BusinessWeek on Apple's design legacy
updated 09:05 am EDT, Tue September 6, 2005
Apple design legacy
A BusinessWeek article looks at Apple's legacy of groundbreaking designs and . Apple's many design triumphs (and flops) have been backed by grand visions. "Idealism is a major part of Apple," says Andy Hertzfeld, an original Macintosh team member. "The company operates for artistic values rather than for commercial purposes." According to the report, many products start as a design vision. After the design is worked out, says Jory Bell, a designer who worked on several iterations of the PowerBook, "then you sign it off with Steve [Jobs]. Only after that is there negotiation over whether the laws of physics will actually allow [that vision] to happen."
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Apr 2005
Testament to cool!
In other words, Apple still asks this question: if it isn't cool, why are we doing it? I wonder if the article mentions that Apple is THE ONLY IT company that still (if anyone else ever did) does this?
I am glad articles like this still come out about Apple even though its hit its stride in the mainstream for now. I don't think Steve Jobs is capable of saying, "okay, so its going to make a ton of money, so we will put it out there even if it is ugly, dumb, and has no cool to it." Steve's got plenty of money, and he has always seemed to believe there are plenty of companies who can figure out how to put a commodity product out there to make a bunch of money, no matter how dumb, clunky, ugly, and ill-served the public may be with it (e.g. Dell, Intel, MS, Gateway, HP, etc.).