RSS FeedJust minutes ago, Apple announced a slew of new products, including: an updated Apple TV that will make a play
for cable and Netflix; an entire new line of iPods; and a refreshed version of iTunes.
All of these are geared toward a singular vision of a new Apple, which produces the world's most beautiful boxes
and interfaces for bringing you every type of media content you like, anywhere you want it.
So it's fitting that the products all share a coherent design language: Subtle cues link the devices,
making each one feel like it's part of something greater -- namely, the Apple brand.
[The new iPod Touch]
Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive have been hinting at this for years. Ever since the release of the iMac in the late 1990s,
Apple has been in turns coherent and incoherent. Somewhere around the mid-2000s, which featured the PowerBook, MacBook,
iMacs, and three iPod lines that looked wildly dissimilar, it sort of fell apart.
But since then, the discipline is back (though it's a process that's gone on quietly). The central point of reference, you'll recall,
was the MacBook Air, a brilliant design that introduced the shiny black accents and matte aluminum that you see all over Apple
today, and it recently culminated in the iPhone 4, which is probably Apple's biggest homage yet to the design cues of Dieter Rams.
The new line-up almost fully incorporates that DNA. Take, for instance, the packaging -- a feature of Apple's products that
has always been the brand's first impression on new customers:
The new line-up is simple, and the low-end products don't feel like afterthoughts. Again, they feel like part of the family
-- and even something as tiny as the new iPod nano shares buttons, curves, finishes, and proportions with the mighty iPhone 4:
I don't think it's a stretch to say that feeling you have a foot in the door as a consumer predisposes you to go back for new products (as opposed to say, feeling like you have just a busted little entry-level device).
You'll even notice that the new UI for Apple TV -- a product that Apple always seemed to hold at arm's length -- appears redesigned. It looks unique but of a piece with the layouts and organizing logic of the iPod UI and iTunes:
We've heard from sources close to Apple that in the past couple years, designers there have been moving to a longer and
longer-term view of product design. So instead of one concept per product, each new concept involves designing an entire range
and showing how it might evolve and extend to other devices.
Yet again, Apple raises their game. This time, it's in thinking of their products as paper boats in a steadily flowing river that's
the Apple brand, rather than weighty nuggets of brilliance that just sink to the bottom. The new line proves how successful
they've been at hewing to that vision.
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