Interview With iMac designer, Jonathan Ive 556
rleyton writes "The Independent has an interesting interview with Jonathan Ive, the designer of the new imac (and the iBook, the iPod and original iMac...)" It's actually a pretty interesting
even if you think the new iMac is repulsive. Personally I dig it.
Re:What do you think of Vincent Jeunejean? (Score:2, Informative)
and 2), Vincent hasn't got a leg to stand on [apple.com], I'm afraid.
Re:new iMAC (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, I think the decision to leave out the sub was a good one. A subwoofer can be placed under a desk or in another inconspicuous place, and Apple took that into account when designing the iMac. An integrated subwoofer would signifigantly increase the footprint of the iMac and take up valuable desk space.
Plus, not all users are avid music listeners. The speakers that come with the iMac can adequately handle the dings and whistles from normal PC use. Not all users need a subwoofer in the first place, and including one would add to the cost of the unit.
Re:Not just pretty on the outside... (Score:5, Informative)
Granted, it doesn't require more paste if you only open the hatch to the RAM and wireless card, but it does if you actually open the case itself.
See page 12 in the manual:
Replacement Note: Whenever the bottom housing is opened for service, you must clean
and reapply thermal paste to the surfaces joining the thermal interface layer. Failure to
reapply this paste could cause the computer to overheat and possibly damage the internal
components. Refer to the next topic, "Thermal Paste Application" for detailed information.
Re:new iMAC (Score:2, Informative)
Re:drives slower when vertical? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:new iMAC (Score:4, Informative)
Audio playback on a computer, at it's best, is still pretty bad. Even if you have an iSub Woofer and some fancy Altec Lansing speakers, the CD drive isn't a very good audio CD player. The sound card isn't a very good preamp or amplifier.
If Apple were to begin adding all the hardware that would be required to make an iMac good at audio, the thing would be as big as your desk.
As cool as iTunes and the iPod are MP3 is a lossy format, even at the highest sampling rate, it tosses out some information (=sound) from the ripped CD.
More fundamentally, CD audio itself is "lossy" because even its sampling rate misses too much information from the original analog sound recording (most records are still originally recorded in the analog domain, then digitized).
Until the widespread adoption of audio DVD (which stores much more information and allows for a much higher sampling rate) digital audio playback will remain inferior to analog.
New from Apple and Harmon Kardon, the iTurntable!
Anglepoise (Score:5, Informative)
Need to look that one up? Me too. The Anglepoise [design-technology.org] table lamp, modeled on the muscles and bones of human limbs, was invented by George Carwardine in 1933. You know your standard adjustable desk lamp? That's an Anglepoise-derived design.
Re:with all the new iMac hub-bub (Score:3, Informative)
Re:new iMAC (Score:2, Informative)
That's why Apple, or really Harmon-Kardon, sells a subwoofer called the iSub. The sound quality increases exponentially when you add one to an iMac. Its also probably as big as the new iMac. But at around $60 its not a bad pickup.
Greg
Apple has the CRT line for education (Score:3, Informative)
So, they still have the durable iMac CRT for those that need it.
__nether
Re:with all the new iMac hub-bub (Score:5, Informative)
Including the 4 PowerBooks, I've owned 7 different Macs (9600, B&W G3, original (rev A) iMac, PB 5300, PB 3400, "WallStreet" G3, "Pismo" G3). None of them have ever had any sort of hardware failure. None. My little sister has been using that Rev A iMac since it was introduced nearly 4 years ago.
I'd say that purchasing Apple equipment is a pretty safe bet.
Of course, there are some people who have problems, but given my experience with Apple hardware, I'd say it's some of the highest quality stuff on the market.
Steve Jobs on Design (Score:5, Informative)
STEVE JOBS ON DESIGN
Fortune Magazine: What has always distinguished the products of the
companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with
design an inborn instinct or what?
Steve Jobs: We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior
decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me,
nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the
fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in
successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just
the colour or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the
iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element
plays together.
On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it
is much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the
time. That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it
required an enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power
better and do a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That
is the furthest thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the
day we started.
This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy
and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really
good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's
hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything
remotely like it.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/2000/01/24/app6.
--
Why the dome? (Score:5, Informative)
I thought a more squarish (dare I say cube-shaped) base would have allowed for built in stereo speakers. And I think it would have looked a lot cooler than the lump base.
The Independent interview with Ive finally explained it for me:
Well if lump is the most functional form for the base, then lump it is. As Ive mentions in the interview, you don't really appreciate all the subtle decisions that go into an industrial design until you start to understand all the constraints.
I like the G4 iMac more now.
Re:What I'd ask (Score:3, Informative)
Besides which, screwing a VGA connector on is a PITA on a laptop. With this design, you can screw the adapter onto the monitor cable and then just plug it in. Apple provides the adaptor and it is as easy to plug and unplug as a USB or Firewire cable.
Re:Why the dome? (Score:2, Informative)
> I thought a more squarish (dare I say cube-shaped) base would have allowed for built in stereo speakers. And I think it would have looked a lot cooler than the lump base.
Other posts on other replies have addressed this, but: builtin speakers sound terrible given that the bass generator is always so small. The built-in single speaker is fine for the standard "beep", chimes, etc. If you want good quality sound from *any* PC, you want external speakers anyway, so why should Apple waste money/space/etc on something that would be criticized as inadequate? Better to let folks make their own audio choices.
Not the bottom of the unit (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Go read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenan (Score:4, Informative)
Re:new iMAC (Score:2, Informative)
What a crock of... Sorry to burst your bubble, but most (if not all) professional recording is done digitally. Just because your $20 K-Mart brand CD player doesn't sound as good as your LPs doesn't mean the format is shit - it means you didn't get a good CD player. DAC quality varies substancially between different models (and price ranges) of players, so "you get what you pay for" definitly applies.
It's not even like the full dynamic range of CDs gets used most of the time... The majority of pop music is normalized to 99% so it can be loud for radio airplay. The ONLY type of music that would actually benefit from more dynamic range would be classical.
As for more spectral range offered by higher sampling rates, do you honestly believe you can hear above the 20,000Hz that current 44.1KHz sampling provides? Get some good headphones (Radio Shack Pro 35's go up to 25,000Hz and they're inexpensive) and some tone generation software - then prove yourself wrong. Sorry, the benefit would only be for your pet dog, and I'm sure he'd be more interested in you spending your money towards juicy steaks than audio hardware to reproduce the notes you can't hear in Backstreet's latest pop song.
A: For Apple (Score:1, Informative)
Apple's industrial design studio, where Ive and his team work, is in a secluded building across the street from Apple's main campus in Cupertino.
This helps to keep their designs out of the public eye, but it also gives them a great deal more freedom to explore design ideas without mad interdepartmental pressures... if you've ever had a person with no experience in your field looking over your shoulder while you work and making suggestions, you appreciate this arrangement.
Re:The last company that tried to be "better" (Score:4, Informative)
Funny you should mention that. Actually, as you'll discover if you ever install Linux on a Mac, there are several "hidden partitions". These include:
Those are what I've discovered on a single Macintosh (Blue & White G3 model) which had been running Mac OS 9 and onto which I'd installed Debian. I'm sure there are even more on a modern system with Mac OS X. And no, the Mac doesn't use the PC partition format with its "primary" vs. "logical" limitations.
Thing is, you're mostly right ... in Mac OS
itself, you never have to worry about these things.