Upon the return of Steve Jobs to Apple, Jony Ive found his role transformed. Given more freedom and authority to have innovative designs find their way into products, Ive and Jobs set out to restore Apple's reputation in the industry.
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On monday, I published an episode about johnny ives journey to apple
and I've, if you don't know, is
He designer famous for his influence at apple,
He had a hand in the look and aesthetic at the company for twenty years
recently, he and apple have cut ties, so we're going to continue his story in this episode
This is really not just an episode about Johnny I've and his influence its really an episode. That's about apple in its transition.
From a company that was in serious trouble to one that became a tastemaker like this is the period in which apple,
itself underwent a massive transformation, so, while
It is going to take a crucial part of that story. It's
require us to talk about some other stuff too. Now, where we left off,
I was in a really delicate position. He had recently been promoted to apple's director of industrial design. This was
five years after he had joined apple, he joined apple
as a designer. The ninth member of the design team, five,
years later, the
going director of industrial design, recommended I've for the jobs that this was a really remarkable journey. I mean that's a short amount of time to go from.
Entering in as a base,
member of a team to becoming the leader of that team.
I've came into apple in the early nineties, which was a period where co founder steve.
Ups was effectively banished from apple. I talked about that in the last episode
and you know jobs after he had been pushed to the side in the mid,
eighties. He left apple and founded a different computer company called next big and little e big ex big t
This company would end up designing computers meant for the educational sector at least primarily, but the computers were really expensive.
And they had a fairly limited suite of software, because software
helpers aren't likely to dedicate
time and resources to make stuff for a platform that
I have a very large install base. It just doesn't make sense you never going to make back the investment you made in order to make the thing in the first place, so
We must make more sense as a developer, to create software for computers that a lot of people use instead of an upstart company. That's true:
to muscle its way into a pre existing market and over at apple.
had become pretty rocky in no small part due to the chaos going on with the team that was responsible for building the next generation of the macintosh operating system. That old,
eject, had ballooned out of control with feature creep and internal struggle
within the team and so the then
ceo gil amelio moved to acquire. The next computer
company and the idea was that wild next wasn't getting much traction in the market, its operate
system was really good and
could serve as the next generation of the mac operating system and the internal
build of the next mac. Ios apple could be set aside for the time being made,
we could be rescued and fixed, but Emilio felt that
and in the state that it was in within apple it
wasn't going to be ready for the market, so he decided to acquire next and use that operating system instead, so apple acquires now
and then Steve jobs came back to apple initially as an advisor, but within
short order. He became the interim ceo and then eventually the permanent, ceo and jobs
was not happy. Actually,
up on various stories of apple's history. There are a lot of tales about jobs not being happy, and part of that was the
The jobs of standards were that the deputy beat up and when products failed to meet his standards, he got mad jobs had come back to apple and,
he did. What he saw apple is producing so many different models of macintosh computers, because the pre
He has leaders thought, though
aid to address the issues apple had was to expand the product line by making a tonne
different macintosh models, but it got to the point
where the companies own sales team had trouble.
Explaining why one model would be more suitable for a specific customer over
the other model. If your sales team can't say oh based upon your
This is what you should get there.
You know, you're in trouble,
such was muddled, the products were confusing
jobs was enraged
and he wasn't shy about voicing his opinions now. I've as the
head of industrial design was
lay concerned for his team. Jobs was particular,
the angry about the direction of apple's design team, he said that he felt the quote: unquote. Sex had been taken out of
products that they no longer had the appearance of something people wanted to interact with an
word, got around. The jobs was planning on looking outside apple to find someone in design
to come in and realign the company and to lead that team, meaning I would be
a job. So I've talked
with his team and they even discussed the possibility of creating their own design firm. If the whole department should find itself sacked
but I have advised his colleagues to wait and see what jobs would do and the
created a kind of showcase, with
the design department, so I've
It was just a matter of time before jobs would make his way to the design department and see exact
He held things had gone totally wrong
in jobs's mind and I
wanted to showcase the work his team had created with designs that the company had not accepted.
These are these were ideas that
no one else in apple had approved, so they put on display
a lot of the more radical designs that had failed.
Find their way through apple's bureaucratic process and sure enough when job-
did come down and take a look at the design department. He was in
asked by what he saw, the things that he
looking at from
team. They weren't at all representative of the actual products, the job.
The phone so boring and uninspired. According to trip mikel the author of after steve
if a book that I used extensively in my research here, jobs,
and I've
Actually, he said you
we've been very effective. Have you I am
paraphrasing, because jobs could use a lot of what Mr Spock would call.
colorful metaphors in his language. What jobs meant was that
I and his team were
standing designers. They were creating amazing work, but they weren't adept at getting that work at,
did by leadership at apple and that's all
big component of paying a department head. It's not enough to be an effective manager. A leader
as to have vision and a way to commute
that vision to others and get by on to get them to support that vision.
So a leader has to be able to convince other people to try new things or, at the very least, come
to the table and negotiate a way forward.
I was unquestionably a great designer, but
It. Might have been that he was not yet a great leader, at least in that sense, but then,
I was also felt that the pre
he s, regime at apple was rife with incompetence, and so
I'll jobs gave I've a little bit of a hard time, it was clear that he placed on
all the blame on apple's previous leadership that the
company had become so weighed down by people afraid to take risks or more
you're saying competing directly against the ensconced pc market, rather than creating a compelling alternative that they were incapable of listening to I've and his team and so
billy. The fault was on them more than it was on I've and the
news was the jobs, saw this and felt that the design
team was doing great work that they were brilliant and innovative,
so jobs knew that the department was the right group of people to make his vision of what apple could be
into a reality, and this began
working relationship that would develop into a fierce friendship between jobs and I've. It also meant job
would end his search for a new head have designed. So I was safe in his job
jobs and I've bonded.
For a shared fascination with the form of products and
by form. I really actually mean a bunch of different things, not just the physical she
although that is a huge part of it
I was actually really obsessed with materials. He would carefully go through each and every sample of various metairie
as to determine what was right for any given project,
and, in his mind, specific effects that the materials should pull off weather
as a shiny metal, surface or a very smooth curve of glass or a pebbled leather cover
and jobs was very much the same way. So the two spent age is talking about different material.
Also what was possible with each wine or what
petitions existed with them and how to
The solution to meet those limitations- or you know in most cases with eyes if he
I'm fault in a material. He was far more likely to just reject the material outright and find something better that met his expectations, even if a man
scouring the entire world to find what he wanted, and jobs
the wasted no time once he returned to the leadership role, he gave the newton programme, the axe and ninety. Ninety eight, I talked about the apple newton in the last up, a suit
that was a little less than six years after the apple Newton had debuted, and that wasn't it
to create a new product line, but because of some
real limitations with the hardware and more, moreover, the software, it did not work. It was a failure, but steve jobs didn't just acts products he axed entire layers of
in german jobs essentially laid off the general managers overseeing the various business units within apple. In fact, he did that
in a single day like it was
an armageddon where he laid off.
legions of general managers and that pro
will contributed to some people at apple, using the phrase getting jobs to
as a way of saying, you got fired apple head
it had silos of departments, so little feudal states each with its own leader that was locked
we cut off from the other departments and jobs
those silos down. He essentially reorganized the entire company into a more cohesive and collaborative operation. Now, the team
it would still have leaders like I was leader of the designers for industrial design, and these would
if people had deep expertise in whatever field it was that they were representing. So there are people who could manage.
Others, but they also knew how to do the stuff that the team was doing,
the team they were managing was doing
jobs at one really big mistake that he was the egg made way back in the seventies was to bring in people who are really adept at business, but they didn't know how computers worked and that that disconnect
It led to all sorts of trouble down the line.
and then jobs gave I've a critical assignment.
On new that the company needed to launch a product that would put it back in the minds of consumers. They needed to capture the rebel
yes and innovative spirit of the company. In its early days, jobs
those are how the internet was playing an increasingly
important role in while everything
and so he wanted apple to create a desktop computer with the express purpose of being a machine that would work well with the internet,
Jobs also wanted to ditch some traditional features found on most personal computers of the day. For example, he didn't
What this new computer to have a floppy disk drive something that was standard on other machines at the time. He also wanted to ditch
cereal boards, which, if
not familiar were used as a communication interface with computers, so they can connect with other peripherals right, send information
two to and receive information from those peripherals jobs
he's wanted to incorporate usb technology in this new apple computer, and he also gave I
team one other directive
He wanted the design for this computer to be quote, joyful and quote, and I've and his team would take on that challenge. We're going to take a quick break when we come back
talk more about this project and how it really helped turn things around for apple. But first these messages- I I I I I I I 's success is yours for the asking and with survey monkey all you have to do is
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the
so Johnny. I've and his team got this assignment from
jobs and they got to work they.
add the parameters and then pretty much a blank, can't canvas that they could use where they could
create the next generation of consumer macintosh computers. It would be called the imac,
This was the beginning of apple, using that lower case I in front of its various product names. The imac would be the first of those those products, the first major one
the so the team led by Johnny. I've decided that the computer should be innovative, but not threatening. So I need to look. Futuristic
but it also needed to look accessible. It couldn't be something where you're like. Oh that looks cool, but I don't want to touch it so one big
point of inspiration was the cartoon. The jet, since you know me
budgets, jetson and so on. All the
since lived in a world that was simultaneously futuristic and also anchored
the aesthetic of the nineteen fifties, while the imac wouldn't look like it came straight out of the nineteen
they did have elements of the familiar along with the novel. Now the original imac was not
flat screen. Computer like later models, would turn into. It was an all
and one computer that look like a very colorful cr t monitor.
Before the imac. The team had
is a laptop prototype that had translucent plastic built in
The body of the computer and I've decided he wanted to incorporate that element into the imac,
I have presented his ideas to jobs and jobs.
did a lot of them, but why
the jobs really liked was a sketch.
I showed him and I've described it as a computer. That looks as though it was about to jump off the deck
and go do something and that
really resonated with jobs, so I returned to his team with jobs isn't but, and they refined that design
began to move more in that specific direction and they created a model
like so much. They would actually take that to other departments in order to show it off to them. The team
Those a polycarbonate shell for the computer for a couple
isn't one, it's a very
call material. So it's it's resilient, but also it can hold a tinted color really effectively. It doesn't fade over time
at least not rapidly, so so it would hold whatever color you wanted to give it, and as for those
others. They initially created computer shells that were either orange or purple
or a bluish greenish color. That would end up being called bondy blue the process
to make. The shells was expensive, both because of needing to make the polycarbonate translucent and also the process itself was sort of a customized one. They couldn't
rely on existing manufacturing processes that all had to be built from scratch in order to mass manufacture these now, this meant that it would cost apple.
Sixty dollars per unit per per computer case, just the case, not the internals, and that was much more expensive than the typical computer case was
However, I was very happy to find out that steve jobs wasn't really concerned about manufacturing costs because deep
jobs saw the need to bring customers back to apple, as well as to attract new customers to the company.
and he thought it was going to be short sighted to worry about production costs and that this
really going to be a swing for the fences kind of product, a
We need a home run, so we're going to swing as hard as we can so because,
the case was translucent. I've and his team worked with other departments to figure out how the sir,
tree layout that would be in the computer underneath would be visible and attract
if they wanted it to look sophisticated and not messi's,
another consideration that really set apple apart.
It also be the foundation for the types of computer rigs that are are very popular today. Their allotted
get cases out there that have transparent glass panels.
But you can see the interior right. You can see the the fan
in the various components, many of them decked out with Ellie dees, and that's the kind of rig the gamers prefer these days, and I feel that we can thank apple, in particular,
and specifically johnny ive and his team for setting.
as down that kind of pathway. I feel like the imac, was sort of an early example of that aesthetic
that extends all the way down to today. Obviously,
The shapes are very different today than the imac was, but there are those those elements I feel that have carried through
when it came time to unveil the imac thing
nearly went pear shaped one of the the components
jobs really wanted in this computers. Design was a cd slot so that you
irs could just insert a compact disc into the slot. It would go into the computer and then they could.
With information from the the c. So he,
send it to be a little slit in the computer and to be as unobtrusive as possible, but when it came time to actually unveil the design and jobs, look at the the
type that he was going to show off. He saw
that the imac had a sea.
a trade that would extend out from the computer, you would put the city into the tray and then retract the seat
trade back into the computer and he was furious, but
when he was lashing. I help
super angry that the thing he wanted wasn't part of the imac. He was told
The problem was that
technology he wanted in the computer didn't exist yet no one had died.
A working version of what he was envisioning and that
That was the issue. Johnny
but actually stepped up to talk steve jobs down johnny. I've said
You know what you're thinking of right. Now. That's the next one of these less than the next imac. We can't do it yet.
but next generation we will. However, we have to ship this version
and remarkably Johnny Ives approach really worked at calm down, Steve jobs and he went on,
to rehearse what the
presentation that would unveil the imac would become, and you can actually watch that
then online,
it was done way back in nineteen. Ninety eight, so if you do find a copy of it there, there are copies on youtube. The video
these pretty bad, but it is,
it mind nineties,
and you can watch as jobs calls. The imac quote
excitement of the internet, the simplicity of macintosh. In
jobs then goes on to essential
a slam. The got competition
saying that consumer computers that are on the market are all
slow and ugly. Today,
I have lousy displays and if they have,
a networking capability and them at all is pretty limited. So he was really trying to set up how the imac would contrast with what he was
claiming to be the status quo and
and the girl specks on the imam were the all they were impressive for the time, but you would laugh at them now a yoke
talks about having a ton of memory in this computer, which was there
aid to whole megabytes worth
if the processor ran at a blistering two hundred and thirty three megahertz, that processor was the g three powerpc processor. By the way. That's why this
the computer is sometimes referred to as the imac mac G3 cosette, that was the processor but power that
but he really wanted to focus on the impact of industrial design. Of the computer and
Really what we want to talk about too. We don't want to I'm not going to run down all the technical specs, because that's not really what these episodes are about. We're talking about the aesthetic of apple
So when jobs revealed the imac, the crowd could only see the
front of the machine. Initially they could just see the face of the imac right
look like a sleek
did computers so, instead of sharp corners had round
the corners and
they get only see-
in the face of the computer at initially,
they went ahead and went banana-
and then jobs brought in a camera that could
the care operators could circle by mac.
The feed was set live two movie scream.
That were in the presentation hall, so everyone could see
the translucent plastic along the sides and the back of the computer and
jobs showed off how the imac had a handle as well in the back like along the top and
That was a design factor that Johnny I've had suggested because he thought it looked cool. It wasn't practical,
but weren't going to be carrying around there. I met computers everywhere, but it was something that just made it look
like you wanted to get your hands on it. That was the whole point of it. So this was not a practical component
added into the design
it was one at least not practical in the sense of physically practical. It was practical.
Sense of marketing ban.
it was another thing that made you want to pick one of these things up and purchase it right. So
jobs agreed to that design change, even though it meant that the production costs of the case of the computer would be even higher, because it would require a special approach to make this handle that's incorporated into the cases
of jobs would end up saying it looks like it came from another planet, a good planet,
one that has better designers, which
huge accolades
better than all the other designers on earth. Now.
max off a ton of issues for one day.
the all in one design meant that apple could actually ship and I'm act in a single box. The contained the computer, the keyboard and the mouse
more on the mouse in the second there
no components to connect apart from the keyboard and mouse to the computer right, so you didn't have to connect speakers to it. You didn't have to
enact the monitor to the tower. All of that was in integrated. It was one thing so
that really simplified the setup process. Apple,
make sure that the customer wouldn't need to install any software or do anything complicated. They wanted.
to work out of the box
This was the beginning of that idea of it just works. Although the
wasn't how Steve jobs described it. Yet he would later describe apple products as it just works. That would become one
One of the mottos of the company
So all you really had to do was take
imac out of the box, plug it in turn.
on nor have the the keyboard emails connected, and you are a good to go. There really sick,
by the process of connecting to the internet as well and doing so well, using a really attractively designed computer case and
It really was a showcase for ives work and his team's work
their collaboration on each design element got the spotlight,
I said, the imac was a watershed product for apple. The company had been in danger of bankruptcy due to mismanagement of the previous regime and apple and jobs,
both needed a slam dunk hit
or a grand slam hit if you prefer, and the imac delivered now
I did mention the computer mouse. That was one part of the imac. That was not a slam, dunk
the computer mouse for the imac was small and it was
circular in shape not like egg shaped or oblong like your typical computer mouse, the moral
almost like a perfect circle, and it also had a very short cord, so it was very
pretty to look at it had the same translucent, polycarbonate plastic,
had the same color features as the parent. I mac that it came with
But the mouse itself was awkward to use the size and the shape meant it was
little challenging to keep things on track, because if the
also rotated even a little bit under your hand. Then
whenever you move the mouse, the cursor was gonna go in the direction you had not intended it to go on and
cable length also meant it could get a little hard to use as well. It could limit you, and so this
I get our mouths which would gain the door
I got to re nickname the hockey puck wasn't lauded like the imac was. It was very pretty, but it was not
practical- and this would not be the last time that I've in his team would design something that would be criticised as emphasising form over function, but there I make it became the fast.
selling computer in apple's history. At that point,
company moved eight hundred thousand units by the end of its first year in existence. More importantly,
It marked a reversal of apple's fortunes so
for two years essentially, the company had
reporting. Massive losses have been operating in the red, but the
imax popularity, gave apple a profitable.
order in early nineteen. Ninety eight, and then it was
after the races, the company,
that so many people had shrugged off as having lost its way. A bearded to be not just
back on track, but league
ahead of the competition,
and it was largely thanks to ives design team that
I was already hard at work
another product one.
In many ways to the imac- and this was the eyeballs-
which was a nod to the imac and the indented.
Purpose to serve as a computer that could quickly connect to the internet
this was a clamshell laptop computer that also featured rounded corners. So you didn't have these sharp corners of your typical laptop. It also featured colorful rubber accents that
bordered a polycarbonate white plastic case to give it kind of a whimsical appearance
There are elements of translucent plastic in that case as well,
and a lot of the design elements that maybe I max so compelling found their way into the eye book design,
by the time Steve jobs, ready to unveil this new computer in nineteen. Ninety nine.
After the imac had come out. The crown
It was already on board
You should really watch this presentation, the eye book, unveiling presentation to see how the cult of apple was off too,
big start, even as early as ninety. Ninety, nine, the crowd
even seen a single image of the laptop
but as soon as jobs revealed, that apple had a new consumer laptop to show off after referencing the incredibly popular imac
he was already getting crazy amounts of applause,
got even more when he revealed that the name of the laptop was I book and he still hadn't actually shown off the ding dang darn thing,
apple- was known as using this naming convention of power in front of its professional grade hardware. So a power mac was meant for professionals,
as the imac was meant as a consumer product. Well, the
professional grade
horrible mac computer was called a power book. So
what he said
since we have the imac. This is going to be. The ibook
That alone got a huge ovation from the crowd, and he literally was bonkers.
and jobs had to have been flying high his audience
was already on his side. He didn't have to win them over
for providing him a ton of energy so hidden
went through the technical specs of the laptop which again
not really important for this podcast, so I'm not going to go through them, and then
He finally showed off the design and when he did, he showed
If this tangerine colored rubber, accented laptop so like all the color parts are,
rubber that overlay, the the white polycarbonate plastic and
it was a nice nod to ives past. I think, because in case you don't remember from the last episode
johnny. Ive came to apple after he had been working at a design, consultancy, firm, called tangerine.
the apple logo on the front was
tangerine and color against the white polycarbonate plastic on the back
Add the entire bottom of the laptop coded in this tangerine shaded rubber, except for me
apple logo, which was in white, so very nice little accent nods.
jobs continue with a presentation. Even though you can
the audience roaring like he didn't pause for them too.
View shout out there their joy.
at seeing this
and they would roar again when jobs revealed that the computer had a handle near the hinge of the laptop which would lead
you carry the laptop like a briefcase which just goes to show. We were easier to please way back in nineteen. Ninety nine
He also showed how the laptop didn't have a latch, so wouldn't latch closed, and you wouldn't have to press anything
in order to open it
at the hinge was had enough tension in it to keep the laptop closed under normal conditions. Are you also
now. The communication ports didn't have covers, which made them easier to access. You can really
The ives influence here his desire to make the product something that you would want to use and trying to avoid any components that would make that experience. Frustrating jobs announced that the
but could be available in the color.
Tangerine or blueberry upon their first release later on.
apple would include a couple of other colors. They had indigo graphite
key lime?
Her own did I book, but I have to say that the color and designs really actually do look super inviting I mean I know that my phone is technically
or advanced than those computers are, but still I cried
would like a tendering I book, because it's just really pretty and I
goes to show how Ivan his team were geniuses. They tapped into something really
powerful they were able to come up with an aesthetic they had an instant appeal
I, with his tendency towards simplicity and minimalism, kept his too.
from adding in superfluous or distracting features or embellishments. Now we're
Take another quick break when we come back I'll talk about, and I've
and product. That, sadly, did not,
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The
I don't want to give the impression that Johnny ive was incapable of
we already saw that the imax mouse was kind of a misstep that people didn't really.
Like using it and, if you don't like,
using a product. That's a that's, a huge design problem right. It can look as gorgeous as anything, but if people don't like using it, it's a failure. Well,
Ivan apple did turn out a few misfires
I booked an imac, we're both
really well performing products, but one that wasn't was the power mac g. For
cube, which had a g for processor in it, which is what gave it its name just as the imam g three would be called that. Well, the
Our magazine or a cube, was meant for professional users, cause it had the power designation right.
so it was more powerful and included more features than what you would find in consumer macintosh computers and also had a hefty price tag.
Go along for the ride, the design.
of the power cube, wasn't
Thirdly, striking because, as the name tells you, the computers form factor was that of a cube. Rather
the tower. However, I should mention it wasn't a perfect cube and measured seven point: seven by seven point: seven by nine point, eight inches or twenty by twenty by twenty five cent to me:
further. The cube had a housing that was made of clear, acrylic, glass and ives team chose that
nine, because it gave the computer the sort of illusion of hovering just above the desk. It would sit on because the
I the case of this acrylic case, would have hold up
computer a couple of inches
The computer had no internal fan inside it to dissipate heat
Instead, it relied on a grill in the top of
computer case that allowed heat to escape passively
so didn't have a physical power button. Instead, it had a touch sensitive button.
That as soon as you make contact with it would power on the computer or would make a
word computer go to sleep, which was a problem. Some people had where they would accidentally graze this touch.
Instead of button and turn their working computer into sleep mode, and that was frustrating the cupid form factor
placed other limitations on this computer, namely in order to fit all the components into that small space.
An apple would not be able to include expansion slots, so you couldn't expand.
The capabilities of the computer beyond what it could do out of the box, the tree
phyllis seedy slot that jobs had wanted for the eye mac would find its way.
Into the g for cube.
Donnie I've relished the job
just creating a form factor of a
shooter that was unique among pcs,
while the design meant apple, had to make some massive compromises.
Johnny ive and his team did manage to get it all working and the price,
that's really solidified a shift in apple's operations that
I team,
but now have a much larger influence in product development than it had ever had
four because jobs with such a huge ally for indeed
field design, while the physical appearance of the cube was striking,
It failed to find a real market critics.
Jobs actually didn't identify a target market for the device and that the lack of feet,
paired with a high sticker price, the most folks.
market for a more powerful mac. We're going to go with a more traditional power mac computer, not the q, also the
injection molding fabrication process for the cubes case. Some
am errors which introduce flaws like cracks in the clear acrylic case. So some customers were frustrated that it was
Is it up to the standards of the previous models where you know johnny? I was known for,
play and inspecting the manual
bring process to make absolutely certain that the design he created would come out flawlessly. This was a case where that did not
then at least in some instances leading
up to the cubes release apple had enjoyed nearly three full years of profitability, but the cube underperformed drastic,
and apple said that poorer cube sales
led to a ninety million dollar shortfall for the company, just
and the cue alone, I think,
It was a hundred eighty million dollars less than what they had projected total. So the cube accounted for about half of that shortfall, and
that was a pretty tough quarter and it was another reminder that leaning more on form over function can
times, have negative consequences
we'll say that, despite the poor sales, the presentation the jobs gave in order to introduce the cube when
like gangbusters, so that
Initial excitement didn't progress into sales, unfortunately, but it was another case where the cold
of apple, was in full display jobs came out and the crowd
went gaga for the presentation once they saw the design of the cube, particularly when Steve jobs turned
the case upside down and
there was a handle on the underside of the computer and buy online,
king the handle he could pull out. The in
of the computer in one smooth motion you didn't have to fiddle with
with screws or anything like that and remove a panel. You just lifted it straight out of the case. I will say
That was an amazing design. Choice like something that made it super easy to access the internals really really cool. It's just unfortunate that, because of the form factor,
there wasn't a whole lot. You could do like you couldn't really slaughter.
expansion cards into it or anything, because there wasn't the space for it, but the the
design choice to make that a feature. Super cool now
it just didn't, sell well, so
It was
the kind of a black mark.
johnny, ives record at that point.
and then it was entirely his fault. I mean it was that it was a company wide failure right because
again the decision to go with that form, factor blaze, so many limitations and restrictions on the rest of the teams that
was pretty much impossible to create something that would
go toe to toe with the other, more powerful professional level, computers that apple was creating
and also justify the very high price tag
why do people said it's
like a very expensive toy,
other than a computer that just
Why is the high price? However? It was the next big
line that would really push apple in
to a new trajectory. It was the
in the I ordered you,
these saved apple and put it on a pathway to becoming
ridiculously successful the product would
come out till two thousand and one and the first really.
Breakthrough model of it
what no merge until two thousand and four. I am, of course talking about the ipod
now I have done episodes on the ipod before so we're not going to go through. All of that
I will say it was not the first mp3 player, it was apple's. First mb three will hair, but it wasn't the first in the world, so apple
is very rarely first to market with a technology. That's not really the company's mo. That's not what it does
instead apple is known for designing top of class examples of
technologies that someone else has already created, so no
I ipod was not the first time be three player. It was just the first one that
become a runaway success, though, as I said, it took a bit of time for that to happen,
now the first model or the ipod had some features that the company would quickly drawn up.
I think it had a mechanical method for scrolling through songs. If you looked at the face,
the ipod you would see there was this circular device on the face of the ipod. Underneath
screen would put your thumb on this and you would physically turn the circle. It was a scroll wheel, in other words, and you would use it to click through playlists or songs. You can scroll through menus this way, and but it physically would turn on its axis, so it had this tactile.
feature that other ipods would lack in the future. Probably because this was a mechanical point
failure. Although there's something really satisfying, I think of turning a mechanical component,
wherein we we've seen plenty of fidget devices that aren't that,
they are right there just little physical things that you can
they were in order to burn.
some excess energy and the
my ipod had one of those mechanical elements to it as sadly, I guess. Well, I guess it depends on your perspective, in my view,
sadly, they would get rid of that in the future versions of the ipod butts
I, the scroll circle were four buttons
made up a perimeter around the circle and these, but
His had controls like play and pause and rewind that kind of thing,
now, the original ipod could hold about one thousand songs and it lacked a few things that really prevented this first generation from becoming a superstar for
I didn't have a usb port. Instead, it had a firewire port
which really limited how you would be able to use it also
no compatible software that you could run on a pc to interact with an ipod, so it
then, if you wanted an ipod, you had to have an apple
computer in order to make it work and,
limitations kept the original ipod from becoming the success it would later be. But it did,
though, the direction of the company and its set the tone for moving forward. The next
duration of the device ditched
mechanical wheel. Instead, it had a touch sensitive wheel, so capacity
if tat, instead of mechanically turning a circle around, but physically
it resembled the first generation. It was not a huge departure in design the mccain
the wheel was gone, but the layout of the device was pretty much the same. There were a couple of other meant minor changes of the firewire port and then had a cover, instead of it being open like it was
first generation of the ipod.
five team would take a larger departure with the third edition of the ipod
interface became touch based. There was
yet a touch screen, but there were touch buttons instead, mechanical buttons to access
The controls, Ives dean, moved the control buttons above the touch we'll rather than around the perimeter of it, and the team would could
need to make adjustments to their bonds, design and clean the crew,
issues of spin off products. You had the ipod many which only lasted two generations, and you had the.
It by nano, which was the replacement for the ipod. Many was an even smaller version,
the ipod then later on. You had the ipod shuffle as well
bright touch on those a little bit in the next episode, though he won't go into as much detail as we have for the the imac and and end the cube for exam.
so we're going to leave it off here and in
next episode. We'll talk about how the
I bought design would influence apples direction and the general public's perception of the company- and me we call them pod- casts because we
named it after the ipod. That's how definitive a product that became
I will talk about ives role,
in creating this kind of momentum
Then we'll also talk about other products, the big one, obviously being the iphone and how that design ended up just cementing apple's place as a
tastemaker in consumer electronics and then
We also talk about the various things that played a part in
becoming less
enamored of apple and ultimate.
his decision one to leave the company as an employee, and then
who to essentially cut ties with apple. By now,
extending the contract that his design firm had established with the company
Those will be things we'll talk about in the next episode in the series
hope, you're enjoying these episodes. If you
suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech. Please reach
and tell me you can,
that, in one of two ways one way is to download the free. I heart radio app now
into the text of podcast page. You
that little microphone icon to record a voice message up to thirty seconds in length and, let me know through there
or you can reach out on twitter. The handle for the show is tax stuff, each as w and I'll try
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Transcript generated on 2022-08-03.