Apple design - page 2

January 15, 2008: Apple CEO Steve Jobs shows off the first MacBook Air at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, calling the revolutionary computer the “world’s thinnest notebook.”

The 13.3-inch laptop measures only 0.76 inches at its thickest point and 0.16 inches at its tapered thinnest. It also boasts a unibody aluminum design, thanks to an Apple engineering breakthrough that allows the crafting of a complicated computer case from a single block of finely machined metal.

In a brilliant piece of showmanship during the MacBook Air launch, Jobs pulls the super-slim laptop out of a standard interoffice envelope. (You can watch his keynote introducing the MacBook Air below.)

January 5, 1999: Apple introduces a revised Power Mac G3 minitower, nicknamed the “Blue and White G3” or “Smurf Tower” to distinguish it from the earlier beige model.

The first new Power Mac since the original iMac shipped, the pro-level machine borrows the same transparent color scheme. Unfortunately, it doesn’t hang around too long.

December 23, 2005: Apple files a patent application for its iconic “slide to unlock” gesture for the iPhone.

At this point, the iPhone remains a secret research project. However, the ability to unlock the device by sliding your finger across it signifies Apple’s big ambitions for its smartphone. Cupertino wants the iPhone that it’s racing to develop to be easy to use, intuitive and miles ahead of the competition technologically.

The best people to ask about Steve Lemay, the new head of user interface design at Apple, are the people who’ve worked with him.

Spoiler alert: They seem absolutely thrilled. The word “excited” keeps coming up in their comments on the change in leadership.

Here’s what the people in a position to really know Lemay have to say about him.

Alan Dye, the former chief of Apple’s user interface design, has done brilliant, groundbreaking work — but almost no one is getting to experience it.

Dye just got poached by Meta, and the majority opinion among Apple fans seems to be “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Some of Dye’s critics, like John “King of the Apple nerds” Gruber, are scathing. “His tenure is considered a disaster by actual designers inside and outside the company,” Gruber wrote after Dye’s departure from Apple became public Wednesday.

Dye, of course, is not perfect. He is rightly getting criticized for Liquid Glass, the shiny new interface in Apple’s operating systems, that’s been tweaked, rolled back, tweaked again, and is now semi-optional for users who don’t want it.

Where’s the conviction Apple is famous for? Steve Jobs must be spinning.

But Dye’s best work is spectacular, important and deep. You’ve just not seen it.

In 2025 an unprecedented talent exodus decimated Apple’s leadership ranks, with Meta Platforms emerging as the primary beneficiary of the iPhone maker’s retention struggles. The social media giant has successfully lured away four high-profile executives from Apple’s artificial intelligence and design divisions, raising serious questions about the Cupertino company’s competitive position in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Find out more about the top executives left Apple for Meta below.

Meet Steve Lemay, the new head of user interface design at Apple — the highest-profile software design job at the giant company, and possibly the world.

Unfortunately for Lemay, who has worked at Apple since 1999, he shares the same first name as the late Steve Jobs, who nicknamed him “Margaret” — a name that reportedly stuck.

Aside from being called “Margaret” internally at Apple, Lemay has a long and stellar design record at the company. He’s helped shape everything from OS X to visionOS. He is named on hundreds of patents and helped develop one of Apple’s most highly celebrated UI tricks.

November 19, 2013: Apple gets final approval from the Cupertino City Council to proceed with building a massive second campus to house the iPhone-maker’s growing army of workers in California. Regarding the new Apple headquarters, Cupertino Mayor Orrin Mahoney issues a simple message: “Go for it.”

However, the massive structure — with an innovative circular design that will earn it the nickname “the spaceship” — remains years away from opening, despite Apple’s ambitious schedule.

November 18, 2003: Apple debuts a new iMac G4 sporting a 20-inch screen, the company’s biggest flat-panel all-in-one computer ever.

The introduction makes an already superb Mac even better. Somehow, though, the additional screen real estate makes the new Mac weigh twice as much as the 17-inch model.

Abidur Chowdhury, the industrial designer who helped shape the iPhone Air, reportedly left Apple for an unnamed AI startup.

“His exit made waves internally, given his rising profile within the design team,” according to a Bloomberg report.

November 15, 1990: Cupertino wins a design patent for the Apple Extended Keyboard II, arguably the greatest computer keyboard of all time.
Delivering the perfect combination of durability, feel and a pleasing click-clack sound, the Extended Keyboard II will become a mainstay of pro-grade Apple setups during the early 1990s — and perhaps the best-loved keyboard in Apple history. Courtesy of an ADB-to-USB adapter, some people continue to use these input devices today.

The new cosmic orange iPhone 17 Pro is undeniably orange. It’s not bronze, it’s not burnt umber, it’s not sepia or some other subdued shade that fades into the background.

No, Apple finally — after years of begging and pleading — produced a pro-level iPhone in an unapologetically bold color.

As a man in a loincloth once screamed while staring at something unfathomable: “Oh my god … [you] finally, really did it. You maniacs!”

To be fair, in that instance, the bare-chested man was ranting about something horrific. With the cosmic orange iPhone 17 Pro, Apple did something previously unthinkable — and totally welcome.

Despite their sleek designs, Apple products boast impressive durability. And now, for the first time, the company has provided a look into one of its 200 durability labs, where it rigorously torture tests its products.

Apple conducts several types of trials on its devices, including environmental, liquid, drop and vibration stress tests.

For the first time, Apple will unify software design across it various platforms with a new interface design called Liquid Glass. Inspired by visionOS, Liquid Glass is, as its name implies, a translucent and fluid new interface for iPhone, iPad, Mac and other devices in Apple’s ecosystem.

“It’s the kind of project that only comes along about once per decade,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, as he introduced Liquid Glass during Monday’s WWDC25 keynote.

In demos, conference attendees and online viewers got to see “glassy,” translucent menus, panels and icons throughout the system. The new look and feel creates a more immersive and modern visual experience.

Concept designer Antonio De Rosa issued a slick new set of designs Thursday for what he’s calling “17 Pro Max: Thinnovation,” despite Apple’s legal department getting in his face a while back over some of his concepts looking “too real.” For the new one, he left out the word “iPhone” and used AI to help avoid copyright infringement, he said. And his passion for the work — and for Apple — outweighed his fear of retribution.

“Call me a fanboy, but I love these products and even the illusion to ‘work’ for any of those,” De Rosa told Cult of Mac. “It makes me feel happy. Maybe I can save them some headaches looking at my works; they could say ‘Naaa, this is ugly, let’s pass on [it].’ Who knows, maybe I’m helping to have less ugly phones.”

Right after Apple unveiled the redesigned M4 Mac mini on Tuesday, people noticed the power button’s odd placement — on the bottom of the tiny but potent machine! The design provides precious little room for a fleshy finger to reach without tipping the whole computer to get at it. Since then, a variety of “fixes” have poked fun at this perceived error, which is most likely a very intentional Apple design choice.

Check out some of the best “Buttongate” fixes below.

When it comes to new tech, the focus understandably falls on what’s changed, not what stayed the same.

That’s absolutely the case for the new M4 iMac, which Apple unveiled on Monday. Plenty of attention is (rightly) being lavished on the iMac’s guts. The M4 chip is a screamer, and the machine now comes with 16GB of unified memory as standard, a welcome change. And the new colors look great.

However, one thing that drives Apple customers bonkers has stayed the same. That one thing is Apple’s terrible mouse — or, more specifically, the ridiculous location of the charging port on the Magic Mouse.

Interface designer Bas Ording is one of those little-known Apple employees who has had a huge influence on our digital lives. Ording is the brains behind the “rubber band” effect — the iconic touchscreen animation that convinced Steve Jobs to build the iPhone. During a 15-year career at Apple, Ording was responsible for a big chunk of Apple’s computing interfaces — from macOS to iOS.

You can read about his career in Unsung Apple Hero, a Cult of Mac e-book detailing his career at Apple. Just sign up for Cult of Mac Today, our free daily newsletter, or Weekender, our weekly email, and we’ll email you a copy.

Apple reportedly stopped looking for a replacement industrial design chief. This is surprising, as it’s a high-profile position once held by Jony Ive, who led the team that created the iconic look of the iPhone, iMac and more.

The corporate rearrangement increases the power of Jeff Williams — Apple’s chief operating officer and possibly Tim Cook’s eventual replacement as CEO.

Legendary Apple design chief Jony Ive, responsible for the look and feel of iconic products like iPhone, grabbed headlines Wednesday for a new creation — a big, red paper nose. That may sound odd, but it’s for a good cause.

Ive and his team came up with the nose to go along with Red Nose Day, March 17. That’s charity Comic Relief’s day of giving in the U.K. and around the world to help end poverty, particularly among children.

A leaker with a pretty good track record for accuracy said Sunday the upcoming iPhone 15 series will feature rounded corners and edges, plus a titanium case. Rounded corners would harken way back to earlier iPhones and a titanium case would be a first for Apple handsets.

The rumors came from ShrimpApplePro, who gets it right a fair amount of the time when predicting what Apple will do.

Three years after the influential Jony Ive vacated the role of hardware design chief at Apple, it’s opening up again, according to a report.

Vice President of Industrial Design Evans Hankey, who stepped into the top job in 2019, plans to step down. And Cupertino hasn’t said yet who will take over when she goes.

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Apple desperately needs to shake up its iPhone Pro colors. The brand-new iPhone 14 Pro — in the exotic-sounding “deep purple” color — actually looks like a dull gray in real life.

When Apple marketing chief Greg “Joz” Joswiak revealed the new deep purple color at last month’s Far Out product launch, I immediately thought of “Smoke on the Water.” I envisioned a bold hue that would actually look trippy and unique. And I thought maybe Cupertino’s brightest minds finally broke free from the iPhone Pro’s typically mundane color palette.

What was I smoking?

Jony Ive’s 30-year partnership with Apple is over.

Ive and Apple have reportedly severed ties completely, ending a relationship that spanned more than three decades and resulted in some of Apple’s biggest products, including the iPhone, iMac, Apple Watch, spaceship campus, numerous retail stores and much more.

Contrary to rumors, the upcoming M2 MacBook Air may not come in the same eye-catching colorways as the M1 iMac.

Instead, it will be available in the standard three colors as the current-gen MacBook Air, with a shade of blue being the only new addition to the lineup, according to the latest intel.