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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.'"
'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.'
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?
#DeleteChrome
...or are those designs really, really ugly? They bear hardly any resemblance to real Apple products. I'm guessing that's due to the fact that style-man Jobs became CEO in 1997, by which time this designer was gone.
Apple enforcing civil agreements (NDA) = good
RIAA enforcing civil agreements (copyright)= bad
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Man, that PodWatch looks badass. I'd love to have something like that.. except that I KNOW I'd lose the wireless earbuds in a matter of hours.
This looks to me like Pentagram is trying to get themselves bought, by showing off that they are good designers and might be a worthwhile acquisition for Apple.
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Is this supposed to be a photo of Steve Jobs in 10 years? If so, they did a pretty good job!
Anybody remember this? Dood has a great natural feel for products.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
I think you missed the point of the post. All the things he mentioned *did* happen already. The reason iPods costs so much, BTW, isn't that the prices are artificially or unreasonably inflated due to a monopoly. Component costs certainly have a lot to do with it, since the retail prices of the storage media alone often cost more than the iPods they're included in.
I guess Apple has a "monopoly" on iPods, but they don't have a monopoly on MP3 players.
How about something new guys? I don't mean to troll, but if this is the most creative you can be then this company is going downhill fast. Whatever happened to the Apple that had all those great new ideas?
um... the design firm is not affiliated with Apple. It was hired by Business 2.0 magazine to present the "ideas".
Well, the firm was working for Apple from 89-96, when Apple did go downhill fast. Now we know why.
bp
If Apple actually sold computers again. Seriously, they are rapidly turning into a consumer electronics companies and selling computers are becoming more and more of an afterthought.
>that glowed (and the button would be optional)
>
It's been done (just not by Apple): http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/5da2/
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Bob Brunner is an excellent designer, one of the top in the industry; so was his team. Many others in the field of industrial design would agree. The problem was that Sculley, Spindler, Amelio, and the horde of suits they gathered around them failed to appreciate good design, believing beauty had no place in computing (much like Slashdotters, I would point out). Apple's ID team, hobbled though it was by the fact that their best work never saw the light of day outside Apple, still managed to win numerous design awards from '89 to '96. I don't think you can blame the ID group for the shortsightedness of their management.
I think we may reasonably see FM tuners on iPods. My iRiver has one, but of course, like everything else on my iRiver, I have to use this multidirectional tiny button to browse around to get to it (I bought it for the open standards it supports).
I think if Apple could keep a straight, uncluttered interface they would support an FM (or XM, or Sirius) tuner.
I'd like my watch to do a ton of other things- but the "it has to be a watch" comes first. So a calculator would distract from that terribly (bunch of tiny buttons, my watch is digital with analog face, etc.). I agree that Apple hasn't been big into hybridization, and for this we have much more useable items out of them. A watch that plays music would presumably have a cable going to my ears: no thanks, guys. If it broadcast a tiny signal that independant headphones / headband recieved, then maybe. Maybe.
I think before we get truly multifunctional small slabs of plastic and metal, we will need better dynamic controls. Example: my Kyocera 7135 Phone/PDA combo works real nice, but mostly that's because of a touch screen that makes the MP3 player have MP3 player controls, the address book have address book controls, etc. But it's still a pain to use when moving at all, even walking, because of the stylus / difficulty of hitting the screen correctly. Dynamic buttons (LCD screen on each button) would go in this direction, but I think we are still far away from good general purpose items for this reason.
Apple has a history of taking existing but fringe technologies and making them mainstream. I thought, in keeping with this, that the next revision of the iMac would keep the swing-arm structure, but add the ability to rotate the screen to portrait mode.
Don't get me wrong, the new iMacs are cool, but I would have liked to see the rotating monitor become mainstream.
- AJ
Why does a cell phone NEED so many buttons though? I really think that mine has too many, and I rarely use them. For me, the ideal cellphone would have an answer button, and ignore button, a button to initiate voice-activated dialing, a button to toggle between ring, vibrate, and silent, and a power button. I should be able to enter contacts through a USB or BlueTooth interface, and since I'd like to use the phone with a BlueTooth headset instead of holding it to my head, it should have a small design.
I don't need a camera, I rarely use the digit keys (only for entering my voice mail password, which could use voice authentication), and I don't need a d-pad because I don't want to browse the web or play tetris on my phone.
On a side note, I also don't want my phone integerated with my digital music player. If a neat-o new technology comes out, I don't want to have to replace my music player just to upgrade my phone or vice versa.
Apple would be smart to integrate a cell phone and an iPod. It doesn't need to be a PDA, but a lightweight device that you could listen to music or make calls from. For the most part, PDAs are impractical and have features that your laptop would do better and with less hassle. I don't know if they want to venture into that market, but today mobile phone technology is complete garbage.
Right now phone companies want more money for poor phones and the only innovations they offer are fake innovations not driven by consumer demand. Heck, before 2001 who would have said, "this phone needs a crappy little camera"?
But by using Apple's minimalistic paradigm and integrating the iPod interface and your music library, the iPod could become are real "replace all your other crap" device. I'd rather have one bulge in my pocket that was slick and did everything I needed simply (data swap, music, phone, some email) than several devices that do it badly (I have a Smartphone, which sucks) and have features that are not needed.
Apple does bide its time though, but when they succeed (recently anyway), they really succeed. I think of all the crappy MP3 players I had before my iPod and now you can't sit on the subway counting white ear buds before you run out of fingers (or toes).
It was management that nearly drove Apple under. It was products like the PB which helped keep Apple afloat.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I was a big user of Power Computing clones back in the day - they had features I couldn't get in Apple kit, had good prices, and you could do BTO without a problem. The reliability was only so-so, but their support was always good and they were quick about getting me parts if I needed them.
Apple's reliability was also crap during that era, too - and their prices were a lot higher.
When it became obvious that MacOS 8 was really just being targeted at shutting down the cloners (at the time, most of the clone companies only had license rights up through 7.x, because 8 was originally supposed to be Copland) and that Apple was going to refuse all the license renewals, I wrote Steve Jobs a snippy e-mail complaining about it and telling him I expected to see their lunch eaten by NT.
A day later, he sent me an e-mail back explaining his rationale in what he was doing, and we agreed to disagree. You know, I'd say he was probably right after all...
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
what about having just those buttons and a touch sensitive LCD that can display any sort of button you want? Set it up so the this screen is usually locked, but when unlocked the buttons can magically appear and dissapear. You would need a power button, an answer button, and if push the power and answer at the same time the LCD unlocks and you can access all your other buttons. You could make the phone practically any shape at that point (especially if it only used a bluetooth headset or something - then it could be a small little box or something). You could also add Functionality (including iPod) as long as you could reprogram the interface and add memory.
Personally I would still want one that looked like the last picture - a smooth black rectangle. The thing looks awesome!
You must be thinking of the Apple Design Award. It's a "beautiful metal cube ... that glows when you touch it." Unfortunately they're generally not for sale.
http://www.mekentosj.com/goodies/cubism/
PIctures, including x-rays:t ml
http://www.mekentosj.com/goodies/cubism/gallery.h
nokia makes a very small, no button cameraphone aimed at clubbers that just accepts your SIM card then uses voice dialing.
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,62371,00.html
Newton + IPod (>=10Gb) + lightweight BSD/OSX on modern hardware (i.e. Zaurus SL-3000 size and form factor) with WiFi,USB 2.0, Outlook sync (for work), PalmOS emulation, Sony PSP screen resolution, and no shit 8 hours of battery life for less than $600.
Steve, let me know when I can place my pre-order!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Hmm... I can think of no company in the computer space that has had more designs copied from apple. Hell, every Linux and windows GUI is a copy of the old Mac UI (and not a very good one at that.)
I can understand why Microsoft did it- they have little creativity and their culture stifles it.
But why did Linux GUI developers just copy the really poor Windows UI (which is a poor copy of the Mac UI)?
Sidebar-- if you're going to mention xerox in your response, don't bother. Apple licensed some ideas from xerox, paid them in Apple stock, and then created a user interface from them that went far beyond what xerox had in the lab, etc.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
What you want is a Nokia 7280. No keypad, just a clickwheel (very iPod).
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Except there were still many things that were easier on the command line than the GUI. The command line serves the users, period. Apple crippled thier OS by not having it. No one else copied this mistake, and eventually Apple rectified it with OS-X (which is their first serious OS).
"Users want total control over their computers. Redefinition (via Mac): "
Apple was way behind on this at the start. Jobs was openly hostile to "hackers" playing around in the guts of the machine and the OS to make it work better. The CLI went away only on the Mac. No one copied this mistake, and Apple was forced to bring it back. Besides, you never increase user control by getting rid of a feature. That only makes it harder to use.
"- Computers sit on a desk and run applications. Redefinition (via Newton): Computers can portably support everyday tasks. Result: PDAs"
Now it seems like you are making stuff up. The Newton was a false start, a failure. It was Palm who gave us the PDA for others to copy. Newton's only legacy is "flvvbr writte on nVVt0n!" handwriting recognition jokes.
" Computers are for computing. Redefinition (via iMac, iLife, iTunes, iPod): Computers are for entertainment."
Again, you have it backwards. Look at Jobs again, often outright hostile to the idea computers being used for games. Computers were also making music and playing games long before, as well. Original Napster on PC was hugely popular long before iTMS. Yes, the iPod is hugely popular now.
" Computer companies make computing equipment. Redefinition (via iMac, iPod): Computer companies make consumer electronics."
Do you think history began in 1984? Of course not. Commodore sold calculators before, during, and after its computer run. It took mere seconds to think of them. There are probably many other examples.
What we really have here is instances of Apple doing something so badly it never mattered (the Newton), Apple doing stuff others already did before (consumer electronics, computers as a way to listen to your personal music), Apple doing something the wrong way and eventually catching up to everyone else (sophisticated command line only in the 10th "X" version of the OS), or Apple just doing what everyone has done since the late 1970s (making computers for entertainment). On the network part alone, you are pretty close to the mark.
There is no redefinition going on here, except when it comes to colors. The iMac color scheme had a profound impact throughout industry, resulting in staplers and George Foreman grills.
Now for the good part:
You forgot to mention an actual Apple innovation that they DID start and was copied by others: firewire. Wifi (Airport) probably should have been mentioned: Apple was a true leader in this. You also under-emphasized the iPod. While not 100% a "computer" thing, it is having a huge influence.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.