3. And they sucked. Apple sold more iPads in the first year than tablets sold in the prior 10 years.
Boy did they suck. And tablets running Windows have existed since the days of 16-bit Windows. Oh yes, I have used them. They were heavier than a 17" MacBook Pro and had 3 hour batteries. Little had changed from those days to the UMPC days, other than Moore's Law. But tablets were still crippled Windows laptops without keyboards.
Really? That doesn't look very comfortable or safe.
After looking a little more closely at the original trimaran design, it is not apparent how you would conveniently get to the bow or the poop deck. So it still needs some work I guess.
He puts Bauhous inspired furniture in a Victorian setting. The couch on the right sticks out into the doorway. The one on the left blocks the radiator. The heat will ruin the leather, and it is facing nowhere.
The photo sucks too. It is overexposed in the bright parts, and underexposed elsewhere. The iPod column fades into the darkness behind it. The other one is in the middle of the floor, waiting to be bumped into.
How is this picture supposed to showcase the work of a talented designer?
The WallyPower 118 has been a fav of mine for years - truly beautiful and kind of scary. 16,800 horsepower total from three gas turbines. 70 mph top speed. They should use in a bond movie for the villain's boat.
According to LinkedIn Doug Field is currently a VP of product design at Apple. Not sure who he works for or if he's part of Ive's ID team. I did a patent search and his name didn't come up at all with Apple. A while back Apple hired Richard DeVaul to work on wearable electronics. I believe he's since left the company but when he was there he was working under Jony Ive. I could maybe see Stark collaborating with the ID team on something but more likely if he's involved with Apple it's designing a new store or finishing Steve's yacht.
I'm sure Apple (just like Microsoft) hires freelancers and senior designers from everywhere for special projects so they don't develop tunnel vision and miss obvious design solutions.
The litre per second nonsense would have Steve balking, though. He wouldn't ever be that wasteful. And he'd want something more livable. I imagine the 118 has to be mostly fuel tank…
Interesting... Can you elaborate on this "connectivity subsumes content" concept -- especially as it applies to the current stranglehold of bandwidth/accessability applied by the cablecos?
Not fair. I'm not the one to work it out, seeing as for years I have had no cable, haven't watched TV except for the occasional DVD, been on full exile from the commercial mediasphere.
All I know is that McLuhan got media right because, as an Irish-Catholic-Canadian English professor mostly on the works of James Joyce, he saw the contours of the shift from print to electronics and the resulting global village clearly, as a total outsider, better than anyone else at the time.
As an outsider myself, I predict that more people will find the living-room internet screen more interesting than the old force-feed model from the ad-crippled Providers. There will be a shift of enough magnitude that lack of content deals will be seen as minor annoyances. YouTube is only the beginning. Global-village FaceTime (in 3D?) is more like what's the future of television. The past 15 years have shown that many people prefer communication with each other over passive content consumption. Maybe I'm just being optimistic. And as thataveragejoe points out, sports and news are exceptions. Or is there a crowd-sourced way around that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
1. Yeah, all you needed to add was a kb, TV-Typewriter circuitry, Dazzler boards for graphics and color, Assembler and BASIC languages... the Apple ][ Had all those things and game paddles -- you plugged an RF modulator into the Apple and the TV -- any person could do it!
2. Doing it so people could actulally use them, and wanted to buy them was new!
3. And they sucked. Apple sold more iPads in the first year than tablets sold in the prior 10 years.
Thank you for an eyewitness report from the past.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
I don't know this Stark guy but I think it's plausible Apple uses outside talent for developing designs.
Here is an interesting article about Steve Jobs on first seeing the Segway. I recommend reading the whole thing as it gives a lot of insight into how Steve thinks but I'll point out this one part...
I'm with you. If it doesn't have a gun turret and a helicopter pad I move right along to the next offering at the boat show. Torpedoes would be good also.
Interesting, another product from the Jobs era. I wonder how long it'll be before we see something conceived entirely since Cook took over.
The way that tech works the answer could be not in your lifetime. Perhaps not even in your kids or grandkids. Not if you are looking for something that wasn't at least a kernel of an idea before Jobs died.
Okay, that quote from Jobs' biography was literally a single paragraph in an over 600 page book. If the TV happens, awesome, but it's not the fact that it's a TV that will sell it. It's the content. iPod = iTunes. iPhone/iPad = App Store. This hypothetical TV is going to need some kind of blow-away, revolutionary content store much like the two previous examples in order to take off.
I agree. Content not the actual set is what will make something like this sink or swim. Which is part of why I question if they are making a tv set at all. The Apple TV may always stay this set top box and what they could be working on is a major overhaul of the Cinema Display series to make it more advanced, more size options and more inputs so you can use it with your computer, your blu-ray etc. Might it have the Apple TV hardware inside, perhaps. But it won't be just about the Apple TV. And they won't discontinue the box for those that would rather keep using their Samsung etc TV
I agree. Content not the actual set is what will make something like this sink or swim. Which is part of why I question if they are making a tv set at all. The Apple TV may always stay this set top box and what they could be working on is a major overhaul of the Cinema Display series to make it more advanced, more size options and more inputs so you can use it with your computer, your blu-ray etc. Might it have the Apple TV hardware inside, perhaps. But it won't be just about the Apple TV. And they won't discontinue the box for those that would rather keep using their Samsung etc TV
Who the heck knows? Perhaps they'll have something like a sensor that sits on or near the TV that would compliment their face recognition, iCloud, content deals and video streaming technology. Whatever is released, it will have to be idiot-simple and irresistible.
I'm sure Apple (just like Microsoft) hires freelancers and senior designers from everywhere for special projects so they don't develop tunnel vision and miss obvious design solutions.
A friend who does design work for large corperations (not the electronics industry) often laments the concept of NIH. Not invented here. In other words I agree with you.
I have wondered ever since Apple started selling TV episodes on iTunes Store why they have not produced any original content to make iTunes Store stand out from Hulu, network websites, DVDs, etc. And then Hulu AND Netflix beat them to the punch.
Apple is no more in the TV/Film production business than it is an ISP or a cell phone company. And they don't want to be.
That said, if someone came to them and wanted to sell a show that was an 'iTunes original' I think they wouldn't care so long as the sellers have the legal rights to put it up for sale and Apple gets their 30%. Or it could be a way to keep shows with a rabid fan base going without dealing with a network or the ratings. The whole Fox Studio shopping Terra Nova after Fox Net called it a successful gamble and then killed it comes to mind. That horde of fans seems rabid enough they would be willing to pay as much as $4.99 an ep (if it is in 1080p) to keep it going. And if that gamble was a success it could be the beginning of the end for the Nielsen ratings system deciding what is and isn't produced
A friend who does design work for large corperations (not the electronics industry) often laments the concept of NIH. Not invented here. In other words I agree with you.
Which is why J Mays at Ford commissioned Marc Newson to design the 021c car. The design team at Ford didn't even know the project was happening until it was presented to them for inspiration. Truly not invented there.
Interesting, another product from the Jobs era. I wonder how long it'll be before we see something conceived entirely since Cook took over.
Wonder no more:
Stock Dividends, corporate charitable contributions and seeking settlements over annihilation in some inter-corporate disputes.
(PS: Just an observation not an evaluation.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by iSheldon
Sir' Jony's toys without Jobs' insight or direction should be vedy interesting.
They played well off each other in a creative tension, true. So the new homeostasis and synergy (or lack of same) among the top-decision makers will be of great importance
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rabbit_Coach
I just checked out the Homepage of this guy, and spoke a prayer:
OMDG please don't let him have any influence on Apple design. Not now, not ever! Thanks! Amen!
Consequently, I'm not a fan of the design of this ironic citrus squeezer. And fruit juice is bad for you.
The thing pictured looks like a Martian tripod in a bad moodm but the article - from 2008 - is very revealing (slightly excerpted, emphasis supplied):
Quote:
Renowned French designer Philippe Starck says he is fed up with his job and plans to retire in two years...
"I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact'"
"Everything I designed was unnecessary. I want to do something else, but I don't know what yet. I want to find a new way of expressing myself... design is a dreadful form of expression."
Starck, who is known for his interior design of hotels and Eurostar trains and mass consumption objects ranging from chairs to tooth brushes and lemon juice squeezers, went on to say that he believed that design on the whole was dead.
Sound like the guy you want designing your next "magical and revolutionary" Apple product? Unless he had a spiritual revival by spending time with Steve, of course.
You also notice how a) he's addicted to hyperbole and delusions of grandeur and b) hardly followed through on his "retirement."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Me
There appears to be a complete misunderstanding of "The Apple Problem." The Apple prior to Jobs's return did not lack for ideas. Its problem was that it had numerous ideas. Many were products. Many more were sinkholes of corporate resources.
When Jobs returned to Apple, he did the exact opposite of flood the company with ideas. He trimmed products and projects. He developed a focused corporate strategy. Most of the people who helped him carry-out his corporate strategy are with Apple now. They have no fewer ideas now than while Jobs was with us. We can only hope that they have as must discipline.
Well said!
Quote:
Originally Posted by tundraboy
You lay out what's wrong with existing car stereos and how Apple could improve it greatly and then conclude that Apple has no incentive to go into it.
I think it's more than just improving on car stereos. It will be in-car computing, a seamless extension of what iCloud/iPhone/iPad does now.
i believe Apple's long term goal is to achieve the ubiquitous and hyper-intelligent computing that is best demonstrated by what the federation crew used in Star Trek Next Gen.
Ford and MS seem to have forged a good working partnership with Sync. I've only seen demos, but if you could add some special Apple sauce....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flaneur
" . . . sleek, sexy . . . " ? these are words that PC gearheads use when trying to describe why Apple stuff is different. They betray only a superficial understanding, or misunderstanding.
The iPhone 4, for example, is about precision machining and materials engineering and deep functionality much more than it is about any tacky object-eroticism. The end result may be loveable, but it's the result of discipline and competence, and above all, taste in engineering.
Also well said. Form follows function. Which has always been true and was articulated about the emerging architecture of skyscrapers over 100 years ago:
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,
Of all things physical and metaphysical,
Of all things human and all things super-human,
Of all true manifestations of the head,
Of the heart, of the soul,
That the life is recognizable in its expression,
That form ever follows function. This is the law
Louis Sullivan, American Architect, 1896
He and Steve seem cut from the same cloth. As was Frank Lloyd Wright. Stay hungry!
PS: the phrase was also used by a sculptor, Horatio Greenough, in 1852 (also in relation to architecture).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flaneur
As for "what has Apple ever done that is new," how about 1) the first personal computer 2) the first touch phone/music/podcast personal computer in your pocket 3) the first touchscreen computer in your hand?
Not quite as well said. I'm not going to re-refresh my memory by searching, but I'll basically stand by this: There were other devices which were arguably "personal computers" (for true geeks) emerging at Homebrew and elsewhere - Steve and Steve's was just better, more accessible and marketable. It's kind of like asking "who invented the automobile?" as the technology was ready for it to emerge, people had a vision of it, and, and although Karl Benz had the first patent (aided immeasurably by his wife, Bertha Ringer Benz, it appeared independently in about 12 places within a period of a few years. And Henry Ford's "invention" of the assembly line was, not too arguably, what made the car business take off like a rocket.
In other words, the PC was GOING to emerge. It was however forever shaped and enormously influenced by Apple.
Apple WAS the first (I think) to merge a pocketable "phone/music/podcast personal computer" into one device, but all those things existed separately or in partial combination before that, so more of an engineering and design tour de force merged with a brilliantly conceived and executed software and content infrastructure. And the 3rd device you described was an elaboration on the aforesaid iPhone (sans the phone), and not the first tablet, though those were previously stylus-driven in the main.
This is not to belittle Apple (nor to suggest they're not inventors - as they hold many thousands of in-house developed patents), rather it's a misapprehension of what they've always been fundamentally about: always using a whole panoply of emerging technologies in designing and making what other people were grasping for elegant, intuitive, useful and accessible to "the rest of us." (And at a very healthy markup!)
Just can't trust any "cheese eating surrender monkeys".
Considering that they fought for this country at one key point in its history, and most recently, cleanly and efficiently took care of Gaddhafi (unlike our pathetic, long-drawn out mess in Iraq and Afghanistan), that's a bit of a silly claim. And highly ethnocentric too.
Comments
3. And they sucked. Apple sold more iPads in the first year than tablets sold in the prior 10 years.
Boy did they suck. And tablets running Windows have existed since the days of 16-bit Windows. Oh yes, I have used them. They were heavier than a 17" MacBook Pro and had 3 hour batteries. Little had changed from those days to the UMPC days, other than Moore's Law. But tablets were still crippled Windows laptops without keyboards.
CultOfMac erroneously claims that this is the yacht Steve designed. It's absolutely hideous.
image: http://i.imgur.com/FXADf.jpg
I like the design but I think this is better.
I like the design but I think this is better.
Really? That doesn't look very comfortable or safe.
After looking a little more closely at the original trimaran design, it is not apparent how you would conveniently get to the bow or the poop deck. So it still needs some work I guess.
This guy's design sense sucks.
He puts Bauhous inspired furniture in a Victorian setting. The couch on the right sticks out into the doorway. The one on the left blocks the radiator. The heat will ruin the leather, and it is facing nowhere.
The photo sucks too. It is overexposed in the bright parts, and underexposed elsewhere. The iPod column fades into the darkness behind it. The other one is in the middle of the floor, waiting to be bumped into.
How is this picture supposed to showcase the work of a talented designer?
Besides all that, he is a blabbermouth!
I agree
I like the design but I think this is better.
The WallyPower 118 has been a fav of mine for years - truly beautiful and kind of scary. 16,800 horsepower total from three gas turbines. 70 mph top speed. They should use in a bond movie for the villain's boat.
Giorgio Armani's yacht is also pretty amazing.
According to LinkedIn Doug Field is currently a VP of product design at Apple. Not sure who he works for or if he's part of Ive's ID team. I did a patent search and his name didn't come up at all with Apple. A while back Apple hired Richard DeVaul to work on wearable electronics. I believe he's since left the company but when he was there he was working under Jony Ive. I could maybe see Stark collaborating with the ID team on something but more likely if he's involved with Apple it's designing a new store or finishing Steve's yacht.
I'm sure Apple (just like Microsoft) hires freelancers and senior designers from everywhere for special projects so they don't develop tunnel vision and miss obvious design solutions.
I like the design but I think this is better.
I'm not a yacht man. I'm not even a car man.
But that's my favorite yacht. It's just so clean.
The litre per second nonsense would have Steve balking, though. He wouldn't ever be that wasteful. And he'd want something more livable. I imagine the 118 has to be mostly fuel tank…
Interesting... Can you elaborate on this "connectivity subsumes content" concept -- especially as it applies to the current stranglehold of bandwidth/accessability applied by the cablecos?
Not fair. I'm not the one to work it out, seeing as for years I have had no cable, haven't watched TV except for the occasional DVD, been on full exile from the commercial mediasphere.
All I know is that McLuhan got media right because, as an Irish-Catholic-Canadian English professor mostly on the works of James Joyce, he saw the contours of the shift from print to electronics and the resulting global village clearly, as a total outsider, better than anyone else at the time.
As an outsider myself, I predict that more people will find the living-room internet screen more interesting than the old force-feed model from the ad-crippled Providers. There will be a shift of enough magnitude that lack of content deals will be seen as minor annoyances. YouTube is only the beginning. Global-village FaceTime (in 3D?) is more like what's the future of television. The past 15 years have shown that many people prefer communication with each other over passive content consumption. Maybe I'm just being optimistic. And as thataveragejoe points out, sports and news are exceptions. Or is there a crowd-sourced way around that?
1. Yeah, all you needed to add was a kb, TV-Typewriter circuitry, Dazzler boards for graphics and color, Assembler and BASIC languages... the Apple ][ Had all those things and game paddles -- you plugged an RF modulator into the Apple and the TV -- any person could do it!
2. Doing it so people could actulally use them, and wanted to buy them was new!
3. And they sucked. Apple sold more iPads in the first year than tablets sold in the prior 10 years.
Thank you for an eyewitness report from the past.
I don't know this Stark guy but I think it's plausible Apple uses outside talent for developing designs.
Here is an interesting article about Steve Jobs on first seeing the Segway. I recommend reading the whole thing as it gives a lot of insight into how Steve thinks but I'll point out this one part...
Great story. Good find.
For a multi-hull vessel, I like this one.
I'm with you. If it doesn't have a gun turret and a helicopter pad I move right along to the next offering at the boat show. Torpedoes would be good also.
Interesting, another product from the Jobs era. I wonder how long it'll be before we see something conceived entirely since Cook took over.
The way that tech works the answer could be not in your lifetime. Perhaps not even in your kids or grandkids. Not if you are looking for something that wasn't at least a kernel of an idea before Jobs died.
- The most likely new product is the TV, but the best design for a TV is a simple black slab.
Actually I would prefer a unibody aluminum iMac-like TV design, tough it was already copied by LG
Okay, that quote from Jobs' biography was literally a single paragraph in an over 600 page book. If the TV happens, awesome, but it's not the fact that it's a TV that will sell it. It's the content. iPod = iTunes. iPhone/iPad = App Store. This hypothetical TV is going to need some kind of blow-away, revolutionary content store much like the two previous examples in order to take off.
I agree. Content not the actual set is what will make something like this sink or swim. Which is part of why I question if they are making a tv set at all. The Apple TV may always stay this set top box and what they could be working on is a major overhaul of the Cinema Display series to make it more advanced, more size options and more inputs so you can use it with your computer, your blu-ray etc. Might it have the Apple TV hardware inside, perhaps. But it won't be just about the Apple TV. And they won't discontinue the box for those that would rather keep using their Samsung etc TV
I agree. Content not the actual set is what will make something like this sink or swim. Which is part of why I question if they are making a tv set at all. The Apple TV may always stay this set top box and what they could be working on is a major overhaul of the Cinema Display series to make it more advanced, more size options and more inputs so you can use it with your computer, your blu-ray etc. Might it have the Apple TV hardware inside, perhaps. But it won't be just about the Apple TV. And they won't discontinue the box for those that would rather keep using their Samsung etc TV
Who the heck knows? Perhaps they'll have something like a sensor that sits on or near the TV that would compliment their face recognition, iCloud, content deals and video streaming technology. Whatever is released, it will have to be idiot-simple and irresistible.
I'm sure Apple (just like Microsoft) hires freelancers and senior designers from everywhere for special projects so they don't develop tunnel vision and miss obvious design solutions.
A friend who does design work for large corperations (not the electronics industry) often laments the concept of NIH. Not invented here. In other words I agree with you.
I have wondered ever since Apple started selling TV episodes on iTunes Store why they have not produced any original content to make iTunes Store stand out from Hulu, network websites, DVDs, etc. And then Hulu AND Netflix beat them to the punch.
Apple is no more in the TV/Film production business than it is an ISP or a cell phone company. And they don't want to be.
That said, if someone came to them and wanted to sell a show that was an 'iTunes original' I think they wouldn't care so long as the sellers have the legal rights to put it up for sale and Apple gets their 30%. Or it could be a way to keep shows with a rabid fan base going without dealing with a network or the ratings. The whole Fox Studio shopping Terra Nova after Fox Net called it a successful gamble and then killed it comes to mind. That horde of fans seems rabid enough they would be willing to pay as much as $4.99 an ep (if it is in 1080p) to keep it going. And if that gamble was a success it could be the beginning of the end for the Nielsen ratings system deciding what is and isn't produced
A friend who does design work for large corperations (not the electronics industry) often laments the concept of NIH. Not invented here. In other words I agree with you.
Which is why J Mays at Ford commissioned Marc Newson to design the 021c car. The design team at Ford didn't even know the project was happening until it was presented to them for inspiration. Truly not invented there.
Interesting, another product from the Jobs era. I wonder how long it'll be before we see something conceived entirely since Cook took over.
Wonder no more:
Stock Dividends, corporate charitable contributions and seeking settlements over annihilation in some inter-corporate disputes.
(PS: Just an observation not an evaluation.)
Sir' Jony's toys without Jobs' insight or direction should be vedy interesting.
They played well off each other in a creative tension, true. So the new homeostasis and synergy (or lack of same) among the top-decision makers will be of great importance
I just checked out the Homepage of this guy, and spoke a prayer:
OMDG please don't let him have any influence on Apple design. Not now, not ever! Thanks! Amen!
http://x1brettstuff.blogspot.com/200...hat-feeds.html
Consequently, I'm not a fan of the design of this ironic citrus squeezer. And fruit juice is bad for you.
The thing pictured looks like a Martian tripod in a bad moodm but the article - from 2008 - is very revealing (slightly excerpted, emphasis supplied): Sound like the guy you want designing your next "magical and revolutionary" Apple product? Unless he had a spiritual revival by spending time with Steve, of course.
You also notice how a) he's addicted to hyperbole and delusions of grandeur and b) hardly followed through on his "retirement."
There appears to be a complete misunderstanding of "The Apple Problem." The Apple prior to Jobs's return did not lack for ideas. Its problem was that it had numerous ideas. Many were products. Many more were sinkholes of corporate resources.
When Jobs returned to Apple, he did the exact opposite of flood the company with ideas. He trimmed products and projects. He developed a focused corporate strategy. Most of the people who helped him carry-out his corporate strategy are with Apple now. They have no fewer ideas now than while Jobs was with us. We can only hope that they have as must discipline.
Well said!
You lay out what's wrong with existing car stereos and how Apple could improve it greatly and then conclude that Apple has no incentive to go into it.
I think it's more than just improving on car stereos. It will be in-car computing, a seamless extension of what iCloud/iPhone/iPad does now.
i believe Apple's long term goal is to achieve the ubiquitous and hyper-intelligent computing that is best demonstrated by what the federation crew used in Star Trek Next Gen.
Ford and MS seem to have forged a good working partnership with Sync. I've only seen demos, but if you could add some special Apple sauce....
" . . . sleek, sexy . . . " ? these are words that PC gearheads use when trying to describe why Apple stuff is different. They betray only a superficial understanding, or misunderstanding.
The iPhone 4, for example, is about precision machining and materials engineering and deep functionality much more than it is about any tacky object-eroticism. The end result may be loveable, but it's the result of discipline and competence, and above all, taste in engineering.
Also well said. Form follows function. Which has always been true and was articulated about the emerging architecture of skyscrapers over 100 years ago: He and Steve seem cut from the same cloth. As was Frank Lloyd Wright. Stay hungry!
PS: the phrase was also used by a sculptor, Horatio Greenough, in 1852 (also in relation to architecture).
As for "what has Apple ever done that is new," how about 1) the first personal computer 2) the first touch phone/music/podcast personal computer in your pocket 3) the first touchscreen computer in your hand?
Not quite as well said. I'm not going to re-refresh my memory by searching, but I'll basically stand by this: There were other devices which were arguably "personal computers" (for true geeks) emerging at Homebrew and elsewhere - Steve and Steve's was just better, more accessible and marketable. It's kind of like asking "who invented the automobile?" as the technology was ready for it to emerge, people had a vision of it, and, and although Karl Benz had the first patent (aided immeasurably by his wife, Bertha Ringer Benz, it appeared independently in about 12 places within a period of a few years. And Henry Ford's "invention" of the assembly line was, not too arguably, what made the car business take off like a rocket.
In other words, the PC was GOING to emerge. It was however forever shaped and enormously influenced by Apple.
Apple WAS the first (I think) to merge a pocketable "phone/music/podcast personal computer" into one device, but all those things existed separately or in partial combination before that, so more of an engineering and design tour de force merged with a brilliantly conceived and executed software and content infrastructure. And the 3rd device you described was an elaboration on the aforesaid iPhone (sans the phone), and not the first tablet, though those were previously stylus-driven in the main.
This is not to belittle Apple (nor to suggest they're not inventors - as they hold many thousands of in-house developed patents), rather it's a misapprehension of what they've always been fundamentally about: always using a whole panoply of emerging technologies in designing and making what other people were grasping for elegant, intuitive, useful and accessible to "the rest of us." (And at a very healthy markup!)
Just can't trust any "cheese eating surrender monkeys".
Considering that they fought for this country at one key point in its history, and most recently, cleanly and efficiently took care of Gaddhafi (unlike our pathetic, long-drawn out mess in Iraq and Afghanistan), that's a bit of a silly claim. And highly ethnocentric too.
For a multi-hull vessel, I like this one.
The Hummer of the sea. Designed by Homer Simpson. Its got plasmas in each room and a bowling alley.