> That's pretty much how every Apple product since 1998 was developed.
This feels really lazy and borderline trollish.
Over the last decade or so Apple (and others!) have fairly consistently demonstrated a belief that design is multifaceted: the form factor, the software, the components inside the form factor.
Increasingly we see these intersecting. The form factor for the iPhone is also the hardware: the screen and the antennae. The unibody manufacturing process for MacBook Pro means that the trendy aluminium form of the product also provides its rigidity and reduces the number of components required to hold it together. More room for batteries, which increases the battery life. Apple and Intel worked together to develop a Merom chip 60% smaller than the standard in order to ship the MacBook Air, which was at the time the thinnest notebook around.
Apple doesn't design the form factor and then work out what components need to go inside it. Very often the overall design (form factor + software) is where Apple can innovate, because Apple doesn't typically manufacture components, but they frequently make compromises of design in order to accommodate hardware (and vice versa). IR receivers on the original MacBook Pro (horrible black spots on the bezel), the home button on the iPhone (an absence of hardware buttons on the front of the device would be more pleasing). The black plastic at the base of the original iPhone for Wifi (since engineered out by a combination of component and product design).
People will look back on the last two or three decades as a renaissance for design. Apple has contributed, but across the board the importance of design -- and by design I mean the aforementioned intersection of form, software, and hardware -- is visible in products from Samsung, Sony, HTC. Heck even Microsoft has realised that design is more than commissioning Brian Eno to write the Windows boot music.
Back to the Mac Pro: I'm sure Apple threw out a dozen designs which had space for more RAM, or which had more CPU sockets, or which had internal expansion. But Apple makes tradeoffs for the overall goal. Sometimes the tradeoffs are such that hardware suffers (I can still type way faster on a BlackBerry than on an iPhone), and some times the aesthetic is diminished (I bet the visible sensors on the iPhone 5 really rankle with Jony Ive). But to suggest that since 1998 Apple has consistently developed the form factor for products first is ludicrous.
> design is more than commissioning Brian Eno to write the Windows boot music.
It's always funny when people use obscure(?) but interesting anecdotes to make a joke. It sort of shows the breadth of one's knowledge. Well, at least I had never heard of this.
This feels really lazy and borderline trollish.
Over the last decade or so Apple (and others!) have fairly consistently demonstrated a belief that design is multifaceted: the form factor, the software, the components inside the form factor.
Increasingly we see these intersecting. The form factor for the iPhone is also the hardware: the screen and the antennae. The unibody manufacturing process for MacBook Pro means that the trendy aluminium form of the product also provides its rigidity and reduces the number of components required to hold it together. More room for batteries, which increases the battery life. Apple and Intel worked together to develop a Merom chip 60% smaller than the standard in order to ship the MacBook Air, which was at the time the thinnest notebook around.
Apple doesn't design the form factor and then work out what components need to go inside it. Very often the overall design (form factor + software) is where Apple can innovate, because Apple doesn't typically manufacture components, but they frequently make compromises of design in order to accommodate hardware (and vice versa). IR receivers on the original MacBook Pro (horrible black spots on the bezel), the home button on the iPhone (an absence of hardware buttons on the front of the device would be more pleasing). The black plastic at the base of the original iPhone for Wifi (since engineered out by a combination of component and product design).
People will look back on the last two or three decades as a renaissance for design. Apple has contributed, but across the board the importance of design -- and by design I mean the aforementioned intersection of form, software, and hardware -- is visible in products from Samsung, Sony, HTC. Heck even Microsoft has realised that design is more than commissioning Brian Eno to write the Windows boot music.
Back to the Mac Pro: I'm sure Apple threw out a dozen designs which had space for more RAM, or which had more CPU sockets, or which had internal expansion. But Apple makes tradeoffs for the overall goal. Sometimes the tradeoffs are such that hardware suffers (I can still type way faster on a BlackBerry than on an iPhone), and some times the aesthetic is diminished (I bet the visible sensors on the iPhone 5 really rankle with Jony Ive). But to suggest that since 1998 Apple has consistently developed the form factor for products first is ludicrous.