Slashdot Mirror
Apple Releases $300 Book Containing 450 Photos of Apple Products (theverge.com)
Apple has a reputation for releasing "revolutionary" products that carry higher price tags than competing products. Today, the company hasn't made that reputation any better as it has released a "$299 coffee table book" that contains 450 photographs of Apple products. The Verge reports: It's a hardcover edition, bound in linen, and is available in two sizes: $199 for a smaller 10.20" x 12.75" version, and $299 for a larger 13" x 16.25" edition. The book is simply titled Designed by Apple in California -- a name that somehow manages to be both humble and incredibly pretentious at the same time. The photos inside are all new images shot by Andrew Zuckerman, and will show off 20 years of Apple design "in a deliberately spare style." In a press statement, chief designer Jony Ive described the book as "a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years," and hoped that it would serve as a "resource for students of all design disciplines." The book is published by Apple itself, and is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs. It is, undeniably, an act of corporate vanity publishing on an impressive scale, but it's one Apple deserves to get away with more than pretty much any other tech company. No one denies that when it comes to industrial design, Apple earns the praise it gets. That aside, though, the book's publication does show a certain amount of self-interest, navel-gazing, and even arrogance from Apple -- themes that were also present in September's unveiling of the new MacBook Pros. It's all very well to feel proud of the successes of the past, but we'll be interested to see if the company can justify releasing another such book 20 years from now.
And is at college text book pricing levels.
I have given up buying slaughtered tree books for quite a while now, no matter how elegant they may look on a coffee table. So if this is worth buying, it would have to be on my Kindle. Which brings me to the question - how much does the E-book version cost?
Not that I'd necessarily buy it - just curious! Apple has enough of my cash to date
oh wait..
It'll be organized by year, and start out with the iPhone. Then the iPad. Then the Unibody MacBook Pro.
However the final 80% of the book's pages will be filled with photos of watchbands.
#DeleteChrome
Just when you thought their smugness and pretentiousness had peaked, they outdo themselves. Horrible, horrible, elitist excuses for human beings.
"does show a certain amount of self-interest, navel-gazing, and even arrogance from Apple"
Nothing wrong with that !
...omphaloskepsis often...
And you will have the old outdated one.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Don't buy the Apple book, buy something that's a lot more reasonable and not so self indulgent:
Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey (Hardcover)
It's only $7,777.02 for a new copy.
I'm guessing the the people writing and reading this story don't know anything about the coffee table book market. $300 is nothing.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Burn down, burn down Hot Topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We can literally close the book on Apple.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Anyone remember the 20th Anniversary Mac?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That was a $7500 (in 1997) priced, under-powered piece of desk jewelry that was released at a point when Apple nearly went out of business.
This may be history repeating itself with Microsoft Windows replaced with Google Android.
Fluff companies spit out to distract from the mounting evidence they are out of ideas and lost at sea.
The more interesting retrospective will chronicle the rise and fall of Apple. They have been coasting financially on the success of the products from Jobs era. That will eventually run its course and only then will we know if they can continue to produce at the level established during Jobs tenure.
But you know what, apple fanboy will buy that. D'oh!
The old saw was that when corporation builds fancy new corporate headquarters, it is an indication of an "edifice complex" and a red flag.
The combination of a fancy new building _and_ a self-aggrandizing book seems dangerous to me.
An Wang's "Lessons" was published in 1986, about five years before Wang collapsed...
"The Ultimate Entrepreneur: The Story of Ken Olsen and Digital Equipment Corporation" came out in 1988, the year DEC merged with Compaq... it's a little hard to date the "collapse of Digital."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
For those complaining about Apples prices - this is Apples cheapest product yet!
If you want a table of contents it is an extra $25. A glossary is $50 per page. Just to match the outrageous prices for memory or SSD upgrades in their products.
If you wash a Note 7 in their machine, does it counter-act each other?
Table-ized A.I.
Like the headphone jack, it had to be removed in the name of bravery.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
It's a hardcover edition, bound in linen, and is available in two sizes
Given the likely market, wouldn't a wipe clean cover be more appropriate?
The existence of this $300 book pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with Apple and its priorities.
No one denies that when it comes to industrial design, Apple earns the praise it gets.
Apple does not deserve praise for its designs.
Apple has a reputation for releasing "revolutionary" products that carry higher price tags than competing products.
Revolutionary? You mean by removing stuff people want? Let me fix that for you...
"Apple has a reputation for releasing proprietary products that prioritize looks and simplicity over functionality and flexibility and also carry significantly higher price tags than competing products."
In a year's time, they'll be going for $50.
AC comments get piped to
Do they also sell a fitting table, the only table this book can be put on to be read?
It's designed to sit on a Microsoft Surface... the ORIGINAL Microsoft Surface.
#DeleteChrome
Apple want people to pay to watch them masturbate.
So they can design products that Apple can sue for design patent infringement.
Corporations MUST be people, because only humans can be narcissistic, and this is some serious mirror gazing. It'll be interesting to see how many acolytes cough up the scratch for this outrageous self-love letter.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Apple is not a tech company, they are a fashion company that sells tech-related luxury goods. Calling them a tech company is like calling Gucci a textile company.
People will actually buy it. :-)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Hipsters across the world are frantically writing to Santa.
Area51 - We are watching...
Then you get a clean explosion
Less than $1 per page for hipster iPorn.
I think the real hipsters are past iStuff. Now it's all about ironic low-end Android, or even better Blackberry.
lucm, indeed.
This is the end. Their hubris knows no limit, so it is time for them to take a huge fall. Let's not buy any more iPhone 7's, that will teach them!
The book is just a collection of pages held together with giant binder clips because Apple has Revolutionized the Design of a Book.
HiDPI displays like those 27" iMacs do need those 2500x2000px images. However, a "non-retina" iPhone like an iPhone 4 won't benefit from anything bigger than 320x480px. The Verge needs to learn about true responsive design which requires srcset in their img tags.
just pictures of the final product, as you will find them in the store. Ridiculous.
Ohh, you already have your copy?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.