fastcodesign:
Perhaps you heard. A few weeks ago, Apple released a book called Designed by Apple in California: a $300 hardcover containing 450 photos of Apple products, chronicling almost 20 years of Apple’s industrial design—and specifically, Jony Ive’s Apple industrial design.
But I also thought where the book started was interesting: 1998’s candy-colored iMac G3, the first Mac released after Steve Jobs came to Apple. This is an important computer, true. But it’s not the first computer Jony Ive designed for Apple. Nor is it his most forward-looking.
It’s understandable the reasons behind the decision but it certainly can be argued it should have been included.
The book also appears to have ignored the emate (Newton based, not Mac based). Turns out it was designed by Thomas Meyerhoffer, not Jony Ive.
The book is called “Designed by Apple in California.” It is not called “designed by Jony Ives” or “designed by Apple while Jony Ives worked there.” The book is very much about the post- NeXT-aquisition collaboration between Steve Jobs, Jony Ives, and others that used the signatory phrase “Designed by Apple in California.”
Further, even if the book were not specifically about post- NeXT-aquisition Apple, the computers that are being called out here as missing are horrible and almost nobody used them.
What is actually missing from the book is the software, which was always the most important part. That whole part of the Apple story has been written out.
The TAM was a prototype, but the thinking behind it shouldn’t be entirely dismissed.