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Apple Designer Honoured By British Crown
metalcup writes "The vice-president for design at Apple, the man behind the iPod and iMac, has been inducted into the Order of the British Empire as a Commander (a CBE honour)." From the BBC story: "Mr Ive started working for Apple in 1992 but exerted a big influence on its products only in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to the company he co-founded. Mr Ive's first design for Apple, the iMac, was hugely influential and has been followed by a series of other widely admired gadgets ... Since the launch of the iMac in 1998, Mr Ive has driven the design of almost every piece of Apple hardware. Landmarks include the original iMac, iBook, Power Mac, PowerBook, Mac Mini and iPod."
John Ball a math prof at Oxford, and Michael Pepper, professor of physics at Cambridge, also will receive a knighthood. That's also news for geeks.
There is no entry for John Ball on Wikipedia, anyone who knows more about him, might want to fill this gap.
Same for Michael Pepper, who is mentioned in the article on the Quantum Hall effect.
It still amazes me that the British Empire uses the technique of honoring bravery of their Knights and Lords in todays society to honor people who now run multimillion dallor industry and come up with ideas like the iPod.
....
What does this mean to us? Nerds are as cool and as handsome as ye'old days knights in shinning armor
Same here. I have an iMac G5 sitting among various other computers, and nobody ever notices the others at all: they are invariably intrigued by the Mac's looks, screen, generally quiet operation, and how it has "a much nicer Windows" than the one that came with their own PCs.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
So HE is the clever guy designing all the sexy gadgets. I swear, between their computadora cases, laptops, and most definately the Ipod (Gen 4), Apple's got the best looking set of hardware. Why so sexy? I think its simply the golden ratio. Its why bodies look good. 1:1.6 is everywhere. The best looking body has 1:1.6 ratio in forarm to arm, waste to shoulders, thighs to calfs, calf and knee girth to ankle girth. Plus, for a side profile (on women) breast to waist width, and (on all, a side profile still) buttocks to thigh width.
So it only makes sense to put this ratio in every product: it makes it inherently more attractive, just because. And thats what this guy did. Width to height, scroll wheel width to Ipod width, etc. Ingenious, really. Its also the reason why I expect the video Ipod and the Nano to not sell nearly as well as their previous incarnations (Gen 4 and Ipod Mini). The Nano and Ipod Video are lacking in the 1:1.6 ratio department.
From what you're saying, I gather that the issue of surface scratches out-ranks product atributes such as reliability, amiable UI, and the absence of general problems that seem to plague some personal computing systems.......
Yeah, I guess I could be real upset that my ipod screen is scratched (believe me, it is)....but wait, it dosn't matter! It still works great and I can see the text fine and the battery is f*****g sugary sweet after 1 year+
I guess what i'm sayin is those surface scratches have nothing to do with what computers are about. Apple has been a very positive force in the tech world, in my opinion.
The obvious point has to be made again. Royalty is a medieval artifact which in my opinion is evidence of lack of development. It's a Bad Thing (tm). I wish more people who are "honoured" or knighted by royalty would take a stance and say it as it is, as opposed to immediately deteriorating to someone grateful and humble and respectful, to people who are irrelevant except in bloodline, but think they are special. In fact they have done nothing for us but spend our money on bling-bling. Snub their PR and marketing! It is no coincidence that they give these honours to people who are influential. Some would call it a moral bribe.
Could it be done with someone other than the Windsors on the throne? hell yes. I'd be perfectly happy if the current head of state was Thomas Cromwell IV or somesuch - but someone needs to take that role for the system to work at all.
James P. Barrett
(sigh. Just goes to show you, its all about tone on slashdot.)
I read your post. I think you are projecting some of your personal preferences onto the memories of these old computers and end up with surprising results.
For instance - and as we are talking subjectives here it can't go far - I simply cannot understand how you decide a C64 is 'better designed', aesthetically, than a Mac II? They use practically the same school of thought, that Star Trek II man-ridges and swiss lines sort of thing that was big in the early 80s. I mean, I can understand a slight preference for one over the other (in my case definitely the Mac) but saying they are worlds apart is baffling.
Ditto the Amiga - I had 5 of those suckers and I would say their meager efforts went no fruther than the token swoop that Dell puts on their cases. Again, I would compare an Amiga 3000 to the supposedly hideous Mac II and say, you see a difference?
The Sinclair was beautiful I'll give you that. But the rest, I think you are basking in the warm glow of Amiga memories or the bitter reverie of changing a video card in the Mac II. But design wise, they are not far apart at all, not even remotely so. Put a Mac Classic case design versus, oh, any of them. The Smithsonian agrees with me.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I thought Ives first design was the eMate?
Still a wicked design, IMHO.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I've scratched iPods, I believe you about the iMac mini. But I've had 2 iBooks over 4 years, and I can tell you scratching is not a problem. iBooks are the most durable laptops I've ever had. They might scratch, I dunno. But due to the milky color, you can't tell. Unless you pull out a loupe, they look near to brand-new for years.
This is in stark contrast to the Powerbooks, which dent quite easily.
I do have to agree with the other posters, if Apple's stuff didn't look so cool, you wouldn't care about the scratches. My two PC towers next to me have various scars and labels on them, and I don't really notice because they weren't something great to look at even when I got them. And they're both Antec Sonata cases, which are considered quite good-looking as far as cases go.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
After WW2, we very sensibly got rid of almost all the British Empire, except for a few bits of other people's countries (Gibraltar, Northern Ireland). I can't help wondering if the whole thing is some kind of convoluted official joke - sorry, you're not worth a "proper" honour, how would you like to be a Commander of a few dodgy tax havens and a place terrorised by gangsters?
We already have proper honours - the OM for the arts, the Royal Society for scientists, the Royal Academy for artists (tricky ground there though) - and I really do not know why we cannot simply have properly designated recognition for charity workers,business people and designers. Of course, the work of trawling through all those OBEs, CBEs etc. and deciding what recognition they should now be given would need a whole commission of well paid ex civil servants, so you would think they at least would support such a scheme.
Pining for the fjords
First, I am not an Apple fan and most especially I am not a Steve Jobs fan. Not only did I program for the original Mac back in the early eighties, I had the deep joy of administering some NeXT boxes in the nineties. They were always, at least from a software point of view, a triumph of surface gloss over good engineering. I've never spent my own money on an Apple box, and I've never advised a customer to do so.
But.
OK, it's true that there have been very occasional ugly Apples. OK, it's true that there have been very occasional attractive case designs by other makers (I particularly like some of the mid 90s Silicon Graphics case designs, and, of course, the NeXT cubes were fantastically good to look at). But - and I say this with a very expensive designer PC case sitting under my desk - I've never seen a PC case design that didn't look awful, whereas by contrast some of the Apple case designs (Lisa; PowerMac G4 and G4 cube; Mac Mini) have been really excellent.
So no. Steve Jobs has excellent visual taste, has a history of employing good industrial designers, and generally of producing better looking products (and often better physically engineered products) than anyone else in the consumer computer industry.
It's just a shame about the software engineering.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
That's not really a durability issue; that aesthetics, and while I'm in to glossy, shiny things, practically every item I own--plastic, metal, even wood, that have semi to high gloss surfaces, require extra care to keep that aesthetic.
My shiny black file cabinets, that look so pretty storing items I hate keeping track of, is scratch prone. My high gloss finish desk (which I built) requires annual touch-ups to keep it super shiny, for those times when my desk is actually clear. I polish my Powerbook G4 laptop, and use a scratch filler every so often. Why, I even have to put my glasses away in a case or tissue paper each night so they don't get surface scratches. (the horror)
The fact is, if you don't want to provide care, your better off with a matte finish or mesh. Almost all my desktop accessories are matte or mesh, because, who want to spend time keep a pencil holder, stapler or a garbage can shiny. On the otherhand, I am willing to toss everything off my desk once a year, and reapply a finish; just as I'm willing to make sure I use a soft cloth and take other precautions with my iPod.