Once your Apple Watch arrives, you’re going to slap it on your wrist ASAP. But then what?
There’s a fairly steep learning curve for the Apple Watch, since Apple came up with innovations like Force Touch and the Digital Crown to make wrist computing more manageable. Luckily, there’s an easy way you can avoid being baffled by your shiny new Apple Watch — and it won’t take more than a half-hour of your precious time.
Like an autopsy performed on a cadaver that’s yet to be born, slick new renderings dissect the Apple Watch and show off its shiny guts.
Since few normal people have an actual Apple Watch in hand, concept artist Martin Hajek created the images using information gleaned from Apple’s website and industrial porn videos about the making of the smartwatch.
Here’s a chart that explains the Apple Watch user interface so well, you’ll have the UI memorized by the time your smartwatch comes in the mail.
Wondering how multitasking will work on the Apple Watch? Just tap twice. Here’s how it works.
The Apple Watch was created under crazy, sleep-deprived conditions, with its first working prototype being an iPhone strapped to the wrist with a Velcro strap, and the Digital Crown represented by a custom dongle plugged into the bottom of the phone via the headphone jack.
Those are a couple of the revelations from a new in-depth article, reporting on the creation of Apple’s eagerly anticipated wearable device.
If there’s one thing today’s New Yorker profile of Jony Ive hammers home, it’s how important the Apple Watch is to Apple’s design guru. The 16,000-word story reveals how Ive pushed the Apple Watch as a project, shortly after Steve Jobs’ death, when Apple was under pressure to come up with its next insanely great idea.
Here’s all the ways
CUPERTINO, Calif. — This is the first group photo of Apple’s new Industrial Design team — the men and women behind the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and a long string of other hit products.
The group is super-secretive and rarely appears in public together. In fact, they’ve only been pictured once before. This picture was taken at the end of Tuesday’s launch event, when many of the journalists had been ushered out. In the middle is Jony Ive and the team’s latest and highest-profile hire, star designer Marc Newson.
The Industrial Design team is Apple’s idea factory. This is where Apple’s innovation comes from. They design and develop all of Apple’s products, and many of them were working at Apple before Steve Jobs returned in 1997.
We showed you ours. Now it’s your turn. Here are the items big and small that Cult of Mac readers most want to see designed and produced by the mothership. We’ve got Apple solar pens, food packaging and yes, puppies — because even pets could use the Sir Jony treatment.
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple went from being chump of the tech world to champ, and what was the product that turned it all around?
That was the question posed to a panel of ex-Apple designers at a special event here in the city.
The answers might surprise you.
The term “planned obsolescence” has achieved negative connotations, but it originally referred to a long-standing tradition of changing designs to sell more products.
It was coined by the car industry in the 1930s to refer to annual model updates. Over the years, however, the term has taken on a darker meaning. But planned obsolescence is a good thing. It’s the driving force behind much innovation.
This morning, New York Times reporter Catherine Rampell accused Apple of breaking her old iPhone 4 with the iOS7 update, which made it unbearably slow. “It seemed like Apple was sending me a not-so-subtle message to upgrade,” she wrote in a piece entitled, Why Apple Wants to Bust Your iPhone.
According to Rampell, Apple is feeling the heat from Samsung, HTC and others, and is resorting to sabotaging older iPhones with a software update and force users to upgrade their hardware.
This is bullshit from every angle. The iOS7 upgrade isn’t obligatory, it’s voluntary, and pissing off customers isn’t a good way to keep them as customers. There’s no mention that Apple sold a record-smashing 33.8 million iPhones last quarter.
Truth is, Apple’s products are so far ahead of the curve, it’s a constant criticism leveled at the company: that it is a willing practitioner of planned obsolescence.
That new Apple TV that went through the FCC last night? Apple says not to get too excited, it’s just a small tweak: it won’t be physcally smaller, nor will it feature any new functionality.
Upset that after almost a decade, Apple is finally changing the Dock Connector with the new, smaller Lightning Standard? Redditor Ima13X puts it in perspective.
The image makes a great point: Samsung’s had a million proprietary connectors for its devices over the last decade, while Apple’s only had two. However, it’s worth noting that it’s this very consistency in proprietary connectors that allowed Apple to build up a massive third-party “Made for iPhone”, “Made for iPad” and “Made for iPod” licensing business… a business that Samsung’s never managed at all.
So changing the 30-Pin Dock Connector to Lightning is a big deal. The ramnifications on Apple’s accessory ecosystem are huge. As long as Apple doesn’t get in the habit of changing this connector frivolously, though, and has built Lightning to be as future proof (or more so) than the 30-Pin Dock Connector, this changes means fresh billions earned, not just for Apple, but its accessory partners.
Source: Reddit
Sir Jony Ive hasn’t agreed to too many interviews during his time as Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design. But the London Evening Standard has managed to tie him down for a rare interview in which he talks about Apple’s design process, and why its competitors have the wrong goals.
In OS X Lion, Apple redesigned Address Book with a new look that resembles a physical hardcover book binding. This type of design choice is called “skeuomorphic,” because it was, “deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar.” Lion’s version of Address Book takes the old look and feel of a physical book and ports that to a virtual application.
While some may like the new look of Address Book in Lion, many have raised complaints. If you’d like to make Address Book look clean and simple again, we’ve got just the trick to unbind Address Book from its brown hardcover.
Remember how ugly Apple’s online Order Status page was? Well, Apple has finally cleaned up its online store web design to reflect the rest of its top notch aesthetic taste.
While this isn’t particularly huge news, it’s still worth mentioning. Now you can see the order status on that new MacBook Air you just bought on a prettier webpage.
Apple’s suing Samsung for copying the intellectual property of their iPhone, iPad and iOS designs. In return, Samsung’s suing Apple for patent infringement.
In the Apple vs. Samsung case, though, Apple has just won a weird little concession from the judge: they get to see five of Samsung’s unreleased tablets and smartphones. Can you imagine what would happen if Samsung got the same concession in their suit against Apple?
Recording engineer and music producer Michael Jack has amassed an amazing collection of 1,100 transistor radios.
These models from the 1950s look like predecessors of the iPod, he notes on his flickr stream:
“When I fist saw the Zenith RE-10 I figured I had come upon the most obvious inspiration for the iPod… Although all these radios appear to have similar design elements to the iPod I would ALMOST bet that the RE-10 was studied (or at least observed) by the Mac design team.”
I love the still-modern look of these half-century old radios, whether Jonathan Ive used them for inspiration or not.
What do you think?
Designers continue to be inspired by Mac icons as home decor.
The choice for these handmade fleece pillows is a bit random — iCal, the start button and an devilish version of Finder — but cool nonetheless.
$14.99 each at Etsy.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9E2D2PaIcI
“Objectified” the indie documentary film about industrial design that gives you a rare peek into Apple designer Johnathan Ive’s studio is out in movie theaters now — with a limited number of screenings from Stockholm to San Francisco.
The 90-second trailer is punctuated with Apple products (iPhone, MacBook) and a nice-close up of Ives.
At least one reviewer said Ive’s contribution — where he explains how a laptop emerges from just about one piece of metal — is a highlight of the effort by director Gary Hustwit.
If you catch it, let us know what you think.
Welcome iHome: doors recently opened on a solar-powered, energy efficient prefab house that creators hope has the design cachet of Apple products.
Miles away from the usual trailer park digs, the homes feature v-shaped rooflines, bamboo floors and rooftop decks.
The name’s a hat tip to Apple — much like the iApartment building or the iHotel we’ve written about before.
“We love what it represents,” Kevin Clayton of Clayton Homes told the AP. “We are fans of Apple and all that they have done. But the ‘I’ stands for innovation, inspiration, intelligence and integration.”
The recession-friendly iHouse goes for $100 to $130 a square foot, depending on extras in what’s billed as “a moderately-priced plug and play dwelling” for the eco-conscious. The ribbon was cut on the iHouse in the US a few days ago at the annual shareholders’ meeting of investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway Inc. in Omaha, Neb.
Via AP
Over at Core 77, this earbud holder was an in-house entry in this month’s one-hour design challenge to make something useful out of business cards.
Eric says he’s been using it for a week and its still holding up..In any case, it’s a nice way to use those out-of-date cards (dot-com bust, anyone?) instead of just recycling them…
Other Apple-related entries in the business card challenge include an iPhone stand and speakers. Feeling creative? There’s still time to enter the contest — the top five entries win 1,000 business cards.
Via Core77
Spotted this yesterday in Milan: a small stool with a faux-Apple logo, missing the bite and a few colors but unmistakably inspired by the iconic rainbow.
Wonder who, for about $17 (€12.90), would want to sit on it, PC people?
Here’s an Apple keyboard spray painted snowy, pure white — nothing to stop your eye but if your touch typing skills are still at high-school level, you’re in trouble.
Maker Essell says:
“The design snob in me isn’t particularly happy with Apple’s recent trend of using two colors (black and silver, white and silver) on their stuff.
So. Combine my pedantic taste for minimalism with nerdy touch typing abilities and a cheap can of white spraypaint, and you end up with my keyboard – possibly the most pretentious keyboard in existence.”
What do you think?
Via NotCot
Satta van Dahl wants your old Mac.
They’ll be put to good use: the German-born, Melbourne based artist has an ongoing iPaint myMac project, in the works since 2006, which now counts 50 Macs embellished with stencils and paint.
So far they include an orange-and-red 1991 PowerBook 100 and a iconic Happy Mac Classic.
If you don’t have anything to donate, you can always follow the project on his website or Flickr stream .
His current wish list:
* iMac (the one with the half-sphered foot)
* eMac
* Cube (yes, iKnow, they are hard to come by, but hey, there might be the odd chance.. and if it’s just an empty case …)
* Macintosh Portable (they claim this was the first portable Mac, but it was so heavy, no way anyone took it anywhere)
* anything made after 2000 (there aren’t many dead ones to collect around yet)
* Classic, SE & Plus (I already have a few dozen of them, but I need more …)
* any type of Apple //, the legendary Lisa … ok, I’m dreaming now
* anything odd with an Apple logo on it (instruction VHS tapes, old PR material, shop displays, … you name it).
As part of the collection process, he also runs a “Mac surgery convention,” because most of the donated machines don’t work anymore, but there are enough bits to cobble one working machine out of two or three dead ones.
Last time he invited Mac savvy geek friends to bring their screw drivers around for an evening of pizza and computers, there were 10 running old Macs as a result.
Image via Flickr
Mac fans Tuan Nguyen and Ken Thomas got busy with corrugated cardboard and regular white glue to make this iPhone table. The straightforward design comes with handy removable icons to use as coasters.
It doesn’t quite reach the chic of the iPod table, but it’s cute and hey, if you decide for a radical home makeover, you wouldn’t feel too bad about breaking it up for the recycling bin. Details about price, availability to follow.
