple'?
What's confusing to me is the complete inability of other PC manufacturors to produce intelligently-designed computers.
Oh, so is that why a screen by Samsung and another by BenQ, a keyboard by Logitech, and a bunch of other 'PC' manufacturers won awards?
most PCs nowadays still require you to remove a handful of screws to get inside the case
I'd rather remove a couple of screws using my opposable digits (the lack of which apparently hampers those who pursue the iLife) and double my CPU power for $200 every 12 months than have a super ergonomic case that I can throw in the trash and shell out another $4000 to uncle Steve when it's obsolete.
Read Pynchon.
Apple has been ignoring unix users for 14 years (to the day) in their keyboard design.
Their laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple provides a technical note on how to remap the keyboard, but provides no solution to the hardware problems caused by the design of the ADB keyboard. This tech note helps foreign language users, but does nothing for the CapsLock/Ctrl problem.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 14 years (14 years to the day as I post this). I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Ap
save all the 'legacy is bad' blah blah. the fact is that people still use it and apple computers are incompatible out of the box.
the reason that these are left out imho is bc there are all these flaws with those technologies. things like static on the radio or floppies not working when being transported (oh you know its happened to you) and it creates the possibility that someone will pick up an apple computer and have their visual osx orgasm interrupted by some thing not working.
i guess that in the end it all shows a concern for the 'computing experience' its things like that that make me wonder why apple has not beat the snot out of its competitors.
elegance of the Apple solution to offer as the standard solution a combination CD/CD-RW/DVD/DVD-RW drive
Wow, never thought of it this way, espeicially the "elegance" of it.
When I bought my Windows PC two years ago that came standard with a CDRW/DVRW, I didn't realize it was such a great and "elegant" solution that Mac users would get a couple of years later.
Hey, Mike, if I get any mod points this week I'll undo that crack-addicted idiot's droppings. Your post should be +5 Insightful and printed off and shoved down Steve "form over function" Jobs' throat every morning until he chokes.
What would Apple be without the "elegant" design of the hardware?
:)
To me it would be an overpriced computer system...
You really have to think hard.... is ease of use worth sacrificing features (is full screen view in the free Quicktime player YET? and... 2 mouse buttons anyone???) and software availability (Linux & Windows--- Max Payne & Photoshop on the same computer.. imagine that).
Why pay $500-$1000 more for a computer and get less...
Maybe once the Mac easy and simple world merges with the PC do everything cheaply world then I will be sold... but right now Apple MACs are just pretty boxes to me. (And I LOVE pretty boxes... don't get me wrong
I hope this doesn't sound too anti-Apple but I think we have a long way to go with "personal computing" and that is beyond Apple's proprietary realm.