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.'"

An interesting set of designs

[by 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

[prockcore (543967)]

They entirely lack the current Apple design features of absolute minimalism.

You mean they don't look like boring bars of Ivory soap?

How's that again?

[93 Escort Wagon (326346)]

'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?

Re:How's that again?

[Otter (3800)]

As a Performa 636CD owner, I must take exception to that! Could a computer that made me a plaintiff in three separate class-action suits be poorly designed?

Re:How's that again?

[n1ywb (555767)]

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.

Re:How's that again?

[rebeka thomas (673264)]

> 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.

Re:The clones were better than Apple's machines

[justforaday (560408)]

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

Apple is rolling

[DoctoRoR (865873)]

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 [paulgraham.com], which gives a nod to Apple as one of the few US companies that get it.

Re:Not really

[colmore (56499)]

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.

Is it just me...

[jberkom (802463)]

...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.

a music revolution..

[bizmark22 (823743)]

i vote for a new ipod, that not only has no screen, and less storage space, but also no controls at all.. it holds 5 songs, just turns on and off at will, and plays whatever the hell it wants at random...

but damn it would be the same size as a chiclet and only cost $75...

Mines on preorder as we speak...

What Wonderful Credentials

[Witchblade (9771)]

'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.'"

He must be a design genius- 89-96 were such wonderful years for Apple!

iSatan

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

Pentagram, Apple... they really do like the "Devil's advocate" trappings over in Cupertino.

Re-Imaging Apple?

[bbeebe (661968)]

Be sure to make a backup first...

1989-1996

[justforaday (560408)]

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:1989-1996

[geoffspear (692508)]

I for one appreciated the attention to detail given by Apple when they sharpened all of the edges of the metal casing inside my Powermac 6100 to razor sharpness. Everyone knows that NuBus cards work better when they're covered in human blood.

Steve Jobs, great instincts

[Fox_1 (128616)]

Steve Jobs meets Dean Kamen [hbs.edu]

Anybody remember this? Dood has a great natural feel for products.

A list of possibilities for the product name

[product byproduct (628318)]

sed s/^/i/ /usr/share/dict/words

The next big thing...

[bsdparasite (569618)]

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.

Missing the point

[legLess (127550)]

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."

Digital Country Club?

[MisterSquid (231834)]

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/ [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:I sure would like a non reg version of the arti

[Stick_Fig (740331)]

To paraphrase a wise man, Steve Jobs, Why is it that the people who run the magazine companies just don't get it?

Re:Well, for one thing...

[Kagato (116051)]

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.

Re:Really out of the box thinking?

[FunWithHeadlines (644929)]

"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:What will Apple do next?

[cowscows (103644)]

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.