Re-Imagining Apple

FirienFirien writes "Business 2.0 has put up a selection of ideas from Pentagram Design, featuring some interesting rumoured ipod innovations, as well as a look at what may be next for Apple. From the article: 'The project was led by Robert Brunner, who was Apple's chief designer from 1989 to 1996, and who oversaw the design of the PowerBook line, among many other hit products.'"

Comments

An interesting set of designs

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting set of designs, but ones that show that non-steve-approved designers just don't get it.

Those products all look like any old generic electronics product. They entirely lack the current Apple design features of absolute minimalism.

If steve could create a sphere with one single button on the outside, that glowed, and had any realistic expectation that it might sell, he would.

(and the button would be optional)

Re:An interesting set of designs

[dchamp]

Check your voicemail, or your credit card balance, or anything else that you can do with a phone that requires you to enter a pin, zip code, or account number - without a numeric keypad. Go ahead. Try it.

There's also text messaging... which is a big deal for some people. I only use it for my one friend who works the night shift and can't answer the phone while at work.

Most people I know never use the voice activated dialing, mostly because it doesn't work, and they don't want to look like a moron saying "Bob! Bob! Bob!" at their phone in a public place. Of course, this assumes that they're not one of those folks who thinks it's OK to talk on a cell phone at any time and place (see: "Shaun of the Dead")

Apple is rolling

[DoctoRoR]

Apple is the new Sony. Their iPod is this generation's walkman, and Apple is smart enough to leverage that success into other products. Apple has always been good at design. The unix-core of the Tiger OS extends that nice design into the innards.

More food for thought: Paul Graham's essay on Japan vs US design, which gives a nod to Apple as one of the few US companies that get it.

Re:Apple is rolling

[cloudturtle]

I think you are right for the most part, but there is something you say -- that a lot of people say -- that I think misses the point. The iPod may be this generation's walkman, but it is so much bigger for Apple than a "walkman" would be. THe important thing about the iPod is that without a computer it is a big paper weight. The walkman could survive with tapes and radio transmissions, it had no need for an external interface. The iPod requires this external support and that's why it is having a such a great impact on Apple's bottom line -- with the increase in computer sales, iTunes MS, ect. The walkman couldn't have accomplished this, at least the same way, because it was independent and stand alone. The iPod has the ability to be much more than the new walkman, that to me is what makes it such an intersting device from a business standpoint.

What will Apple do next?

[Dancin_Santa]

I don't know what Steve's got up his sleeve, but I know that Business 2.0 doesn't like giving out their stuff for free.

The page you requested is available only to magazine customers and AOL members. Subscribe now and you're in...

I guess that's kind of what Steve Jobs meant when he said they "just don't get it." Steve isn't the type of guy to go around giving stuff away for free willy nilly. In fact, he's built up Apple from relative obscurity to the powerhouse PC juggernaut it is today. But when he sees an opportunity, he goes for it. And sometimes that opportunity is to build a stronger brand through giving stuff away for free. He seems to be criticizing the RIAA's tactics of suing their customers, when they should be kissing their asses.

I'm not saying that Steve Jobs should be on his knees kissing anyone's ass, but it is quite obvious that he has a knack for reading the market and "knowing" what people instinctively want.

Re:What will Apple do next?

[cowscows]

Well, those upset mac faithful should get over it. And I say that as mac user for the past 15 years.

Sure, so Apple's kicking some ass with the ipod/iTMS. They're also giving us constant updates to OSX, lots of fun to play with consumer software, a solid lineup of hardware, and with the mac mini, a cheapo machine that everyone's been clamoring for for years.

Part of being the mac faithful is a belief that the average person would be much better off with a mac than a windows machine. Apple's finally making some progress in reaching those average people, and providing them with a cheap computer. What more could we reasonably ask from them? They're not perfect, but I don't think their success in music is causing any big problems.

Re:What will Apple do next?

[Sentry21]

I think there are a few key things that has made Steve Jobs' term at Apple a success:

1. He does whatever he wants - no one is willing to say no to him. Some people follow him out of respect, the rest give in because of fear, but the result is that he gets what he wants
2. He isn't in marketing - he's not sitting there asking twenty-person focus groups 'what would you want an MP3 player to do?' and then implement it all. He decides what HE wants, and makes everyone around him want it, which spreads swiftly.
3. Reality is no barrier - the famed Reality Distortion Field has been proven by reams of empirical data. Otherwise rational people will listen to, accept, and eventually evangelize things that have no basis in any real or imagined universe. Steve Jobs can tell you the sky is neon green, and you'll believe him. It won't be too long before you think, 'You know, I think the ocean should be neon green as well,' and eventually people will be selling $800 crystal bottles for you to put your neon green ocean water into.
4. He's eccentric - just because conventional wisdom says something doesn't mean that he'll listen. He's willing to abandon caution to the wind and go with what feels right - something that people are too afraid to do these days, especially with shareholders breathing down your neck.
5. He's arrogant - He's right. He knows he's right. You know he's arrogant, but you're too afraid to tell him he's wrong, so you just stay quiet and listen, and eventually, you too realize he's right. He's not afraid to tell you what he thinks, and he doesn't care what you think about it - in the end, you know it's not personal, that's just the way it is.

Generally speaking, all of this boils down to one simple summary: Steve Jobs does whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and when he does, he makes you want it too, regardless of the reality of the situation.

Re:What will Apple do next?

[GlassHeart]

0. He's often right.

Do you imagine for a second that a public company would tolerate a CEO who "does whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and when he does, he makes you want it too, regardless of the reality of the situation" if he wasn't making them as much money as they've ever seen?

Now, leaving everything in the hands of such a person is inherently risky. They are capable of great success because they can brush aside all opposition, but they are also capable of spectacular failures for the same reason. But Steve Jobs is a success today mainly because he made Apple build and sell what people want to buy.

Re:Well, for one thing...

[Kagato]

Apple settled, which is exactly what I predicted they would do. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip, but you can create enough buzz to make other think twice before doing it again.

I know someone who was sued by microsoft. It was essentially the same thing. Rattle the saber a bit, get some media attention, and settle for peanuts after the story has disappeared from the pages.

1989-1996

[justforaday]

Ahhh, yes, the prime era of Apple. Is this guy responsible for the wonderful internal design of the 8500 and 9500? (note: you had to essentially dismantle the entire machine to add RAM)

Re:How's that again?

[rebeka thomas]

> Yeah when he opened up the architecture to clones and you
> started seeing Macs everywhere.

He did no such thing, And those clones were crap. They relied on better performance figures on paper with woeful hardware support & reliability.

I had the misfortune of supporting Macs during the 1990s. Apples were marginally better than most suppliers, but most clones were cheaper & more prone to failure than the worst PC brands.

The next big thing...

[bsdparasite]

I'll tell you why these are not even close to what may come out of Apple.

Simplicity. I don't think Apple is in the game of mixing functionalities (I think Sony is a better contender for that). That is why there is no FM tuner in iPods.

Watch that plays music? No one wants to do anything except keep time using their watch. I mean no one sensible.

Re:How's that again?

[n1ywb]

The PowerBook series set the standard for laptop computer design. They were terrific feats of industrial design. And the rest of Apple's products were usually pretty good that standpoint as well. The bad old days were not the result of poor industrial design. Poor price/performance, a crashy and rapidly deprecating OS, and crappy developer programs probably had a lot more to do with it.

Missing the point

[legLess]

These folks have done some cool work, but they're totally missing the point. Steve Jobs would rather shave with a cheese grater than let these things out into the wild with an Apple logo on them. Take one look at any of these gadgets and my first reaction is, "Huh, I bet that does a lot of cool stuff." But I'm a geek, and these designs are by geeks for geeks, and that's exactly what Apple is trying to avoid.

That silly-looking wirless iPod necklace thing -- what's with the bevelled see-through skeleton around it? How does that make it work better? The skeleton around the iPodWatch -- what does it add?

Apple succeeds because they hide the complexity, not because they call attention to it. Flashy complicated designs advertise internal complexity. While a geek sees power in complexity, most people see added cognitive burden. "Oh, shit, I bet that thing has a million features that I'll never figure out."

Re:Missing the point

[omicronish]

Apple succeeds because they hide the complexity, not because they call attention to it. Flashy complicated designs advertise internal complexity. While a geek sees power in complexity, most people see added cognitive burden. "Oh, shit, I bet that thing has a million features that I'll never figure out."

You've hit the point exactly. I'm a PC user for various reasons, but I drool everytime I see a nice, simple, and clean design from Apple. It's pleasing on the eyes and pleasing on the mind, and I wish a PC manufacturer would realize this and just make a laptop or PC without all these little edges, buttons, and colors.

Digital Country Club?

[MisterSquid]

Someone should string FirienFirien and Zonk up by their editorial tonsils. We can't RTFA unless we shell out money. There is no option to register for free or view advertising in exchange for a subscription. Since when did Slashdot becaome a digital country club where one has no option but to pay to play? Oh, I forgot. 90% of Slashdot doesn't ever bother to RTFA.

That said, I think the most interesting element about this article (of which I could read two paragraphs in addition to its headline) is that a major business news publication is engaging in rumor-mongering just like the fan-based Apple sites. It looks like even the mainstream media has begun imbibing Jobs' Purple Kool-Aid.

Not that I'm complaining. (Just check out mistersquid's profile on http://discussions.info.apple.com/ if you don't believe me). I just find it interesting that mood of Apple's fan-base is starting to be reflected in major media channels.

Re:Really out of the box thinking?

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Whatever happened to the Apple that had all those great new ideas?"

They're still coming up with great new ideas. In the meantime, we have this article under discussion involving ideas from people who do NOT work at Apple, so why are you complaining about Apple?

Re:Not really

[colmore]

The single button mouse is a GREAT design. Just try teaching someone who has never used a computer before to use a two button mouse. It also forces intelligent design on software developers. Very few applications have (or should have) the level of feature complexity that would require contextual menus for basic functionality, and multiple mouse buttons should rightly be viewed as an optional enhancement rather than an interface essential.

If you don't like it, do what I did, and get a $10 logitech wheelmouse. OS X supports it just fine.

Re:The clones were better than Apple's machines

[justforaday]

Having supported some of the Power Computing machines, I'll vouch for Rebeka. Many of those machines were absolute crap.

Get a clue

[Locke2005]

they are rapidly turning into a consumer electronics company And so are Dell and Gateway... hmm, I wonder why? Could it be that computers are now commodities with razor-thin profit margins, while consumer electronics can still be sold for several times their actual worth? Business is all about margins, and you don't get good margins by competing directly with Asian manufacturers. Someday even HP might figure that out...

The only thing I liked

[Dark Paladin]

Was the iPhone and maybe the video iPod, though I think the flap idea is just bad.

For a movie iPod, take the current device, make the screen longer for 16x9. Now if you want to watch a movie, turn it on its side and use the wheel to move forward or back.

For the iPhone, let you side the top half sideways so you could hold the phone while revealing a keypad - great for finding/entering contact information, notes, text messaging, etc.

But I'm not sold that Apple will go this route. I think they see the iPod as a hub to the computer - insert music into computer, get music onto iPod. Insert movies onto computer, get DVD's or (in time) movies onto the iPod. Record messages to the iPod, and back to the computer.

So most - if not all - of what they do is still geared towards the computer. And I think most people in this generation can live with that.

Extend the idea further. Apple is using the iPod as a hub of its own - recording messages, storing contacts, etc. I can see a time when you buy a digital iCamera, and instead of accepting tapes it just uses an iPod for storage. Plug it into the digital camera or camcorder, take your pictures (with 4,000 picture storage space at incredibly high quality, or with 40 GB of storage space, that's what - around 40 hours of video at MPEG-4 for normal TV rates, different for HDTV? I'm just guessing, so I'm sure someone who knows more about video compression will know).

Cars, like GM, are making "iPod plugs" so you can charge up. Look at the third party iPod market - at least 3 manufacturers are creating car stereos to let you view and select playlists from your iPod.

Expect to see the iPod become more of a "hub" in this fashion - and, of course, still come back to the PC. Maybe it will get Bluetooth in the future so can "walk into the house, sync and go". But several of the ideas (such as the "Wireless iPod you hang around your neck") won't happen because doesn't use the computer as a hub - but as a streamer. Apple knows people want to sync and go.

One last thought - the one thing that I'd like to see in future versions of iTunes is a group/family system. I have music, my wife has music, my kids have music, all shared on a Mac Mini. I have a family user just for that reason, but I can see the first time my daughter does a User Switch to herself and doesn't unplug Daddy's iPod, then starts putting *her* music onto just her user - now duplicating storage.

I'd like to see a version of iTunes which takes this into account, and lets you say "I'm a member of an iTunes share - point me here". Granted, there is the DRM angle where you'll have to have a "family user" to play Audible/iTunes store purchased songs (fine by me, since I just either buy CD's or JHymn the music once I buy it online) instead of every person using their own - but an iTunes family system would be a great. Only 4 more years until my daughter turns 10, and I think the system should be in place by then when she *really* starts getting into her own music.

Re:How's that again?

[Simonetta]

Perhaps that should read "... chief designer from 1989 to 1996, a period where Apple saw its market share drop to near irrelevance".

Weren't these the same people Steve Jobs saved Apple from?

This is certainly a valid point, but it is essentially a 'red herring'. It's not the design of the machines that was responsible for Apple's fall in market share. On the contrary, the exempalry design kept the market share from falling further.

Apple's low market share is primarily due to its high price and relative lack of low-cost software. The lack of low-cost software is a direct result of Apple's refusal implement circuitry that runs 80x86 code in general and (to a lesser extent) Windows API calls. The fact that Apple's OS may or may not look, feel, and act better than Windows is irrelevant. The computer is too expensive and the peripherals are too expensive.

PC equipment is highly price sensitive. The only market for Apple equipment is in the fields where dollar value added to the work created by a personal computer greatly exceeds the higher cost of the computer equipment itself (including software). For everyone else, the Windows/Linux OS solution is good enough. The benefits of an Apple system are not worth the extra cost, either the lower cost of the CPU and peripheral and the cost of using the more expensive Apple application software.

For some reason known only to them, Apple chooses to have only a tiny market share of the PC industry. They are certainly smart enough to redefine the industry on their terms.

Re:How's that again?

[Mononoke]

I also remember it with that atrocious trackball, a 9" screen, and terrible battery life. The thinkpad had at 10.something inch COLOR screen, and the 'eraser tip' mouse control.

I remember the Powerbook 100 coming out a year before the thinkpad. I also remember that the 100 was the entry-level model, yet the 1992 thinkpad was the "flagship" of IBM's laptop models.

Oh, and that thinkpad clit-mouse is worse than any trackball.

Re:Not really

[Ohreally_factor]

If you don't know how to access contextual menus in the Mac OSes (and didn't think it was possible), maybe you need to get a clue.

I've tried to teach my father the keyboard shortcut for quitting an app. CMD-Q. Bless his heart, he still uses the menu every freaking time. Do you think these clueless people, such as my father, should be subjected to your "clueful" idea of computing?

Re:Steve Jobs, great instincts

[jfengel]

That is interesting, though I'm not sure he nailed the reason why Segway failed. He never mentioned the price. If it were free they'd be all over the place; they're at least as cool as an iPod even without more funky design. As far as I can tell it was too expensive for what it provided. I just can't imagine enough places to take it.

Who knows? Maybe if it had been designed more innovatively it would have caught more eyes than it did. Certainly if they'd taken his manufacturing suggestions it would have been cheaper, and that might have been sufficient (though I can't imagine knocking off the factor of 5 to 10 that would have been required).

Ultimately I've got to give him props for the crucial observation that it simply wasn't the right thing: "You don't have a great product yet!" Well, it would have been great for free, in the Jobs definition of "insanely great", even without more style. But he was clearly righter than everybody else in the room.

Thanks for the link.

One of those isn't good

[AtariAmarok]

"The first touchpad for mouse control debuted on .. wait for it ... a Powerbook"

One of those isn't something to be very proud of. The reason the IBM eraser tip is not a lot more common is that IBM charges a lot to license their patent. At times, Toshiba has chosen to bite the bullet and include it The eraser nipple thing is far easier to use than one of those mushy touchpads. Especially when so many touchpads have the horrendous "feature" where if you bump the surface, it acts as a mouse click. This makes absolutely no sense: how many real mice register a click when you touch the mouse without clicking it? I've seen some where you could not even turn it off, making "a Drag is often a Click and Drag even though you never clicked any button" a common situation.

Better ERGONOMICS too.

[tentimestwenty]

I'm so sick of people bashing Apple's one button mouse. Next to the PowerMac beige mouse that was standard through the 90s, the new clear optical mouse is the most ergonomic design ever made. You can hold it just about however YOU want, there's no craning to reach the button because the WHOLE THING is a button. All you people who love scroll wheels, and buttons on the side, top and front are going to wake up one day and not be able to move your hand because of carpal tunnel. Take it from me - 10 years as a graphic design power user.

Sure, I can get 10% more productivity with a scroll wheel or multi-button mouse, but I wouldn't be working today PERIOD if I'd used one all along.