both of mine are pretty close to being clones on the outside. Good designs.

Best of both worlds. Apple hardware design but with more options!

I kind of wish Apple wasn’t the only one doing new things with design, but they are the largest computer manufacturer, so..

Usually these things are inverse!

though I'm not sure it's fair to say they're the only one. Surface is new. Convertibles and two-in-ones are new.

or maybe I'm talking form factor experiments and you're just talking raw aesthetics or the like.

'cause Apple sure as hell was singular in refining the laptop into a well-constructed design with quality materials. I can't help but thank them for that.

no one else was even trying high-end until recently.

I’m talking about industrial design, yes.

everyone was just racing to the bottom, and only, like, Sony was actually trying for high-end, and even then, they were just trying for really expensive laptops that still didn’t feel like you paid for them

Apple’s hardware designs were always good but it wasn’t until the Air that they really started to shine.

Also, I would point out that design is saying no, and we seem to be saying yes to a lot of things. “No compromises” translates to “We don’t understand design”.

I don't believe that. I think that the first dozen times you say "yes" you'll probably fail though. But you can't tackle the really impossible challenges by saying "no". Just get to a workable solution faster.

a great solution, maybe. But the best? You can't know if you haven't failed at everything else first.

but I do agree about the industry race to the bottom before Apple disrupted that.

You can fail at things without releasing them to the public. You don’t think Apple tried eighteen other form factors for the original iPhone? Or user interfaces, or any possible variable in the design?

Saying yes to so many things is a cop-out. It’s saying “We can’t figure out if this is any good, so let’s throw it at the wall and see if it sticks."

absolute bullshit. I'm not advocating throwing everything at the wall, but conceptually you cannot say that anything anyone has done is the "best" yet.

could MS up the bar before the tries hit the public? Absolutely. But I'm talking fundamental philosophy, not where the bar is between internal testing and external testing.

I'm talking core philosophy though. I disagree with Jobs fundamentally. I've seen the speeches. And he can get results. But I don't believe in his philosophy at all.

I don't think it's strong enough to persist through real challenges or in the long term.

you'll never see me argue that Jobs, Ive, and crew aren't geniuses at execution and industrial design though.

They truly changed the industry for the better when it comes to the quality of materials and thoughtfulness of design.

I agree more with Apple’s stated philosophy than Jobs’. Jobs’ philosophy was just the primary shaping force behind Apple a few years ago.

I'll just never buy in to a philosophy of exclusion and reduction, even where it can achieve good results.

I'm not familiar with Apple's. I've just seen a few Jobs talks where I had really strong disagreement with his beliefs about the world. Not that they're wrong. I just see it completely differently.

Jobs was an eccentric dude. He’s also no longer alive and Apple has been without him for years now.

Apple today is doing some things that they never would have done five years ago. Some of them are positive, others negative. I feel that their flawless design has definitely suffered.

On the other hand, they told some major shareholders to fuck themselves re: not doing things related to being a good corporate citizen if they don’t have good ROI.

When your CEO is causing Republican interests to write long screeds in Comic Sans about you, I think you’re doing pretty damn well.

I have heard Ive talk about persistence and failure before, so I suspect his beliefs are a big part of the balance too. Certainly behind some of the design I can appreciate.

Apple - Designed By Apple - Intention

This is Apple’s design and corporate philosophy in 90 seconds.

And yes, it feels pretentious. But it isn’t bullshit.

You can disagree that this philosophy works better than anything else a corporation this size has come up with before -

I had a really adverse reaction to that one, but it could be the usual bias. I'll try to watch it again with a new lens.

Even Raymond Chen has posted about the philosophy of “a new feature starts at -100 points"

Their goal isn’t to be exclusionary. It’s the exact opposite. It’s in the last 10 seconds. It’s in Tim Cook saying “I don’t consider the ‘ROI’ of making our products accessible to blind people."

To me, one of the most important things in computing is making people’s lives better. At a macro scale, that can look like a new form factor, a new interface paradigm.

I’m not saying Apple is the only one that understands that concept, or takes it seriously.

but it’s also about the micro scale. About making sure that everything follows the same design language, about coming up with a clear and expressive design language, about making sure people aren’t frustrated

on a daily basis by a thousand paper cuts.