Early Apple Designs Revealed, Courtesy of Hartmut Esslinger 115
A reader writes with an excerpt as carried by CNET of former Apple design chief Hartmut Esslinger's upcoming book, titled Design Forward: Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change. Writing of Steve Job's integration of design as an essential element across the company as a whole, Esslinger says:
"The company's [then] CEO, Michael Scott, had created different business divisions for each product line, including accessories such as monitors and memory drives. Each division had its own head of design and developed its products the way it wanted to. As a result, Apple's products shared little in the way of a common design language or overall synthesis
In essence, bad design was both the symptom and a contributing cause of Apple's corporate disease. Steve's desire to end the disjoined approach gave birth to a strategic design project that would revolutionize Apple's brand and product lines, change the trajectory of the company's future, and eventually redefine the way the world thinks about and uses consumer electronics and communication technologies." CNET shows off a few of those old designs (many of them appearing unsurprisingly fresh), but for much more of them see these images at designboom.
strategic design project = copy Braun (Score:4, Interesting)
http://visual.ly/braun-or-apple [visual.ly]
http://www.metrohippie.com/dieter-rams-top-10/ [metrohippie.com]
Re:Snow White Design Language (Score:3, Interesting)
The distinguishing characteristics originated by the Snow White design language, in contrast to the original Apple industrial design style, include the following:
minimal surface texturing
colored a light off-white (Fog) or light gray (Platinum)
inlaid three-dimensional Apple logo, diamond cut to the exact shape
zero-draft enclosures, with no variances in case thickness and perpendicular walls
recessed international port identification icons
silk-screened product name badging
shallow horizontal and vertical lines, 2 mm wide, 2 mm deep, spaced 10 mm apart on center, which run along any and all of the surfaces of the product, some of which act as vents and setback 30 mm from the front and 4 mm from the back.
Fog products have beige accents and cables, Platinum products have uniform color (no accents) and Smoke gray cables
3mm radius, rear and 2mm radius, front corners
simple unadorned ports and slots
Good intentions (Score:5, Interesting)
I will never buy such product from slave labors.
Before you go all holier-than-thou on us you might want to consider the full implications of what you are saying. First off, "slave labor"? I think you do not know what real slavery is so your hyperbole is really a bit out of line. Foxconn might not treat their employees well but its hardly slavery. They do not own their employees even in a figurative sense. Slavery is something far, far worse. I've actually been in a sweatshop in Chengdu where they were making parts for Dell monitors. I've seen dozens of manufacturing plants in China with my own eyes. I've seen all of this stuff first hand. There is NO electronics manufacturer that is innocent here. You will find that there is no alternative that is any better if you really look into this situation. Anything you can say about Apple/Foxconn you HAVE to say about pretty much any other electronics manufacturer as well as those for countless other products. You are actually saying that you will not buy a wide variety of products.
If you want to not buy products made in substandard working conditions, I respect that stance. But you are going to find it is not as simple as you think. There aren't any innocent parties and in many cases what we consider horrible working conditions are actually a step up from the alternatives. The important thing is that conditions continue to improve. There is considerable evidence that conditions are improving even if progress is sometimes painfully slow. There are more effective ways to improve working conditions than a silent boycott by yourself. Get involved with organizations trying to make a difference. They're out there if you really actually give a damn and want to make a difference.
Re:GUCCI DECRIES FOUL FROM THE GRAVE !! (Score:4, Interesting)
my mother has an ipad and the only "problem" she has with it is frequently forgetting which of about half a dozen very similar passwords she has set for her itunes account.
personally i prefer the freedom of an android tablet and the raw power of my linux laptop.
apple does not put out much that is truely unique and unheard of, but they manage to make state of the art easy to use and have a serious talent for UI. look at the ipod, and compare it to the interface of other devices of the time (and even quite a few now) which would have 5-7 buttons with unintuitive glyphs sloppily imprinted and difficult to see even in favorable conditions.