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Jonathan Ive - Apple's Design Magician
conq writes "BusinessWeek takes an in-depth look at the man behind the Apple magic. The article features a slideshow with all his designs (including one before he was with Apple)." From the article: "During an internship with design consultancy Roberts Weaver Group, he created a pen that had a ball and clip mechanism on top, for no purpose other than to give the owner something to fiddle with. 'It immediately became the owner's prize possession, something you always wanted to play with,' recalls Grinyer, a Roberts Weaver staffer at the time. 'We began to call it having Jony-ness, an extra something that would tap into the product's underlying emotion.'"
You have to admit, the guy must have some creative genious in him. Looking at all those projects there isn't one that I didn't like. The only one that had me scratching my head a little bit about was the vertical fax. Of course, perhaps there was a reason to the madness of that. Regardless, the designs implemented by the groups he has worked with are great.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
But where is it due. How many designers actually take credit for these things? If you dig around and see how many people claim to have had something to do with these designs, it becomes clear that a good chunk of this stuff is outsourced. And I'm not talking the nitty gritty stuff, I'm talking the conceptualizations as well. Don't get me wrong, the man's a genuis, but he isn't responsible for half this stuff.
You're forgetting to look outside the geek, and into the bigger world. Less than 1% of PC owners actually upgrade their machines beyond RAM. They don't do chip upgrades, they don't do HDD upgrades, and they don't even use the expantion slots. Its not pointless, in fact, you've got it backwards. Its pointless to design for such things if no one (respectively) uses them. Its not pointless, its called meeting many design requirements, and meeting them better. Design for use, design for manufature, design for service, etc. That's why those machines only need the RAM upgrade slots. Granted that on the newer ones you can swap out intel chips, but no one (again outside the alpha geeks) will. So the opposite of pointless in SO many ways.
Because that's called a laptop without a battery and is fuckin' pointless. Sure, it looks cool but once its outdated you throw it away. People don't like that with laptops but they put up with it because its portable.
Most people put up with it with laptops because they just don't care. Most people do exactly what you said, they buy a computer, and once it's outdated, they get a whole new computer.
Just junk food for thought...
You believe wrong.
Don't forget that Macs were supporting dual display setups (and triple, etc.) before Windows even knew what to do with one screen. Some say it still doesn't.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
I don't know a single person outside of the geek/IT realm who doesn't go to costco/best buy/etc and buy a whole new computer with a new monitor when the old one is outdated. Not one. The iMac is no different - your new computer comes with a new monitor. Monitors get outdated too ya know, or are you still using the same 14"CRT from 1997? The vast majority of people out there don't care that they won't be able to re-use the monitor as a second display with their shiny new computer - most don't even realize you can do that )or the thought of openeing their shiny new computer and adding a second video card is far too scary for them).
As far as any other types of upgrades go, you've got to be joking, right? Swapping video cards and CPUs? Not a chance - heck, by the time the average user feels a need to upgrade either, the interfaces are different and their mobo is obsolete. Hard drives? That's what externals are for. Have you seen the storage displays at the big bix stores lately? USB/FW drives are selling like crazy because people just want to plug them in without opening their cases...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Wrong. Most people who buy a computer don't want a computer per se. They want to write emails, create photo albums, listen to music, browse the web. The computer is just the means by which all this is accomplished. Very few in the tech industry seem to realize this.
Sort of how Nintendo declares that while Sony and Microsoft see themselves as tech companies who make games, Nintendo sees itself as a game company that just happens to use tech.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
You answered it yourself - because it looks cool.
Function is mostly solved; aside from gamers and developers, almost any computer will work for average Joe's desktop use. What's left? Form - looks, interface, size, etc.
$10 curtains block the light just as well as $200 curtains.. but people still buy the $200 curtains.
if they did that the keyboard would be off-center, and that would drive you insane after a short period. as for the new imac, well, i imagine speakers wouldn't fit there, and there's not too much point in adding something there just for the sake of it being there
It's not semantic nonsense at all. At the design level, it removes the focus from the means, and puts it in the ends, where it should be.
Let me use an analogy. What do you say to someone who says "I need a car?" Very few people want a car. Cars are expensive, they require expensive gasoline, regular maintainence, insurance, etc. No, what people want is to go places. If somebody invented cheap teleportation tomorrow, the sales of cars would drop to nothing, because almost nobody really wants a car.
So now, if you're a designer looking for a solution to a problem, focusing on the ends is crucial. It might change your goal from "how do I design a better car?", to "how do I design a better way to get around?" Its a matter of coming up with a good solution to the problem, rather than working on solving problems with a particular, non-optimal solution. It's a trap engineers often fall into (I do it all the time), but one that they strive to avoid.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Because your design of a "laptop without a battery" has the "[computer] right behind the LCD display" is why Ives is a worldwide renown designer, and you're a bitter poster on Slashdot.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
While I wouldn't mind a numeric keypad on my PowerBook either, I think you just demonstrated why you *aren't* a design genius, by putting the speakers directly under the user's wrists where they will be muffled, and where the grill is likely to accumulate dirt. I've used several laptops that placed the speakers under the wrists or on the front (like my Thinkpad), where they are often muffled by body parts, and it is highly irritating. Since the wider PowerBook has real estate on either side of the keyboard, it makes perfect sense to put the speakers there. Another point against your proposed addition of a numeric keypad--you would have to shift the keyboard and potentially the track pad off center, forcing the user to put their hands in a very unnatural position when typing on the alphanumeric keyboard.
Designers are not different then anyone else - but I think they are more aware of the internal processes in the act of design. I guess a book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" discusses it best. ( Though "Looking for Spinoza" is a good read, also)
When I start something like an assembler program, I find myself in an iterative, non-verbal mode. Only after I get a feeling of rightness can I wrestle the solution to the verbal level.
I use Tony Buzan's mind maps, and free phrase writing to capture the fleeting associations.
After about a day I write, expanding the resultant mess of factors into a chaos of text.
A day after that, I edit, and cut about one third or more of the text down.
This works well for me on stuff like specifications, test plans, and design documents, your mileage may vary. I can't comment on how it would work on fictional prose, or poetry.
I suspect that the rule, "first write, then edit", would still hold. As usual your mileage may vary...
The actual code is only about one-tenth of the work, figuring how to approach that part, and then verifying it is most of it. The rest of the documentation is to remind me later what the heck was I thinking!
Cheers, JB
This is progress?