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Apple Form Factors: Has Apple Lost Its Nerve?

August 9th, 2009 GadgetDon 2 comments

I’m an Apple fanboy.  Love OS X, love my Mac, love my iPod, love my Apple TV.  Budgetary issues mean the Mac I love is a first gen Intel iMac and a 5.5 gen iPod instead of an iPod Touch, but when Publisher’s Clearing House shows up with a million dollar check, Apple shares will go up.  iMac update rumors are starting to swirl, and while interesting…what ever happened to Apple pushing form factors forward?

The iMac is a prime example.  Apple kept doing cool things with design, both in appearance and functionality.

iMac G3The iMac G3

It was the big leap forward, leaving beige boxes behind.  One piece, easy handle for carryability.  Eye-catching color (expanded to several colors, my favorite was the red), reasonably good screen.

Had its downsides.  Memory upgrades were ridiculously difficult, no external monitor options, and the hockey-puck mouse was epic fail.  But still, it was a big statement of “case design can be more than arranging the ports well”.

The “jump the shark” moment was the Blue Dalmatian and Flowers cases (UGLY).  But the design had legs, it survived for a while as the eMac.

iMac G4The iMac G4

When the iMac was upgraded to a G4 and got an LCD screen, it got a new radical form-factor.  An arm let you position the screen where you want, at the angle you want.  Many comparisons were made to Sunflowers or Desk Lamps.  When introducing it, Jobs said that they could have just put a computer on the back of a monitor, but wanted to do more.

I loved my iMac G4.  Speedy (compared to the iMac G3), reasonably desk footprint, the adjustable screen was great.  Probably would have done better with a box base which would allow more space in the base.  The arm did sometimes lose its lift, and it limited the size of the monitor they could support.

imacg5The iMac G5

The G5 put out more heat than the G4, and the new larger LCD screens couldn’t be supported by the arm.  So another new design, a computer on the back of a monitor.  But still, a nice design, clean lines.  Even with the change, there have been some heating issues, but they were solvable.  One minor upgrade was the addition of a built-in webcam.

Then Apple announced they were switching to Intel Processors.  And when the new computers were released…same old form-factors.  The Intel iMac looked just like the iMac G5, the MacBook looked like the iBook, the MacBook Pro looked like the PowerBook, the MacPro looked like the PowerMac, and the Mac Mini had the same old difficult-to-open case.  OK, OK, many of us thought.  Interim step, the production lines are set up for those cases, the next big upgrade will show off the new form-factors.  Except the new form-factors never came.  Oh, Apple has made some minor tweaks of thickness, materials, and size, but nothing that breaks the paradigm.New products have, somewhat.  But each new product gets locked into the formfactor.  The iPod was a revolution…but from the First Gen iPod to the iPod Classic, pretty much the same.  The Nano has tried a few designs (I was tempted by the square Nano) and the Shuffle has changed its formfactor often.  The iPhone and associated iPod Touch was also groundbreaking – but they’ve pretty much stayed there.

Maybe there are no improvements to make.  Maybe the iMac is the perfect design with only minor engineering fiddling (though the lack of any height control is a place some engineering fiddling could be applied).  But I doubt it.  Clearly the Mac Mini is an untapped wealth of possibilities.

I love my Macs for what they do, and they look good.  But when did Apple become so conservative? Jonathan Ive, where have you gone?

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Wonderful Bike Mod

August 6th, 2009 GadgetDon Comments off

A really cool bicycle mod for storage

I’m a big fan of good design.  Not the “ooh, this looks so good who cares if it’s useless” design, but design that increases the usefulness of a project (while looking cool).  One of the RSS feeds I subscribe to because they so often have good design is Make Magazine’s website.  Today, I saw a startling bit of good design in an entry on a Grocery getter bike project.

Dinosaurs and Robots had a contest to create “grocery” bikes, bicycles you could use to go get the week’s groceries.  This was the winner.

OK, looks cool, a stretch limo for bikes.  But it’s really good design as well.  First, the storage is low to the ground, so it ads to the stability of the bike instead of reducing it.  Well supported, so can hold reasonable amounts of weight, meaning can be used for other purposes like trips to the Home Depot (for supplies and tools, not wood) or taking AV equipment to a party or some such thing.

The normal solution to this is some sort of trailer…but the problem is that bikes already have a visibility issue on the road (being seen, that is).  Add a couple feet to the back of a bike well below the rider, and that would worry me.  (To say nothing of babies in those trailers).

The steering looks like a bit of a kludge.  Well, it is a kludge, but it’s an EFFECTIVE kludge.  That sort of connection is going to be rock solid.  Ideally, there would be two bars, so either way you’re both pushing and pulling, but that would interfere with removing the tub.  Could solve that with a hinge on the right side of the cage to slide the tub in and out…but at a cost of some frame rigidity.

One other piece of cool design you’ll find at the links is that the back of the bike can come off, turning the bike into a cart to bring into the store or into the house.  No plastic garbage bags needed, just put the groceries right into the tub for the trip.

Clearly, this isn’t something most people can make in their garages.  And if some manufacturer was inspired by this, I’m sure the steering system would look refined and elegant and hopefully almost as effective.  But still, it’s cool design, and does what good design should do, make you think about new ways to approach things.

Check out the links to see more about how it was made.  And if you’re a fan of design like me, the sites may well be worth following.

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