Apple design - page 6

The world had never seen anything like the iPhone when Apple launched the device on June 29, 2007. But the touchscreen device that blew everyone’s minds immediately didn’t come about so easily.
The iPhone was the result of years of arduous work by Apple’s industrial designers. They labored over a long string of prototypes and CAD designs in their quest to produce the ultimate smartphone.
This excerpt from my book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products offers an inside account of the iPhone’s birth.

The iPhone packed a lot into its first astonishing decade. Not only has the device itself evolved significantly since its promising-but-by-no-means-perfect beginnings, but it’s transformed Apple’s business — and many of our very lives — in the process.

All this week, Cult of Mac’s “iPhone Turns 10” series will look at the innovative device’s massive impact on worldwide culture. The iPhone, which launched on June 29, 2007, truly changed the world.

What iPhone milestones have passed since Steve Jobs introduced this stunning hybrid device, which combined a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device? Check out our handy guide to 10 years of iPhone history.

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines have been the core of the company’s design philosophy ever since the Macintosh in 1978. Apple design evangelist Mike Stern gave an overview of the ever-evolving guidelines during a Wednesday session at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

The session, entitled “Essential Design Principles,” is one of my favorites, in large part because I’m a designer myself. I’ve distilled the essential Apple design principles he talked about in the sketchnotes above.

Apple Music subscribers on Android got some much-needed love from Apple today in the form of an update that brings a fresh UI to the streaming app.

It’s been nearly a year since Apple unveiled its Apple Music redesign as part of iOS 10 at WWDC 2016, but Android users are just now getting a taste of the interface’s bold, streamlined look.

Apple’s rumored plans to launch three different-size iPads this spring has fans a bit confused as to why creating a new 10.5-inch model is a good idea. But according to Dan Provost, the co-founder of Studio Neat, it actually wouldn’t be crazy for Apple to change the screen size when you look at the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

Apple’s Mac team has “lost clout” with the company’s industrial design group and software team, claims a new report, arguing that Cupertino has “alienated Mac loyalists.”

The picture painted by the article is of a division with a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key employees, and technical challenges — all conspiring to make the Mac one of Apple’s forgotten divisions.

Could future Apple Watches ditch the rectangular form factor of current models and opt instead for a round watch design, similar to the Pebble Time Round?

A pair of patent applications filed today suggest this is something Apple is considering. Titled “Electronic device having display with curved edges,” the twin applications make no secret about what they contain.

The question is whether Apple will follow through with them.

This week on The CultCast: Is a secret Apple project stalling Mac updates? It wouldn’t be the first time. Plus: Apple teases Black Friday deals; AirPort routers are walking dead, and the Mac Pro might be next; the future of Time Machine; why iPad should be an iOS/OS X hybrid; and Jony Ive’s new role designing Apple itself.

Increasingly, some Apple fans think Jony Ive has lost it.

He’s killing ports and headphone jacks left and right. The latest MacBooks value form over function. He’s designing gold watches for the 1 percent.

And now his glossy new photo book, Designed by Apple in California, looks like a $300, linen-bound ego trip.

This week on The CultCast: Get out your pitchforks — we’ll tell you why a lot of folks are very unhappy with the new MacBook Pros. Plus, we compare the MacBook Pro’s performance to older models and similarly priced machines; Apple calls it quits on external displays; and the end of an era — one of Mac’s most iconic features gets retired.

Our thanks to Casper for supporting this episode. Casper’s American-made mattresses have just the right amount of memory foam and latex, and people everywhere love them. Learn why and save $50 off your order at casper.com/cultcast.

A new interview with Jony Ive sheds light on his team’s thought process as they created the new MacBook Pro and its innovative Touch Bar.

Ive addresses the history of the Touch Bar project, touches on his rationale for ruling out a touchscreen Mac, and explains why thinking different is easy — but doing so is only a small part of the innovation battle.

Apple faces a serious challenge when it rolls out the rumored OLED “Magic Toolbar” on new MacBook Pros tomorrow: It must convince the world that the new adaptive touchpad is more than a gimmick.

Offering customizable function keys that work in different ways depending on which apps are running, the Magic Toolbar could make the new MacBook Pro one of Apple’s most exciting laptops in years.

But to be more than a gimmick, the Magic Toolbar needs to improve the way we interact with our Macs, not simply add another confusing control element to the laptops. The Magic Toolbar needs to make it easier to perform tasks that we now do using keyboard shortcuts or on-screen toolbars. If it can’t do that, the Magic Toolbar will go down in the history books as a failure.

Luckily, there’s one simple step Apple can take to ensure that the Magic Toolbar becomes a success.

Xiaomi’s incredible new Mi Mix smartphone brings a jaw-dropping “edgeless” display, a ceramic design and groundbreaking new technologies.

Unveiled today, it isn’t just the prettiest smartphone of 2016; it’s the prettiest smartphone to date.

The Mi Mix is not an iPhone clone — something Xiaomi has become famous for — but it could tell us a lot about Apple’s next handset.

Apple’s second beta for iOS 10 is jam-packed with new features and changes to go along with the big batch of bug fixes.

More than 50 changes have been discovered by developers, affecting everything from Apple Music to widgets. A lot of the changes are very minor UI tweaks that would probably go unnoticed by many users, but Apple has also added some huge additions to the Home button, Messages, Notification Center and more.

Here’s what’s new in iOS 10 beta 2:

June 23, 2003: The Power Mac G5 goes on sale. Affectionately nicknamed the “cheese grater” due to its distinctive perforated exterior, it’s Apple’s fastest-ever machine — and the world’s first 64-bit personal computer.

“The 64-bit revolution has begun and the personal computer will never be the same again,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release describing the beastly machine. “The new Power Mac G5 combines the world’s first 64-bit desktop processor, the industry’s first 1 GHz front-side bus, and up to 8GB of memory to beat the fastest Pentium 4 and dual Xeon-based systems in industry-standard benchmarks and real-world professional applications.”

iOS 10 brings much-needed design overhauls for the Apple Music and Apple News apps.

The big iOS update, which is currently in beta but should hit iPhones and iPads this fall, brings huge changes to the Apple Music UI as well as minor improvements to navigation in the music app. To see all the changes in action, watch the Cult of Mac video below.

Sir Jony Ive is now Dr. Jony Ive, thanks to one of the most prestigious universities in the U.K., which gave Apple’s design guru an honorary doctorate in science.

My biggest gripe with my Apple Watch is not the sluggish hardware, the lack of GPS nor the dependance on my iPhone. These are all problems to be sure. But it is the bad user interface design that often drives me so mad that my force-taps turn into force-thumps of frustration.

With an update to the Apple Watch operating system expected at the Worldwide Developers Conference next month, here’s my top 10 list of interface improvements I’d like to see in the upcoming watchOS 3. These essential changes would spare my wrist from future incidents of wrist rage.

The boring beige computers Apple offered all the way up until the late ’90s would never get Jony Ive’s stamp of approval today. But fortunately for those who love retro, Apple’s latest iMac is now available with a beige paint job (and a bigger price tag).

Jony Ive suggests that Apple is bound to make some missteps as it continues to explore wearable devices, and offers some vague, tantalizing hints about Apple’s plans for the Apple Watch in a new interview.

“Regardless of whether we declare an interest in fashion or not, we are making products that are more and more personal, products that you wear and you wear every day,” he told Business of Fashion ahead of the Apple-sponsored Met Gala. “We’ve not done that before and we’ve got a lot to learn.”

HP’s newest laptop, the 10.4-mm-thin Spectre 13.3, is the company’s attempt at building a MacBook beater — complete with slimmer profile, larger screen and more horsepower.

Over the past 40 years, Apple has been many things to many people. Innovative or imitative, premium or overpriced, saintly or evil — everybody’s got their own take on what Cupertino and its revolutionary products mean.

While Apple was founded on April Fools’ Day in 1976, the company and the profound impact that its shiny devices have made on our lives is truly not a joke. Here’s what Cult of Mac staffers said when asked to describe what the company means to them in a single word.

Whether it’s adding tree-lined avenues or high-tech display tables for showing off the Apple Watch or iPhone, the design of the Apple Store is constantly changing.

The latest innovation is a giant floor-to-ceiling television display, which can be seen at Apple’s new Saddle Creek Store in Germantown, Tennessee.

And you thought the 12.9-inch iPad Pro had a big screen!

The iPhone may finally ditch its metal casing in 2017 in favor of a new curved glass body similar to the one on Samsung’s Galaxy S7 edge.

Apple’s next big redesign of the iPhone is slated for next year, reports KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who claims in his latest note to investors that Apple will pair the new case design with a 5.8-inch AMOLED display.

A joke in Zoolander 2 pokes fun at the ’90s craze for tiny cellphones, something which today seems as retro as flannel shirts and Pulp Fiction posters in your dorm room.

With the upcoming iPhone 7, Apple is apparently showing us the next iteration of that ideal by bringing us a smartphone so thin — just 6.1 mm thick — that even Victoria’s Secret models would advise it to eat a sandwich.

But are super-slim iPhones what users really want, or have Jony Ive and Apple’s design team taken things too far?